Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/322

320 it through, its cold commonplace civility fretted her very heart. Impatiently, she tore it into fragments, and flung it in the fire. "And this is the man," exclaimed she, with a bitter laugh, "to whom I am united for my life; my inferior in every way—mean, shallow, heartless—I despise him too much for hatred!" But, deep within her secret soul, Lady Marchmont felt she hated her husband; at that moment she would have been thankful to have given up the world, and spent the rest of her life in the gloomy seclusion of Meredith Place. She turned away from the future with a morbid feeling of discouragement: her first brilliant dream of the pleasures of the world had been broken; she had experienced their worthlessness, and their vanity; she felt that they were insufficient to fill up the void in her heart; they had nothing wherewith to satisfy the noblest and the best part of her nature; they contented neither her mind nor her heart. Lassitude and discontent were her predominant sensations: she had only one strong wish—