and Lady Percy, to perceive that their son-in-law evinced no
disposition to profit by the Royal favour, or to relinquish the
solitude of Silsea, for the splendours of the Capital. But Helen
shared not in their regrets. She had been educated in retirement; she
knew but by report the licentious, but seductive gaieties of the
Court of Charles, and she had not the slightest wish to increase her
knowledge of such dangerous pleasures. Content with loving, and being
beloved by a husband whom she regarded with profound veneration, her
happiness was not disturbed by a restless search after new
enjoyments; and her delighted parents soon forgot their
disappointment in witnessing the contentment of their child.

For some years succeeding her marriage, they perceived no change in
the state of her feelings, but at length the anxiety of parental love
led them to form surmises, which renewed their former disapprobation
of the conduct of Greville. During their frequent visits to Silsea,
they observed that his love of study and retirement had deepened
almost to moroseness; that his address, always cold and reserved,
was becoming offensively distant; and that he was subject to fits of
abstraction, and at other times to a peevish discontent, which
materially threatened the happiness of their daughter. They also
discovered that Helen, whose playful humour and gaiety of heart had
been their solace and amusement, even from her infancy, was now
pensive and dispirited. By degrees the bright expression of her
countenance had lost all that becoming joyousness of youth, which
had been its great attraction, and though still

"Sphered in the stillness of those heaven-blue eyes,
The soul sate beautiful,"