But she pleaded and reasoned in vain. Contented with the access which he had to the tables of his friends, it was of little importance to him that his wife ate her humble meal alone. His habits of enjoyment had ever been solitary: the school-boy, who had at school eaten his tart and cake by stealth in a corner, that he might not be asked to share them with another, had grown up with the same dispositions to manhood: and as his parents, thought opulent, were vulgar in their manners and low in their origin, he had never been taught those graceful self-denials inculcated into the children of polished life, which, though taught from factitious and not real benevolence, have certainly a tendency, by long habit, to make that benevolence real which at first was only artificial. Adeline had both sorts of kindness and affection, those untaught of the heart, and those of education;--she was polite from the situation into which the accident of birth had thrown her, and also from the generous impulse of her nature. To her, therefore, the uncultivated and unblushing _personnalité_, as the French call it, of Berrendale, was a source of constant wonder and distress: and often, very often did she feel the utmost surprise at Berrendale's having appeared to Glenmurray a man likely to make her happy. Often did she wonder how the defects of Berrendale's character could have escaped his penetrating eyes. Adeline forgot that the faults of her husband were such as could be known only by an intimate connexion, and which cohabitation could alone call forth;--faults, the existence of which such a man as Glenmurray, who never considered himself in any transaction whatever, could not suppose possible; and which, though they inflicted the most bitter pangs on Adeline, and gradually untwisted the slender thread which had began to unite her heart with Berrendale's, were of so slight a fabric as almost to elude the touch, and of a nature to appear almost too trivial to be mentioned in the narration of a biographer. But though it has been long said that trifles make the sum of human things, inattention to trifles continues to be the vice of every one; and many a conjugal union which has never been assailed by the battery of crime, has fallen a victim to the slowly undermining power of petty quarrels, trivial unkindnesses and thoughtless neglect;--like the gallant officer, who, after escaping unhurt all the rage of battle by land and water, tempest on sea and earthquake on shore, returns perhaps to his native country, and perishes by the power of a slow fever.