Lord Loudwater was thirty-five; she was twenty-two; he would therefore survive her by at least seven years.

She would certainly be bowed down all her life under this grievous burden.
It was an odd calculation for a young married woman to make; but Lady Loudwater came of an uncommon family, which had produced more brilliant, irresponsible, and passably unscrupulous men than any other of the leading families in England.

Her father had been one of them.

She took after him.

Moreover, Lord Loudwater would have induced odd reveries in any wife.