She attempted not to call him back; but retired to her chamber, in order to give a loose to passions more turbulent than she had ever known before.
CHAPTER VI
Contains a second matrimonial contest, of worse consequence than the former
Whoever considers Miss Betsy Thoughtless in her maiden character, will not find it difficult to conceive what she now endured in that of Mrs. Munden. All that lightened her poor heart, all that made her patiently submit to the fate her brothers had, in a manner, forced upon her, was a belief of her being passionately loved by the man she made her husband: but thus cruelly undeceived by the treatment she had just met with from him, one may truly say, that if it did not make her utterly hate and despise him, it at least destroyed at once, in her, all the respect and good-will she had, from the first moment of her marriage, been endeavouring to feel for him.
It is hard to say whether her surprize at an eclaircissement she had so little expected, her indignation at Mr. Munden's mean attempt to encroach upon her right, or the shock of reflecting, that it was by death alone she could be relieved from the vexations with which she was threatened by a man of his humour, were most predominant in her soul; but certain it is, that all together racked her with most terrible convulsions.
She was in the midst of these agitations, when Lady Trusty came to visit her. In the distraction of these thoughts she had forgot to give orders to be denied to all company, which otherwise she would doubtless have done, even without excepting that dear and justly valued friend.
She endeavoured, as much as possible, to compose herself, and prevent all tokens of discontent from appearing in her countenance, but had not the power of doing it effectually enough to deceive the penetration of that lady; she immediately perceived that something extraordinary had happened to her; and, as soon as she was seated, began to enquire into the cause of the change she had observed in her.
Mrs. Munden, on considering what was most prudent in a wife, from the first moment of her becoming so, had absolutely resolved always to adhere, as strictly as possible, to this maxim of the poet—