Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 1).djvu/92

 entertainment. This inattention to her dignity added to the sourness of her temper, not naturally very sweet. There was another source of bitterness; the lapse of many years had not obliterated the disappointment of her youth, and if love for the husband might have, perhaps, evaporated from a heart not the best adapted for retaining tender affections, there was one passion which remained in its earliest force, hatred for the wife. She had hated her when alive, and still hated her when dead. Brooding over her detestation, her fancy saw its object in all that torture and tormenting beauty and loveliness, which had captivated the object of her own passion. She had heard, with rage, of the charms of Eliza, and her striking resemblance of her mother. As the devil, in sending envy to the human heart, sends its severest punishment in the admiration of its object, and its own rankling gall,