With her inferiors these feelings were mingled with fear;
an impression useful to her purposes, so far as it enforced ready
compliance with her requests and implicit obedience to her commands, but
detrimental, because it cannot exist with affection or regard.
Even her husband, it is said, upon whose fortunes her talents and
address had produced such emphatic influence, regarded her with
respectful awe rather than confiding attachment; and report said, there
were times when he considered his grandeur as dearly purchased at the
expense of domestic thraldom. Of this, however, much might be suspected,
but little could be accurately known: Lady Ashton regarded the honour of
her husband as her own, and was well aware how much that would suffer
in the public eye should he appear a vassal to his wife. In all her
arguments his opinion was quoted as infallible; his taste was appealed
to, and his sentiments received, with the air of deference which a
dutiful wife might seem to owe to a husband of Sir William Ashton's rank
adn character. But there was something under all this which rung false
and hollow; and to those who watched this couple with close, and perhaps
malicious, scrutiny it seemed evident that, in the haughtiness of
a firmer character, higher birth, and more decided views of
aggrandisement, the lady looked with some contempt on her husband,
and that he regarded her with jealous fear, rather than with love or
admiration.
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