One of his idiosyncrasies was his almost contemptuous indifference to women.

He was fond of his sisters in a patronising way, but the average pleasant girl, of whom the neighbourhood of Beechfield had more than its full share, left him quite cold.
The next in age--Dolly--was the most commonplace member of the family.
Her character seemed to be set on absolutely conventional lines, and the whole family, with the exception of her father, who did not concern himself with such mundane things, secretly hoped that she would marry a young parson who had lately "made friends with her." As is often the case with that type of young woman, Dolly was feckless about money, and would always have appeared badly and unsuitably dressed but for the efforts of her elder sister and step-mother.
Rosamund, the youngest and by far the prettiest of the three sisters, was something of a problem.

Though two years younger than Dolly, she had already had three or four love affairs, and when only sixteen, had been the heroine of a painful scrape--the sort of scrape which the people closely concerned try determinedly to forget, but which everyone about them remembers to his or her dying day.
The hero of that sorry escapade had been a man of forty, separated from his wife.

On the principle that "truth will out even in an affidavit," poor Rosamund's little world was well aware that the girl, or rather the child, had been simply vain and imprudent.

But still, she had disappeared for two terrible long days and nights, and even now, when anything recalled the episode to her step-mother or to Betty, they would shudder with an awful inward tremor, recollecting what they had both gone through.