and each showed her more plainly the vacancy
of her existence, this feeling deepened into a quenchless thirst for
revenge. Was she to be the only victim? Man had a hundred means of
quelling or forgetting a hapless passion. Should he who had so lightly
forsaken her--should he triumph while her heart was broken?

He threw the game into her hands, and died. Towards his children she
entertained at the moment no very definite feeling. She had scarcely
thought of them. But she had long cherished the idea of becoming
mistress of Trevethlan Castle, and at last she deemed the hour was
arrived. Met according to her expectations, she would probably have
been kind to the orphans. Spurned, as she felt it, from their door,
hatred burnt again fiercely in her breast. And it was quickened by a
strange jealousy she conceived against their mother, whom she had only
despised before, but now bitterly envied as the wife of her lover.

Could domestic happiness be expected with such a parent? Alas, for the
answer which would come from Mrs. Pendarrel's children! The angry
passions which raged in her breast gave an unmotherly hardness to her
love of rule. And why were they daughters? _He_ had a son. _She_, the
wretched peasant, was the mother of a son. Thus did the effects of
Esther's blighted affection fall even upon her offspring. But Gertrude
rebelled from early childhood against the capricious rigour with which
she was treated. She succumbed at last, however, and that in the most
important event of her life. In obeying the maternal command to marry
Mr. Winston, she thought she stooped to conquer. Gertrude Winston
would be her own mistress. And so she was; but at what a price! Ay,
what an account must they render, who degrade marriage into a
convenience! who banish the household deities, so dear even to ancient
paganism, from their place beside the hearth, and fill it with furies
and fiends! who know not the meaning of our sweet English name of
home! Five years had not reconciled Gertrude to a union in which her
heart had no share. Her husband seemed to her cold, prudent, and dull.
She was enthusiastic, generous, and clever. He was easy and
good-natured, and his very submissiveness fretted her. He was, or
pretended to be, fond of metaphysics, and was always engaged upon some
terribly ponderous tome, while she participated in the popular fury
for Byron and Scott. He liked a level road, and a good inn: she
delighted in romantic scenery, and wa