Aunt Angelica

The first changes referred especially to Hyde's life, and were not altogether approved by him. His pretence of reading law had to be abandoned, for he had promised to remain at home with his mother, and it would not therefore be possible for him to dawdle about Pearl Street and Maiden Lane watching for Cornelia. But he had that happy and fortunate temper that trusts to events; and also, he soon began to realize that if circumstances alter cases, they also alter feelings.

For, looking upon Hyde Manor as the future home of himself and his wife-- and that wife, happily, Cornelia--he found it very easy to take an almost eager interest in all that concerned its welfare and beauty. "How good! How unselfish he is!" thought his mother. "Never before has he been so ready to listen and so willing to please me." But, really, the work soon became delightful to him. The passion for land and for its improvement--the ruling passion of an Englishman--was not absent in George; it was only latent, and the idea of home, of his own personal home, developed it with amazing rapidity. He was soon able to make excellent suggestions to his mother; for her ideas, beautiful enough in the cultivation of flat surfaces, did not embody the grander possibilities of the higher lands near the river. But George saw every advantage, and with great ability directed his little gang of labourers among the rocks and woody crags of the yet unplanted wilderness.