Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/94

92 the bean-plant in the fairy tale, grown up in a single night. Guileless, confiding, and affectionate, she was a child in every thing but years when she married her cousin. Till then she knew naught of the world but from books, books that teach so much, and yet so little. A few weeks sufficed to work an amazing alteration: timid and subdued, the difference appeared little on the surface, but it worked not less certainly below. With all her ad vantages of birth, station, and wealth, it was impossible but that she must excite some degree of envy; and, alas! for human nature, envy will always delight in inflicting mortification. Many were the disparaging remarks that reached, as they were intended to do, the ear of their victim. On one less sensitive, and more accustomed to the malice which, of all others, seems the vice society peculiarly engenders, they would have fallen comparatively harmless; but with Constance they struck to the heart. She had been so happy in the idea of Norbourne's attachment, that the doubt