It was not pride, nor sternness,
but a sort of habitual shamefacedness, that kept far back in each soul
those feelings which are the most beautiful in their outcome; but
after a while, the habit became so fixed a nature, that a caressing or
affectionate expression could not have passed the lips of one to another
without a painful awkwardness. Love was understood, once for all, to be
the basis on which their life was built. Once for all, they loved each
other, and after that, the less said, the better. It had cost the
woman's heart of Mrs. Marvyn some pangs, in the earlier part of her
wedlock, to accept of this _once for all_, in place of those
daily outgushings which every woman desires should be like God's
loving-kindness, "new every morning"; but hers, too, was a nature
strongly inclining inward, and, after a few tremulous movements, the
needle of her soul settled, and her life-lot was accepted,--not as what
she would like or could conceive, but as a reasonable and good one. Life
was a picture painted in low, cool tones, but in perfect keeping; and
though another and brighter style might have pleased better, she did not
quarrel with this.
Into this steady, decorous, highly-respectable circle the youngest
child, James, made a formidable irruption. One sometimes sees launched
into a family-circle a child of so different a nature from all the rest,
that it might seem as if, like an aerolite, he had fallen out of another
sphere.
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