"Sir Boyvill was, in his own conceit, for ever placed on a pedestal; and he loved to imagine that he could say, 'Look at me, you can see no defect! I am a wealthy and a well-born man. I have a wife the envy of all--children who promise to inherit all our virtues. I am prosperous--no harm can reach me--look at me!' He was still on his pedestal, but had become a mark for scorn, for pity! Oh, how he loathed himself--how he abhorred her who had brought him to this pass! He had, in her best days, often fancied that he loved her too well, yielded too often his pride--nurtured schemes to her soft persuasions. He had indeed believed that Providence had created this exquisite and most beautiful being, that life might be made perfect to him. Besides, his months, and days, and hours had been replete with her image; her very admirable qualities, accompanied as they were by the trembling delicacy that droops at a touch, and then revives at a word; her quickness, not of temper, but of feeling, which received such sudden and powerful impression, formed her to be at once admired and cherished with the care a sweet exotic needs, when transplanted from its sunny, native clime, to the ungenial temperature of a northern land. It was madness to recollect all the fears he had wasted on her. _He_ had foregone the dignity of manhood to wait on her--he had often feared to pursue his projects, lest they should jar some delicate chord in her frame; to his own recollection, it seemed that he had become but the lackey to her behests--and all for the sake of a love which she bestowed on another--to preserve that honour which she blasted without pity. "It were in vain to attempt to delineate the full force of jealousy; natural sorrow at losing a thing so sweet and dear was blended with anger that he should be thrown off by her; the misery of knowing that he should never see her more was mingled with a ferocious desire to learn that every disaster was heaped on one whom, hitherto, he had, as well as he could, guarded from every ill. To this we may add, commiseration for his deserted children. His son, late so animated, so free--spirited and joyous, a more promising child had never blessed a father's hopes, was changed into a brooding, grief-struck, blighted visionary. His little girl, the fairy thing he loved best of all, she was taken from him; the carelessness of a nurse during a childish illness caused her death, within a year after her mother's flight. Had that mother remained, such carelessness had been impossible. Sir Boyvill felt that all good fell from him--the only remaining golden fruit dropped from the tree--calamity encompassed him; with his whole soul he abhorred and desired to wreak vengeance on her who caused the ill.