Page:Glenarvon (Volume 3).djvu/133

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and fond caresses offered after long absence. Cruel is such suffering. Such a pang Calantha had already once endured, when last she had parted from her lord; and for such meeting she was again prepared. She had been ill, and no one had read the secret of her soul. She had been lonely, and no one comforted her in her hours of solitude: she had once loved Lord Avondale, but absence and neglect had entirely changed her. She prepared therefore for the interview with cold indifference, and her pride disdained to crave his forgiveness, or to acknowledge itself undeserving in his presence. "He is no longer my husband," she repeated daily to herself. "My heart and his are at variance—severed by inclination, though unhappily for both united by circumstances. Let him send me from him: I am desperate and care not.

None sufficiently consider, when they describe the hateful picture of crime, how every step taken in its