Framleigh Hall Volume 3; a novel - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 Excerpt: ...The intercourse between them would have been more of equal, mutual affection, than of respect on the one hand, and authority on the other; for Mr. Grenville was not without something of the same weakness which characterised the man she loved--perhaps, some of her love for Maurice was owing to this resemblance. He too had been rather weak, rather cowardly--a henpecked husband, an over-indulgent father, a personage who might have been regarded with contempt by a few, and with reverence by none. This Isabella knew; but his faults were no faults in her eyes. She thought of his unselfishness, his warm, tender affection, and felt that such as he was, the office of cheering his declining years would have made her life, not exactly happy perhaps, but perfectly peaceful and satisfactory. So she thought, as it was not to be so. Perhaps such a contrast as this is always exaggerated by those who have experienced the shady side of it. Perhaps, if the poor sickly plant could be transferred to the south side of the wall, it would find that clouds hid the beloved sunshine quite as completely as the wall had done, and would still stretch its pale leaves in vain towards the hidden rays. As nature attains the same result by different means, as it is said the period of repose which she needs is obtained by cold here, and by heat in the tropics, so in the moral world, evils, which it seems the stroke of death alone could have power to effect, may be brought about quite as certainly by the touches of life, and small misunderstandings may separate a parent and child as effectually as the removal of one of them from this world; or rather more effectually, for the tender recollections which "Spring the unbidden violets from the sod," that holds all that was earthly of a b...