The usual moral
transformation which is insensibly wrought in a young, fresh,
sensitive woman by her marriage, seems never to have taken place
in Laura. She writes of her own thoughts and impressions, amid
all the wonders she has seen, exactly as she might have written to
some one else, if I had been travelling with her instead of her
husband. I see no betrayal anywhere of sympathy of any kind
existing between them. Even when she wanders from the subject of
her travels, and occupies herself with the prospects that await
her in England, her speculations are busied with her future as my
sister, and persistently neglect to notice her future as Sir
Percival's wife. In all this there is no undertone of complaint
to warn me that she is absolutely unhappy in her married life.
The impression I have derived from our correspondence does not,
thank God, lead me to any such distressing conclusion as that. I
only see a sad torpor, an unchangeable indifference, when I turn
my mind from her in the old character of a sister, and look at
her, through the medium of her letters, in the new character of a
wife. In other words, it is always Laura Fairlie who has been
writing to me for the last six months, and never Lady Glyde.
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