But Emmeline was not in love; and her husband’s behaviour, though it astonished her, and though she felt it was not what it ought to be, did not wound her heart as it otherwise would have done.
Emmeline was very young, even for her age. With a most superior mind and character, with tender, even romantic feelings, her innocence and simplicity of heart were so great, and all her qualities had as yet lain so dormant, that her character was scarcely known even to herself; and, to common observers, she passed for a mere gay, good-humoured, pleasing girl. She was, however, no common character, nor what one would have supposed the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benson to have been. Nature sometimes seems to amuse herself with playing such fanciful tricks; and Emmeline’s natural superiority made it appear as if she had been thrown into a sphere totally different from that for which she had been originally designed, and that she now was only restored to her own proper station, when raised, by her marriage, to be the companion of Fitzhenry.
To explain how such a being came to be thus passively united to a man who seemed already to have repented the step he had taken, it will be necessary to go back a little in our narrative.
CHAPTER II.
Do I entice you? do I speak you fair?
Or rather, do I not in plainest truth
Tell you—I do not, nor I cannot love you?
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Lord Arlingford had, early in life, entangled himself in pecuniary difficulties by every species of thoughtless extravagance, in which an expensive, fashionable wife had assisted him. Her fortune and health both soon declined, and a consumption rapidly carried her to the grave while still in the prime of life, and when her only child, Ernest, was but ten years old. That which extravagance began, indolence soon completed; and long before his son came of age, Lord Arlingford found himself, in the language of the world, to be totally ruined.