Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 1).djvu/82

 lence of temper, and devoid of personal attractions, was more than indifferent; she was disgusting to him: His mistress, vain of her charms, conscious of the power she had long held over his affections, and which had received additional strength from the birth of a daughter, had for some time past relaxed in her endeavours to please, and by her little solicitude to amuse him in those hours which he devoted to her, had insensibly weakened her powers of attraction, and rendered the visits he paid her rather a retreat from the more disagreeable society at the Castle, than the effects of that violent passion he had once and for a long while felt for her, and which, perhaps, only her own folly and caprice caused an abatement of.

His passions were therefore in that dormant state which of all others is the most dangerous in a susceptible mind, because, if once roused into action, they blaze with more uncontrolled fury than when kept in constant agitation. Such was the Count's situation