Mr. Elford had endeavoured to provide against this, by a plain declaration of his sentiments and expectations; which Mrs. Elford had too inconsiderately concluded she should continue to think rational and just. She imagined there was no fear of violent quarrels, between a man of so much understanding as Mr. Elford and a woman so disposed to listen to reason as herself. She was ignorant of the power of habit over her temper. The rector had taught her pride, marriage had taught her misfortune, and pride and misfortune had made her fretful, melancholy and moody. She had suffered no opposition from her first husband; her will had been his law; and she knew not, till she had made the trial, how difficult it is to concede with a good grace. The least thing that offended her threw her into tears. The passions of Mr. Elford and my aunt were mutually too much inflamed for either of them to draw equitable and wise conclusions, and tears he held to be a false, insulting, and odious mode of proclaiming him a tyrant: it was to say, I dare not utter my complaints in words, but my tears I cannot restrain! Too angry to doubt of or examine his reasons, convinced of his own humanity, and his desire to see and make her happy, such an accusation he considered so violently unjust as to be unpardonable. It must be owned, she did not confine her grief to weeping; she was often seized with fits of hysteric passion, in which the most outrageous and false accusations were indulged. To reply to them, or attempt to disprove what he knew to be so absurd, he thought derogatory to innocence; and the world half suspected him to be the tyrant he had been painted. This increased his sense of injury, and consequently did not diminish the affliction of my aunt. Of the happiness, indeed, which was to result from this marriage, she had conceived romantic ideas; and when she found herself again involved in the cares of a family, liable to the control of a man who expected the utmost propriety and order, who looked with a strict eye over every department, and whose opinion did not always coincide with her own, she became constantly peevish, and her former gloom grew ten fold more gloomy. She pined after that connubial affection which their reciprocal conduct was calculated to destroy; and from the hasty decisions of passion convinced herself, that no part of the blame was justly her own. Mr. Elford was no less obstinate in the contrary opinion. Taking philosophy such as he found it, he like his neighbours too hastily concluded there were duties and affairs for which men were fitted, but of which women were incapable. Blending much truth with some falsehood, he thus argued: