The next step in Lumley's policy was to arm Templeton's vanity against
his wife, by constantly refreshing his consciousness of the sacrifices
he had made by marriage, and the certainty that he would have attained
all his wishes had he chosen more prudently. By perpetually, but most
judiciously, rubbing this sore point, he, as it were, fixed the
irritability into Templeton's constitution, and it reacted on all his
thoughts, aspiring or domestic. Still, however, to Lumley's great
surprise and resentment, while Templeton cooled to his wife, he only
warmed to her child. Lumley had not calculated enough upon the thirst
and craving for affection in most human hearts; and Templeton, though
not exactly an amiable man, had some excellent qualities; if he had less
sensitively regarded the opinion of the world, he would neither have
contracted the vocabulary of cant, nor sickened for a peerage--both his
affectation of saintship, and his gnawing desire of rank, arose from an
extraordinary and morbid deference to opinion, and a wish for worldly
honours and respect, which he felt that his mere talents could not
secure to him. But he was, at bottom, a kindly man--charitable to the
poor, considerate to his servants, and had within him the want to love
and be loved, which is one of the desires wherewith the atoms of the
universe are cemented and harmonised. Had Mrs. Templeton evinced love to
him, he might have defied all Lumley's diplomacy, been consoled for
worldly disadvantages, and been a good and even uxorious husband. But
she evidently did not love him, though an admirable, patient, provident
wife; and her daughter /did/ love him--love him as well even as she
loved her mother; and the hard worldling would not have accepted a
kingdom as the price of that little fountain of pure and ever-refreshing
tenderness. Wise and penetrating as Lumley was, he never could
thoroughly understand this weakness, as he called it; for we never know
men entirely, unless we have complete sympathies with men in all their
natural emotions; and Nature had left the workmanship of Lumley Ferrers