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10 BLACK SHELP.had unbroken health,and was slow to detect anyapproach of disease. She did not think it couldbe that, and conscience, remorse, the presence, thetruth, of the supernatural components of humanlife, she disbelieved in; therefore she refused totake the possibility of their existence and theirinfluence into consideration. She yvas no longeryoung, and she had suffered — yes, she had certainlysuffered a very great deal; no one couldlove as she loved and not suffer, that was all.Time would do everything for her; things weregoing well; all risk was at an end, with the procuringof George's promise and the quieting ofGeorge's scruples (how feeble a nature his was,she thought, but without the acrid scorn a similarreflection had aroused in her husband's mind);and every week of time gained without the revivalof any inquisition, was a century of presumptivesafety. Yes, now she yvas very weak, andcertainly not quite well;it was all owing to hersleeplessness. How could any one be well whodid not get oblivion inthe darkness ? This wouldpass, ancl time wouldbringrest andpeace. Whollypossessed by her love for her husband, she was

RECOGNITION.11not conscious of the changeinher mannertowardshim. She did not know that the strange repulsionshe sometimes felt, and yvhich she told herselfwasmerely physical nervousness,had so told uponher, that she was absent and distant with him forthe most part, and in the occasional spasmodicburstsof love which she yielded to showed suchhaunting and harrowinggrief as sometimes nearlymaddenedhim with anger, with disgust, yvithennui — not with repentance,not with compassion— maddened him, not for her sake, but for hisown.The transition, effected by the aid of his intenseselfishness, from his former state of feehngtowards Harriet, to one which required only theintervention of any active cause to become hatred,was not a difficult matter to a man like Routh.Having lost all her former charm, and much ofher previous usefulness, she soonbecame to hima disagreeable reminder. Something more thanthat — the mental superiority of the woman, yvhichhad never before incommoded him, now becamepositively- hateful to him.It earned with it,nowthat it was no longer his mainstay, a power which

10 BLACK SHELP.had unbroken health,and was slow to detect anyapproach of disease. She did not think it couldbe that, and conscience, remorse, the presence, thetruth, of the supernatural components of humanlife, she disbelieved in; therefore she refused totake the possibility of their existence and theirinfluence into consideration. She yvas no longeryoung, and she had suffered — yes, she had certainlysuffered a very great deal; no one couldlove as she loved and not suffer, that was all.Time would do everything for her; things weregoing well; all risk was at an end, with the procuringof George's promise and the quieting ofGeorge's scruples (how feeble a nature his was,she thought, but without the acrid scorn a similarreflection had aroused in her husband's mind);and every week of time gained without the revivalof any inquisition, was a century of presumptivesafety. Yes, now she yvas very weak, andcertainly not quite well;it was all owing to hersleeplessness. How could any one be well whodid not get oblivion inthe darkness ? This wouldpass, ancl time wouldbringrest andpeace. Whollypossessed by her love for her husband, she was

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