Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 2.djvu/168

158 now how strong are a parent's temptations to spoil an only child.

I have need of consolation in my son, for (to this silent paper I may confess it) I have but little in my husband. I love him still; and he loves me, in his own way—but oh, how different from the love I could have given, and once had hoped to receive! how little real sympathy there exists between us; how many of my thoughts and feelings are gloomily cloistered within my own mind; how much of my higher and better self is indeed unmarried—doomed either to harden and sour in the sunless shade of solitude, or to quite degenerate and fall away for lack of nutriment in this unwholesome soil!—But, I repeat, I have no right to complain: only let me state the truth—some of the truth at least,—and see hereafter, if any darker truths will blot these pages. We have now been full two years united—the 'romance' of our attachment must be worn away. Surely I have now got down to the lowest gradation