Felicia Skene

“ Richard had always been careless respecting these things; and now his inward uneasiness and bitterness of spirit, which arose, though he admitted it not, from the smitings of an unquiet conscience, had rendered him sneering, and well-nigh sceptical, on the subject of religion. It is no uncommon case, when a man has wilfully sinned against the light, that he should seek for a refuge in the falsehood which calls it darkness.
Richard Clayton had taken his first step in the downward course, when he placed his foot within the church where Agnes became his wife ”

“ Their pride and their ancient title were allied to a poverty which they held to be a most unseemly condition for the members of so noble a family; and it was their favourite project that he should make some wealthy alliance, which should restore them to their former grandeur; at the same time, no desire for riches could have induced them to overlook the necessity that the wife of their son should bear a name, if not as noble, at least as honourable and unsullied as their own. ”

“ Clayton the first moment of joy, real heartfelt joy, which they had known for years. Intelligence was brought them of the approaching marriage of Mary Clayton with one to whom it was most desirable, under every point of view, that she should be united.
Mr. Verney was the heir and future representative of a most ancient and noble house. He was the only child of Lord and Lady Verney, who were chiefly remarkable for the pride of birth, which was to them almost a hereditary possession. ”

“ This idea, which really became a species of monomania, caused him to acquire an irritable dislike to Agnes, which he made her feel every hour of the day. During Edward's childhood, it sufficed that his mother had given him some order, for the father to reverse it,--a system which would ruin any child; and as the boy grew up, when Richard perceived that his son openly showed how little respect he felt for the parents whom he heard universally slighted and condemned, his father declared it was but a part of the fatality which had pursued him since his Union with Agnes ”

“ It may seem strange that the only child of parents yet living should have been abandoned to the fatal guidance of his own will; but it arose from the fact, that although outwardly they held him in control, they had lost all moral influence over him so soon as he was of an age to gather from the remarks of the servants and the taunts of his schoolfellows in what light esteem they themselves were held by the world in general ”