In the domestic relations of life, Major Grantham was no less exemplary, although perhaps his rigid notions of right, had obtained for him more of the respect than of the love of those who came within their influence, and yet no mean portion of both.  Tenderly attached to his wife, whom he had lost when Gerald was yet in his twelfth year, he had not ceased to deplore her loss; and this perhaps had contributed to nourish a reservedness of disposition, which, without at all aiming at, or purposing, such effect, insensibly tended to the production of a corresponding reserve on the part of his children, that increased with their years.  Indeed, on their mother, all the tenderness of their young hearts had been, lavished, and, when they suddenly saw themselves deprived of her who loved, and had been loved by them, with doting fondness, they felt as if a void had been left in their affections, which, the less tender evidences of paternal love, were but insufficient wholly to supply.  Still, (although not to the same extent,) did they love their father also; and what was wanted in intensity of feeling, was more than made up by the deep, the exalted respect, they entertained for his principles and conduct.  It was with pride they beheld him, not merely the deservedly idolized of the low, but the respected of the high—­the example of one class, and the revered of another; one whose high position in the social scale, had been attained, less by his striking exterior advantages, than the inward worth that governed every action of his life, and whose moral character, as completely sans tache as his fulfilment of the social duties was proverbially sans reproche, could not fail, in a certain degree, to reflect the respect it commanded upon themselves.

As we have before observed, however, all the fervor of their affection had been centered in their mother, and that was indeed a melancholy night in which the youths had been summoned to watch the passing away of her gentle spirit for ever from their love.  Isabella De Haldimar had, from her earliest infancy, been remarkable for her quiet and contemplative character; and, bred amid scenes that brought at every retrospect, recollections of some acted horror, it is not surprising that the bias given by nature, should have been developed and strengthened by the events that had surrounded her.  Not dissimilar in disposition, as she was not unlike in form, to her mother, she was by that mother carefully endowed with those gentler attributes of goodness, which, taking root within a soil so eminently disposed to their reception, could not fail to render her in after life a model of excellence, both as a mother and a wife.  Notwithstanding, however, this moulding of her pliant, and well directed mind, there was about her a melancholy, which while it gave promise of the devoted affection of the mother, offered but little prospect of cheerfulness, in an union with one, who, reserved himself, could not be expected to