With
Braddock she did not arrange a romantic marriage so much as enter
into a congenial partnership. She wanted a man in the house, and
he desired freedom from pecuniary embarrassment. On these lines
the prosaic bargain was struck, and Mrs. Kendal became the
Professor's wife with entirely successful results. She gave her
husband a home, and her child a father, who became fond of Lucy,
and who--considering he was merely an amateur parent--acted
admirably.
But this sensible partnership lasted only for five years. Mrs.
Braddock died of a chill on the liver and left her five hundred a
year to the Professor for life, with remainder to Lucy, then a
small girl of ten. It was at this critical moment that Braddock
became a practical man for the first and last time in his dreamy
life. He buried his wife with unfeigned regret--for he had been
sincerely attached to her in his absent-minded way--and sent
Lucy to a Hampstead boarding school. After an interview with his
late wife's lawyer to see that the income was safe, he sought for
a house in the country, and quickly discovered Gartley Grange,
which no one would take because of its isolation. Within three
months from the burial of Mrs. Braddock, the widower had removed
himself and his collection to Gartley, and had renamed his new
abode the Pyramids.
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