for her child were capable of increase, it
might have been believed that it absolutely became more profound and
ardent after that short-lived but painful estrangement which we have
related in the last chapter. With all Lady Annabel's fascinating
qualities and noble virtues, a fine observer of human nature enjoying
opportunities of intimately studying her character, might have
suspected that an occasion only was wanted to display or develop in
that lady's conduct no trifling evidence of a haughty, proud, and even
inexorable spirit. Circumstanced as she was at Cherbury, with no one
capable or desirous of disputing her will, the more gracious and
exalted qualities of her nature were alone apparent. Entertaining a
severe, even a sublime sense of the paramount claims of duty in all
conditions and circumstances of life, her own conduct afforded an
invariable and consistent example of her tenet; from those around her
she required little, and that was cheerfully granted; while, on the
other hand, her more eminent situation alike multiplied her own
obligations and enabled her to fulfil them; she appeared, therefore,
to pass her life in conferring happiness and in receiving gratitude.
Strictly religious, of immaculate reputation, rigidly just,
systematically charitable, dignified in her manners, yet more than
courteous to her inferiors, and gifted at the same time with great
self-control and great decision, she was looked up to by all within
her sphere with a sentiment of affectionate veneration. Perhaps there
was only one person within her little world who, both by disposition
and relative situation, was qualified in any way to question her
undoubted sway, or to cross by independence of opinion the tenour of
the discipline she had established, and this was her child. Venetia,
with one of the most affectionate and benevolent natures in the world,
was gifted with a shrewd, inquiring mind, and a restless imagination.
She was capable of forming her own opinions, and had both reason and
feeling at command to gauge their worth. But to gain an influence over
this child had been the sole object of Lady Annabel's life, and she
had hitherto met that success which usually awaits in this world the
strong purpose of a determined spirit. Lady Annabel herself was far
too acute a person not to have detected early in life the talents of
her child, and she was proud of them. She had cultivated them with
exemplary devotion and with admirable profit