I toned down perfectly within three months. Soon after my arrival at his house I became afraid of Cousin Charles. Not that he ever said anything to justify fear of him--he was more silent at home than elsewhere; but he was imperious, fastidious, and sarcastic with me by a look, a gesture, an inflection of his voice. My perception of any defect in myself was instantaneous with his discovery of it. I fell into the habit of guessing each day whether I was to offend or please him, and then into that of intending to please. An intangible, silent, magnetic feeling existed between us, changing and developing according to its own mysterious law, remaining intact in spite of the contests between us of resistance and defiance. But my feeling died or slumbered when I was beyond the limits of his personal influence. When in his presence I was so pervaded by it that whether I went contrary to the dictates of his will or not I moved as if under a pivot; when away my natural elasticity prevailed, and I held the same relation to others that I should have held if I had not known him. This continued till the secret was divined, and then his influence was better remembered. I discovered that there was little love between him and Alice. I never heard from either an expression denoting that each felt an interest in the other's individual life; neither was there any of that conjugal freemasonry which bores one so to witness. But Alice was not unhappy. Her ideas of love ended with marriage; what came afterward--children, housekeeping, and the claims of society--sufficed her needs. If she had any surplus of feeling it was expended upon her children, who had much from her already, for she was devoted and indulgent to them. In their management she allowed no interference, on this point only thwarting her husband. In one respect she and Charles harmonized; both were worldly, and in all the material of living there was sympathy. Their relation was no unhappiness to him; he thought, I dare say, if he thought at all, that it was a natural one. The men of his acquaintance called him a lucky man, for Alice was handsome, kind-hearted, intelligent, and popular.