Edward daily required more and more the stimulus of society.

His wife wondered how he could care to accept dinner invitations from people who treated him as "Wilkins the attorney, a very good sort of fellow," as they introduced him to strangers who might be staying in the country, but who had no power to appreciate the taste, the talents, the impulsive artistic nature which she held so dear.

She forgot that by accepting such invitations Edward was occasionally brought into contact with people not merely of high conventional, but of high intellectual rank; that when a certain amount of wine had dissipated his sense of inferiority of rank and position, he was a brilliant talker, a man to be listened to and admired even by wandering London statesmen, professional diners-out, or any great authors who might find themselves visitors in a -- -shire country-house.

What she would have had him share from the pride of her heart, she should have warned him to avoid from the temptations to sinful extravagance which it led him into.

He had begun to spend more than he ought, not in intellectual--though that would have been wrong--but in purely sensual things.