"But marriage too soon changed Sir Boyvill for the worse. Close intimacy disclosed the distortions of his character. He was a vain and a selfish man. Both qualities rendered him exacting in the extreme; and the first gave birth to the most outrageous jealousy. Alithea was too ingenuous for him to be able to entertain suspicions; but his jealousy was nourished by the difference of their age and temper. She was nineteen--in the first bloom of loveliness--in the freshest spring of youthful spirits--too innocent to suspect his doubts--too kind in her most joyous hour to fancy that she could offend. He was a man of the world--a thousand times had seen men duped and women deceive. He did not know of the existence of a truth as spotless and uncompromising as existed in Alithea's bosom. He imagined that he was marked out as the old husband of a young wife; he feared that she would learn that she might have married more happily; and, desirous of engrossing her all to himself, a smile spent on another was treason to the absolute nature of his rights. At first she was blind to his bad qualities. A thousand times he frowned when she was gay--a thousand times ill-humour and cutting reproofs were the results of her appearing charming to others, before she discovered the selfish and contemptible nature of his passion, and became aware that, to please him, she must blight and uproot all her accomplishments, all her fascinations; that she must for ever curb her wish to spread happiness around; that she, the very soul of generous, unsuspecting goodness, must become cramped in a sort of bed of Procrustes, now having one portion lopped off, and then another, till the maimed and half-alive remnant should resemble the soulless, niggard tyrant, whose every thought and feeling centred in his Lilliputian self. That she did at last make this discovery, cannot be doubted; though she never disclosed her disappointment, nor complained of the tyranny from which she suffered. She grew heedful not to displease, guarded in her behaviour to others, and so accommodated her manner to his wishes, as showed that she feared, but concealed that she no longer esteemed him. A new reserve sprang up in her character, which, after all, was not reserve; for it was only the result of her fear to give pain, and of her unalterable principles. Had she spoken of her husband's faults, it would have been to himself--but she had no spirit of governing--and quarrelling and contention were the antipodes of her nature. If, indeed, this silent yielding to her husband's despotism was contrary to her original frankness, it was a sacrifice made to what she esteemed her duty, and never went beyond the silence which best becomes the injured.