Page:Lady Anne Granard, or Keeping up Appearances Volume 2.pdf/35

Rh which was its best substitute. When the pleasures and troubles of travelling ceased, and their little circle became strictly domestic, she saw clearly the time of trial would come, and dreaded lest Isabella should be come sensible alike to her own inability of supplying the society her husband required, and which in London was always at hand; and to the fact of his being unexpectedly, though on her part most innocently, drawn into making an offer, without that profound consideration, and that careful investigation, which can only be affected properly during a certain lapse of time and thought. The entire change which had taken place in Isabella's situation was enough to dazzle and bewilder a much older and apparently much wiser person. She was taken from the pressure of a poverty that made itself constantly felt, to all the comforts and pleasures of wealth in its best gifts and most luxurious indulgences—from the taunts of a mother who upbraided her for supposed personal deficiencies, and gave grudgingly her barest necessities, to a husband who considered her youth as beauty, or admired her as possessing that description of it to which he had been accustomed long, and preferred much, and on which he lavished freely whatever could enhance its merits, or awaken the gratitude of its possessor. But a man may idolize a wife (which Glentworth did not), and yet not find her a companion, save as a pupil, which term indicates inferiority. A great