Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 1).djvu/129

 ments before she married, and of course with the advantages of his conversation her mind must have been enlightened, and her understanding improved, yet still a number of improper ideas, habitual from early life, would at times recur, and render both her sentiments and behaviour very unequal. She had been always taught to expect that her beauty would make her fortune, therefore of course she thought highly of her charms, and when she sometimes listened to the extravagant praises of Rhodophil, she was ready to blame herself for so quickly accepting the offer of a younger, portionless brother, when, in all probability, had she waited, she might have been a Countess.

A too frequent repetition of those thoughts by degrees undermined the warmth of her affection for her husband, and one day, when walking in the garden with Rhodophil, that he was lavish in his encomiums on her person, she interrupted by asking, with a look of naivete, "How it happened, that, if he thought so well of her, he had not loved her like Ferdinand?"