But although he felt the warmest affection for her, the regardlessness which she had taught him (by example, perhaps, more than by precept) of the feelings of others, was continually prompting him to do things that she, for the time being, resented as mortal affronts.

He would mimic the clergyman she specially esteemed, even to his very face; he would refuse to visit her schools for months and months; and, when wearied into going at last, revenge himself by puzzling the children with the most ridiculous questions (gravely put) that he could imagine.
All these boyish tricks annoyed and irritated her far more than the accounts which reached her of more serious misdoings at college and in town.

Of these grave offences she never spoke; of the smaller misdeeds she hardly ever ceased speaking.
Still, at times, she had great influence over him, and nothing delighted her more than to exercise it.

The submission of his will to hers was sure to be liberally rewarded; for it gave her great happiness to extort, from his indifference or his affection, the concessions which she never sought by force of reason, or by appeals to principle--concessions which he frequently withheld, solely for the sake of asserting his independence of her control.
She was anxious for him to marry Miss Duncombe.

He cared little or nothing about it--it was time enough to be married ten years hence; and so he was dawdling through some months of his life--sometimes flirting with the nothing-loath Miss Duncombe, sometimes plaguing, and sometimes delighting his mother, at all times taking care to please himself--when he first saw Ruth Hilton, and a new, passionate, hearty feeling shot through his whole being.