His progress in her favour, however, had not arrived beyond the dangerous point of indifference when he proposed himself to her parents as her future husband. She shrank from the very idea; but he was wealthy, bore a fair reputation, had, indeed, acquired a high character as a man of honour and integrity, and her parents pressed her so urgently to accept him, that she who was accustomed to yield to them in all things, yielded to them in this also, and she became the wife of a man that she did not love; though it is but fair to say, that there was no other person for whom she had any decided preference.
She married Sir Francis Tyrrell with the full desire and determination to love him as much as she could, and to make him as happy as it was in her power to do, and there were a variety of circumstances which combined to render the first two years of their union tolerably happy. In the first place, there were novelty and passion upon his side; in the next place, her very gentleness was a fortress to her upon which it was difficult to begin an attack; in the third place, her mildness and placability were something so new to the conceptions of Sir Francis, that they made him feel more or less ashamed of his own violence, till he became more familiar with the qualities which at first disarmed him.
But he was one of those who did not like to lead, but rather preferred to drive or to goad; and from the very first moment that some slight remonstrance on the part of Lady Tyrrell, with regard to something in which he had no business to interfere, gave the slightest suspicion of opposition to his will, the violent, the sarcastic, the bitter, the selfish spirit rose up with delight, unfettered; and the system of domineering and tyranny began in full force. The parents of the lady lived to see her apparent happiness, but not to witness its reverse. Her mother died before she had been married six months, and her father scarcely survived two years. Perhaps a suspicion of the truth troubled his deathbed, but we cannot say.
Unless we listen to the voice of the better spirit within us, prosperity and age generally lead forward selfishness between them; and then that selfishness who has hidden herself bashfully in the presence of the more generous feelings of youth, rushes forward with daring impudence, and blindfolds our eyes lest we should see her deformity. Such was the case with Sir Francis Tyrrell. There was no counterbalancing power to check or to control. His feelings of religion, if he had any, were not active; he had speculated away the greater part of his morality. He would not, indeed, have done anything that was glaringly and universally admitted to be evil; first, because his vanity would not consent to his incurring the reputation of a vicious man; and, secondly, because his passions did not particularly take that course. But of the moralities of life, which go hand in hand with the charities of life, he had no conception. To trample upon those who were prostrate before him; to make his own house a hell, and to act the part of ruling fiend himself; to cast every kind of aspersion and imputation, true or false, upon every one that offended him, and many that never offended him at all; to be suspicious, jealous, irritable without cause; to allow no opinion to prevail but his own; to deal a very different measure to himself and others; to exact the utmost, and to grant the least; to be avaricious while he was ostentatious, sensorious when he affected to be candid, and harshly severe to every one while he assumed the language of philanthropy, he considered to be no wrong, and sat down with the conviction that he was a very good and virtuous man.