Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 2.djvu/135

Rh him of, as he never displays it against her, except for such conduct as would provoke a saint. He adores her still, and would go to the world's end to please her. She knows her power, and she uses it too; but well knowing that to wheedle and coax is safer than to command, she judiciously tempers her despotism with flattery and blandishments enough to make him deem himself a favoured and a happy man. And yet, at times, a sombre shadow over-clouds his brow even in her presence, but evidently the result of despondency rather than of ill-humour, and generally occasioned by some display of her ill-regulated temper or misguided mind—some wanton trampling upon his most cherished opinions—some reckless disregard of principle that makes him bitterly regret that she is not as good as she is charming and beloved. I pity him from my heart, for I know the misery of such regrets.

But she has another way of tormenting him, in which I am a fellow sufferer—or might be, if I chose to regard myself as such. This is