The plan suited him admirably.

He was a man in every way qualified to lead a rough life; to face a by no means contemptible amount of difficulty and danger, to govern a small army of native workers more amenable to fear than to affection.

Such a life, demanding thought and action, would afford his strong nature greater interest and enjoyment than he could ever hope to obtain amid the cramped surroundings of civilisation.
"Only one thing could in reason have been urged against the arrangement, that thing was his wife.

She was a fragile, delicate girl, whom he had married in obedience to that instinct of attraction towards the opposite which Nature, for the purpose of maintaining her average, has implanted in our breasts--a timid, meek-eyed creature, one of those women to whom death is less terrible than danger, and fate easier to face than fear.
Such women have been known to run screaming from a mouse and to meet martyrdom with heroism.

They can no more keep their nerves from trembling than an aspen tree can stay the quivering of its leaves.
"That she was totally unfitted for, and would be made wretched by the life to which his acceptance of the post would condemn her might have readily occurred to him, had he stopped to consider for a moment her feelings in the matter.