Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/193

 that she might have the pleasure, when I was almost healed and well, to torture me again: for to behave inconsistently, sometimes well, and sometimes ill, is the greatest curse a mind disposed to love can ever meet with. "My brother and I looked with horror on the consequences of the expensive sort of life Livia was drawing her husband into; and yet, as we saw it impossible to prevent it, we commanded ourselves enough to be silent. But this was not sufficient; the dread we had of what our father would be brought to, broke out into our countenances in spite of any resolutions we could form to the contrary. This she insinuated was owing to selfishness in us, and a fear lest we should have the less for what she spent. As my father could not resist giving way to her desires in every respect, and observed our disapprobation of it in our faces, he began to look upon us as bars to his pleasures, and the reproachers of his actions; which by degrees lessened his affection for us in such a manner, that he esteemed us rather as his enemies than his children. "Thus my father's house, which used to be my asylum from all cares, and the comfort of my life, was converted by this woman's management into my greatest torment; and my condition was as miserable as a person's would be who had lost his best friend he had in the world, and was to be haunted hourly by his ghost; and that not in the pleasing form in which he used to place his delight, but with a face made grim with death, and furious with some perturbation of spirit. Such now was my father become to me, instead of that kind, that fond, that partial approver of everything I said or did; my every action was displeasing to him; and he never saw me, but his looks expressed that anger and dislike which pierced me to the