"Still she was contented. Her temper was sweet and yielding. She did not look on each cross in circumstance as an injury or a misfortune; but rather as a call on her philosophy, which it was her duty to meet cheerfully. Her heart was too warm not to shrink with pain from her husband's ungenerous nature, but she had a resource, to which she gave herself up with ardour. She turned the full but checked tide of affections from her husband to her son. Gerard was all in all to her--her hope, her joy, her idol, and he returned her love with more than a child's affection. His sensibility developed early, and she cultivated it perhaps too much. She wished to secure a friend--and the temptation afforded by the singular affectionateness of his disposition and his great intelligence was too strong. Mr. Neville strongly objected to the excess to which she carried her maternal cares, and augured ill of the boy's devotion to her; but here his interference was vain, the mother could not alter; and the child, standing at her side, eyed his father even then with a sort of proud indignation, on his daring to step in between them. "To Mrs. Neville, this boy was as an angel sent to comfort her. She could not bear that any one should attend on him except herself--she was his playmate and instructress. When he opened his eyes from sleep, his mother's face was the first he saw; she hushed him to rest at night--did he hurt himself, she flew to his side in agony--did she utter one word of tender reproach, it curbed his childish passions on the instant--he seldom left her side, but she was young enough to share his pastimes--her heart overflowed with its excess of love, and he, even as a mere child, regarded her as something to protect, as well as worship. "Mr. Neville was angry, and often reproved her too great partiality, though by degrees it won some favour in his eyes. Gerard was his son and heir, and he might be supposed to have a share in the affection lavished on him. He respected, also, the absence of frivolous vanity that led her to be happy with her child--contented away from London--satisfied in fulfilling the duties of her station, though his eyes only were there to admire. He persuaded himself that there must exist much latent attachment towards himself, to reconcile her to this sort of exile; and her disinterestedness received the reward of his confidence--he who never before believed or respected woman. He began to yield to her more than he was wont, and to consider that he ought now and then to show some approbation of her conduct.