Page:Glenarvon (Volume 2).djvu/153

 *thority, Such a character is open and guileless; but unhappily, the very circumstance that makes it sincere, renders it also, if misturned, desperate and hardened.

During the first years of their marriage, these tumultuous scenes but strengthened the attachment they felt for each other; but when Lord Avondale's profession absorbed his mind, he dreaded a recurrence of what had once so fully engrossed his thoughts. He left Calantha, therefore, to the guidance of that will, which she had so long and pertinaciously indulged. Absent, pre-occupied, he saw not, he heard not, the misuse she made of her entire liberty. Some trifle, perhaps, at times, reached his ear; a scene of discord ensued; much bitterness on both sides followed: and the conviction that they no longer loved each other, added considerably to the violence of recrimination. They knew not how deeply rooted affection such as they had once felt, must ever