第89章[第3页/共4页]

Elizabeth,however,had never been blind to the impropriety of her father's behaviour as a husband.She had always seen it with pain;but respecting his abilities,and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a marriage,nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents;talents,which,rightly used,might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters,even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.

Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family,she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felic