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- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
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- 2795
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- innocence tyrannized into sad nervousness under her spell, according to
the same authority, inly she chewed her blue clay, and you could mark
that she chuckled. These peculiarities were strange and unpleasing; but
another was alleged, one really incomprehensible. In company she had a
strange way of touching, as by accident, the arm or hand of comely young
men, and seemed to reap a secret delight from it, but whether from the
humane satisfaction of having given the evil-touch, as it is called, or
whether it was something else in her, not equally wonderful, but quite
as deplorable, remained an enigma.
Needless to say what distress was the unfortunate man's, when, engaged
in conversation with company, he would suddenly perceive his Goneril
bestowing her mysterious touches, especially in such cases where the
strangeness of the thing seemed to strike upon the touched person,
notwithstanding good-breeding forbade his proposing the mystery, on the
spot, as a subject of discussion for the company. In these cases, too,
the unfortunate man could never endure so much as to look upon the
touched young gentleman afterwards, fearful of the mortification of
meeting in his countenance some kind of more or less quizzingly-knowing
expression. He would shudderingly shun the young gentleman. So that
here, to the husband, Goneril's touch had the dread operation of the
heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So, at favorable times,
he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private
interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable
propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was
witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the
unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such
chimeras, much connubial joy might they give him. All this was sad--a
touching case--but all might, perhaps, have been borne by the
unfortunate man--conscientiously mindful of his vow--for better or for
worse--to love and cherish his dear Goneril so long as kind heaven might
spare her to him--but when, after all that had happened, the devil of
jealousy entered her, a calm, clayey, cakey devil, for none other could
possess her, and the object of that deranged jealousy, her own child, a
little girl of seven, her father's consolation and pet; when he saw
Goneril artfully torment the little innocent, and then play the maternal
hypocrite with it, the unfortunate man's patient long-suffering gave
way. Knowing that she would neither confess nor amend, and might,
possibly, become even worse than she was, he thought it but duty as a
father, to withdraw the child from her; but, loving it as he did, he
could not do so without accompanying it into domestic exile himself.
Which, hard though it was, he did. Whereupon the whole female
neighborhood, who till now had little enough admired dame Goneril, broke
out in indignation against a husband, who, without assigning a cause,
could deliberately abandon the wife of his bosom, and sharpen the sting
to her, too, by depriving her of the solace of retaining her offspring.
To all this, self-respect, with Christian charity towards Goneril, long
kept the unfortunate man dumb. And well had it been had he continued so;
for when, driven to desperation, he hinted something of the truth of the
case, not a soul would credit it; while for Goneril, she pronounced all
he said to be a malicious invention. Ere long, at the suggestion of some
woman's-rights women, the injured wife began a suit, and, thanks to able
counsel and accommodating testimony, succeeded in such a way, as not
only to recover custody of the child, but to get such a settlement
awarded upon a separation, as to make penniless the unfortunate man (so
he averred), besides, through the legal sympathy she enlisted, effecting
a judicial blasting of his private reputation. What made it yet more
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