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an entire change in the manners and conduct of Raymond. She expected
freedom of communication, and a return to those habits of affectionate
intercourse which had formed the delight of her life. But Raymond did not
join her in any of her avocations. He transacted the business of the day
apart from her; he went out, she knew not whither. The pain inflicted by
this disappointment was tormenting and keen. She looked on it as a
deceitful dream, and tried to throw off the consciousness of it; but like
the shirt of Nessus, it clung to her very flesh, and ate with sharp agony
into her vital principle. She possessed that (though such an assertion may
appear a paradox) which belongs to few, a capacity of happiness. Her
delicate organization and creative imagination rendered her peculiarly
susceptible of pleasurable emotion. The overflowing warmth of her heart, by
making love a plant of deep root and stately growth, had attuned her whole
soul to the reception of happiness, when she found in Raymond all that
could adorn love and satisfy her imagination. But if the sentiment on which
the fabric of her existence was founded, became common place through
participation, the endless succession of attentions and graceful action
snapt by transfer, his universe of love wrested from her, happiness must
depart, and then be exchanged for its opposite. The same peculiarities of
character rendered her sorrows agonies; her fancy magnified them, her
sensibility made her for ever open to their renewed impression; love
envenomed the heart-piercing sting. There was neither submission, patience,
nor self-abandonment in her grief; she fought with it, struggled beneath
it, and rendered every pang more sharp by resistance. Again and again the
idea recurred, that he loved another. She did him justice; she believed
that he felt a tender affection for her; but give a paltry prize to him who
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