"Such suspicions began to creep about--rather felt in men's minds than inferred in their speech--till her husband first, uttered the fatal word; and then, as if set free from a spell, each one was full of indignation at her dereliction and his injuries. Sir Boyvill was beyond all men vain--vanity rendered him liable to jealousy--and, when jealous, full of sore and angry feelings. His selfishness and unforgiving nature, which had been neutralized by his wife's virtues, now, quickened by the idea of her guilt, burst forth and engrossed every other emotion. He was injured there where the pride of man is most accessible--branded by pity--the tale of the world. He had feared such a catastrophe during the first years of his wedded life, being conscious of the difference which age and nature had placed between him and his wife. In the recesses of his heart he had felt deeply grateful to her for having dissipated these fears. From the moment that her prudent conduct had made him secure, he had become another man--as far as his defective nature and narrow mind permitted--he had grown virtuous and disinterested; but this fabric of good qualities was the result of her influence; and it was swept away and utterly erased from the moment she left him, and that love and esteem were exchanged for contempt and hatred. "Soon, very soon, had doubts of his wife's allegiance and a suspicion of her connivance insinuated themselves. Like all evilly-inclined persons, he jumped at once into a belief of the worst; her taking her son with her was a mere contrivance, or worse, since her design had probably been to carry him with her--a design frustrated by accident, and the lukewarmness of her lover on that point; the letter left behind he looked on as a fabrication, left there to gloss over her conduct. He forgot her patient goodness--her purity of soul--her devoted attachment to her children--her truth; and attributed at once the basest artifice--the grossest want of feeling. Want of feeling in her! She whose pulses quickened and whose blushes were called up at a word; she who idolized her child even to a fault, and whose tender sympathy was alive to every call; but these demonstrations of sensibility grew into accusations. Her very goodness and guarded propriety were against her. Why appear so perfect, except to blind? Why seclude herself, except from fears which real virtue need never entertain? Why foster the morbid sensibility of her child, except from a craving for that excitement which is a token of depravity? In this bad world we are apt to consider every deviation from stony apathy as tending at last to the indulgence of passions against which society has declared a ban; and thus with poor Alithea, all could see, it was said, that a nature so sensitive must end in ill at last; and that, if tempted, she must yield to an influence which few, even of the coldest natures, can resist.