Calantha, in manner, in appearance, in every feeling, was but a child. At one hour, she would look entranced upon Avondale, and breath vows of love and tenderness; at another, hide from his gaze, and weep for the home she had left. At one time she would talk with him and laugh from the excess of gaiety she felt; at another, she would stamp her foot upon the ground in a fit of childish impatience, and exclaiming, “You must not contradict me in any thing,” she would menace to return to her father, and never see him more. If Lord Avondale had a defect, it was too great good nature, so that he suffered his vain and frivolous partner, to command, and guide, and arrange all things around him, as she pleased, nor foresaw the consequence of her imprudence, though too often carried to excess. With all his knowledge, he knew not how to restrain; and he had not the experience necessary to guide one of her character:—he could only idolize; he left it to others to censure and admonish. It was also for Calantha’s misfortune, that Lord Avondale’s religious opinions were different from those in which she had been early educated. It was perhaps to shew him the utility of stricter doctrines, both of faith and morality, that heaven permitted one so good and noble, as he was, to be united with one so frail and weak. Those doctrines which he loved to discuss, and support in speculation, she eagerly seized upon, and carried into practice; thus proving to him too clearly, their dangerous and pernicious tendency. Eager to oppose and conquer those opinions in his wife, which savoured as he thought of bigotry and prudish reserve, he tore the veil at once from her eyes, and opened hastily her wondering mind to a world before unknown. He foresaw not the peril to which he exposed her:—he heeded not the rapid progress of her thoughts—the boundless views of an over-heated imagination. At first she shrunk with pain and horror, from every feeling which to her mind appeared less chaste, less pure, than those to which she had long been accustomed; but when her principles, or rather her prejudices, yielded to the power of love, she broke from a restraint too rigid, into a liberty the most dangerous from its novelty, its wildness and its uncertainty. The monastic severity which she had imposed upon herself, from exaggerated sentiments of piety and devotion, gave way with the rest of her former maxims.—She knew not where to pause, or rest; her eyes were dazzled, her understanding bewildered; and she viewed the world, and the new form which it wore before her, with strange and unknown feelings, which she could neither define, nor command.