this also the mortified parent perceived. Squire Griffiths was a
selfish parent.

Letters in those days were a rare occurrence. Owen usually received
one during his half-yearly absences from home, and occasionally his
father paid him a visit. This half-year the boy had no visit, nor
even a letter, till very near the time of his leaving school, and
then he was astounded by the intelligence that his father was married
again.

Then came one of his paroxysms of rage; the more disastrous in its
effects upon his character because it could find no vent in action.
Independently of slight to the memory of the first wife which
children are so apt to fancy such an action implies, Owen had
hitherto considered himself (and with justice) the first object of
his father's life. They had been so much to each other; and now a
shapeless, but too real something had come between him and his father
there for ever. He felt as if his permission should have been asked,
as if he should have been consulted. Certainly he ought to have been
told of the intended event. So the Squire felt, and hence his
constrained letter which had so much increased the bitterness of
Owen's feelings.

With all this anger, when Owen saw his stepmother, he thought he had
never seen so beautiful a woman for her age; for she was no longer in
the bloom of youth, being a widow when his father married her. Her
manners, to the Welsh lad, who had seen little of female grace among
the families of the few antiquarians with whom his father visited,
were so fascinating that he watched her with a sort of breathless
admiration. Her measured grace, her faultless movements, her tones