d her silken shoes. Fanny Trevanion
seemed to have come into the world with silk shoes,--not to walk where
there was a stone or a brier. I heard something, in the gossip of those
around, that confirmed this view of Lady Castleton's character, while it
deepened my admiration of her lord, and showed me how wise had been her
choice, and how resolutely he had prepared himself to vindicate his own.
One evening, as I was sitting, a little apart from the rest, with two
men of the London world, to whose talk--for it ran upon the on-dits
and anecdotes of a region long strange to me--I was a silent but amused
listener, one of the two said: "Well, I don't know anywhere a more
excellent creature than Lady Castleton: so fond of her children, and her
tone to Castleton so exactly what it ought to be,--so affectionate, and
yet, as it were, respectful. And the more credit to her if, as they say,
she was not in love with him when she married (to be sure, handsome as
he is, he is twice her age)! And no woman could have been more flattered
and courted by Lotharios and lady-killers than Lady Castleton has been.
I confess, to my shame, that Castleton's luck puzzles me, for it is
rather an exception to my general experience."

"My dear--," said the other, who was one of those wise men of pleasure
who occasionally startle us into wondering how they come to be so
clever, and yet rest contented with mere drawing-room celebrity,--men
who seem always idle, yet appear to have read everything; always
indifferent to what passes before them, yet who know the character and
divine the secrets of everybody, "my dear," said the gentleman, "you
would not be puzzled if you had studied Lord Castleton, instead of her
ladyship. Of all the conquests ever made by Sedley Beaudesert,--when the
two fairest dames of the Faubourg are said to have fought for his smiles
in the Bois de Boulogne,--no conquest ever cost him such pains, or so
tasked his knowledge of women, as that of his wife after marriage.
He was not satisfied with her hand, he was resolved to have her whole
heart,--'one entire and perfect chrysolite;' and he has succeeded! Never
was husband so watchful and so little jealous, never one who confided
so generously in all that was best in his wife, yet was so alert in
protecting and guarding her wherever she was weakest. When in the second
year of marriage that dangerous German Prince Von Leibenfels attached
himself so perseveringly to Lady Castleton, and th