"But was not that somewhat unreasonable?" suggested Mary.
"It certainly proved a mistake; and so we soon began to pull different ways, and I suppose will do so to the end of the chapter."
"Oh, my dear Olivia, how can you talk thus, when you and Louis ought—and do really, I am sure—so to love one another?" Mary exclaimed, feeling shocked and sorry.
"Humph it does not signify much what we ought to do, or what lies perdue, when daily and hourly experience makes us most feelingly act and speak to the contrary. As for Louis, the quiet, unresisting manner in which he has allowed me to do things other husbands would have soon prevented, contenting himself with a few cutting words and sneering inuendoes, does not speak much for the depth of his affection. But the fact is, there is not much depth of any kind in Louis's nature—no strength—no firmness of feeling or purpose—nothing to lay hold of except the whim of the moment, and that melts away before you can get a very sure grasp.
"'One foot on land and one on sea,
To one thing constant never.'"
Although it was somewhat repulsive to Mary's ideas and principles to hear a wife thus critically expose the weak side of a husband's character, her naturally quick perception of human nature—
"The harvest of a quiet eye,"
as well as the intimate insight now afforded her, by constant intercourse, into Mr. de Burgh's disposition, made her own this portraiture to be not incorrectly drawn, and to fancy that much of his wife's decline of feeling towards her handsome, captivating husband might have been thus unfavourably influenced by the discovery of these points of character in her cousin Louis.
She could imagine in her own case, that however faithfully, if once beloved, she might have preserved her affection towards such a truly amiable man, that he was not exactly the being who would ever have very strongly impressed or awakened any deep and lasting feeling in her heart—
"That love for which a woman's heart
Will beat until it breaks."