istook passion for love;
reason was dumb, and had nothing to do with his choice; he made the one,
irretrievable false step and was ruined. No strong antipathy developed
itself; there were no quarrels, but there was a complete absence of
anything like confidence. Michael had never for years really consulted
his wife in any difficulty, because he knew he could not get any advice
worth a moment's consideration; and he often contrasted his lot with that
of David, who had a helpmate like that of the left arm to the right, who
knew everything about his affairs, advised him in every perplexity, and
cheered him when cast down--a woman on whom he really depended. As David
knew well enough, although he never put it in the form of a proposition,
there is no joy sweeter than that begotten by the dependence of the man
upon the woman for something she can supply but he cannot--not affection
only, but assistance.

Michael, as we have said, had two children, a girl and a boy, the boy
being the eldest. Against neither could he ever utter a word of
complaint. They were honest and faithful. But the girl, Eliza, although
unlike her mother, was still less like her father, and had a plain mind,
that is to say, a mind endowed with good average common sense, but
unrelieved by any touch of genius or poetry. Her intellect was solid but
ordinary--a kind of homely brown intellect, untouched by sunset or
sunrise tint. A strain of the mother was in her, modified by the
influence of the father, and the result was a product like neither father
nor mother, so cunning are the ways of spiritual chemistry. The boy,
Robert Trevanion, on the contrary, was his father; not only with no
apparent mixture of the mother, but his father intensified. The outside
fact was of far less consequence to him than the self-created medium
through which it was seen, and his happiness depended much more
intimately on himself as he chanced to be at the time than on the world
around him. He was apprenticed to his father, and the two were bound
together by the tie of companionship and friendship, intertwined with
filial and paternal love. What Eliza said, although it was right and
proper, never interested the father; but when Robert spoke, Michael
invariably looked at him, and often reflected upon his words for hours.

There was in the town of Perran a girl named Susan Shipton. Michael knew
very little of the family, save that her father was a draper and went to
ch