Gerald was also regular in his habits, attentive to devotion, and had, from an early period, been high in the favour of her spiritual director.

Gerald, too, if he had not the delicate and dream-like beauty of Aubrey, possessed attractions of a more masculine and decided order; and for Gerald, therefore, the Countess gave the little of love that she could spare from Aubrey.

To me she manifested the most utter indifference.

My difficult and fastidious temper; my sarcastic turn of mind; my violent and headstrong passions; my daring, reckless and, when roused, almost ferocious nature,--all, especially, revolted the even and polished and quiescent character of my maternal parent.

The little extravagances of my childhood seemed to her pure and inexperienced mind the crimes of a heart naturally distorted and evil; my jesting vein, which, though it never, even in the wantonness of youth, attacked the substances of good, seldom respected its semblances and its forms, she considered as the effusions of malignity; and even the bursts of love, kindness, and benevolence, which were by no means unfrequent in my wild and motley character, were so foreign to her stillness of temperament that they only revolted her by their violence, instead of affecting her by their warmth.
Nor did she like me the better for the mutual understanding between my uncle and myself.