She was extremely unhappy
in her domestic life, and naturally she gave him her confidence and
awoke that sentiment which is so fatally akin to another and sometimes
more disastrous one.
Dartmouth loved her with that love which a man gives to so many women
before the day comes wherein he recognizes the spurious metal from the
real. It was not, as in its first stage, the mad, unreasoning fancy
of an unfledged boy, but that sentiment, half sympathy, half passion,
which a woman may inspire who is not strong enough to call out the
highest and best that lies hidden in a man's nature. This feeling for
his cousin, if not the supremest that a woman can command, bore
one characteristic which distinguished it from any of his previous
passions. For the first time in his life he had resisted a
temptation--principally because she was his cousin. With the instinct
of his caste he acknowledged the obligation to avert dishonor in his
own family where he could. And, aside from family pride, he had a
strong personal regard for his cousin which was quite independent of
that sentiment which, for want of a better name, he called love.
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