And then in a fit of remorse, he would break out upon himself with:
“I am certainly the most infernal villain that Heaven ever let live!” or words to the same effect.
In these moods he would go and buy something to take home to Drusilla, some set of jewels, piece of lace, rich shawl, gay dress, or other article of vanity.
But soon he saw that his child bride, who was still wearing her first mourning for her dead mother, valued these things not in themselves, but only as proofs of his thought for her.
And besides, how could jewels and fine clothes console the loving young wife for the lost society of her husband?
But Alexander was provoked, that his efforts to please her were so utterly unavailing. He did not reflect that if she had been a vain, selfish woman, and had loved herself more than she loved him, she would have been happy in his presents, and indifferent to his presence.
But as she was neither vain, nor selfish, as she loved him rather than herself, she pined amidst all her plenty, because he was almost always absent from her.
This pining became evident in her appearance, notwithstanding all her efforts to conceal it.
And sometimes it exasperated him so much that it was with difficulty he could restrain himself from reproaching her, and thus adding to the sum of his own injustice and her misery.
Often, also, his temper was severely tried in town by what he called the difficulties of his position, but what any one else might have called the hardships of the transgressor.