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THE SEMI-ATTACHED COUPLE
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was, and this difference of feeling, with which their married life had commenced, was every day creating and increasing fresh misunderstandings. Lord Teviot was so distractedly in love with his wife that the greatest devotion on her part would hardly have satisfied him; he had never had brothers or sisters of his own, and had no clue in his own life or feelings that could lead him to judge of the strength of early family affection. Helen was all in all to him, and he expected to be the same to her. She was too young and guileless to affect what she did not feel, and too inexperienced to trace to their right source the variations of Lord Teviot's temper. She had, as we have already seen, begun to fear him before her marriage; and this fear had been increased rather than diminished by his subsequent conduct. She saw that he was courteous and attentive to other women; therefore, the taunts and reproaches which he occasionally vented on her she imputed to dislike, and his want of sympathy in her affection for her family she ascribed to a desire to make her unhappy. She was totally unable to imagine that he could be jealous of sentiments so natural and right in themselves; for Helen was still almost a child, and the obliquities and injustices of strong passions were incomprehensible to her. She would have been surprised if she had known the trifles, the absolute nothings, by which, in the course of every day, she roused or irritated his jealousy—how he brooded over a careless word or a negligent look—how he tortured a kindness to another into an insult to himself, and an enjoyment into which she entered without him into a misery purposely inflicted on him. And numerous as were the little reproachful scenes that passed between them, she would have blessed her good fortune if she had known how many more she had escaped—if she had guessed the long array of her crimes and his wrongs, that he drew up against her, and which were not poured out, because some gentle, careless