But he was one of those who did not like to lead, but rather preferred to drive or to goad; and from the very first moment that some slight remonstrance on the part of Lady Tyrrell, with regard to something in which he had no business to interfere, gave the slightest suspicion of opposition to his will, the violent, the sarcastic, the bitter, the selfish spirit rose up with delight, unfettered; and the system of domineering and tyranny began in full force. The parents of the lady lived to see her apparent happiness, but not to witness its reverse. Her mother died before she had been married six months, and her father scarcely survived two years. Perhaps a suspicion of the truth troubled his deathbed, but we cannot say. Unless we listen to the voice of the better spirit within us, prosperity and age generally lead forward selfishness between them; and then that selfishness who has hidden herself bashfully in the presence of the more generous feelings of youth, rushes forward with daring impudence, and blindfolds our eyes lest we should see her deformity. Such was the case with Sir Francis Tyrrell. There was no counterbalancing power to check or to control. His feelings of religion, if he had any, were not active; he had speculated away the greater part of his morality. He would not, indeed, have done anything that was glaringly and universally admitted to be evil; first, because his vanity would not consent to his incurring the reputation of a vicious man; and, secondly, because his passions did not particularly take that course. But of the moralities of life, which go hand in hand with the charities of life, he had no conception. To trample upon those who were prostrate before him; to make his own house a hell, and to act the part of ruling fiend himself; to cast every kind of aspersion and imputation, true or false, upon every one that offended him, and many that never offended him at all; to be suspicious, jealous, irritable without cause; to allow no opinion to prevail but his own; to deal a very different measure to himself and others; to exact the utmost, and to grant the least; to be avaricious while he was ostentatious, sensorious when he affected to be candid, and harshly severe to every one while he assumed the language of philanthropy, he considered to be no wrong, and sat down with the conviction that he was a very good and virtuous man. The effect upon his wife was, that for a time she sank into a state of timid and cheerless despair, from which she at length rallied herself to make ineffectual resistance. When he accused her of things she had never committed, and purposes she had never entertained, she would now rouse herself to repel the charge, but still, having the worst of the argument, and cut to the heart by sarcasms and insinuations, she would have recourse to flight to her own chamber, and end the day in tears. When he was simply violent, she had the good sense to sit in quiet and make no reply.