own her long enough--he ought to
have been acquainted with it, but what can she do? If her home is always
dull and lonely, and her husband is always absent and finds no pleasure
in her society, she is naturally sometimes driven (seldom enough, she is
sure) to seek a little recreation elsewhere; she is not expected to pine
and mope to death, she hopes. 'Then come, Louisa,' says the gentleman,
waking up as suddenly as he fell asleep, 'stop at home this evening, and
so will I.' 'I should be sorry to suppose, Charles, that you took a
pleasure in aggravating me,' replies the lady; 'but you know as well as I
do that I am particularly engaged to Mrs. Mortimer, and that it would be
an act of the grossest rudeness and ill-breeding, after accepting a seat
in her box and preventing her from inviting anybody else, not to go.'
'Ah! there it is!' says the gentleman, shrugging his shoulders, 'I knew
that perfectly well. I knew you couldn't devote an evening to your own
home. Now all I have to say, Louisa, is this--recollect that _I_ was
quite willing to stay at home, and that it's no fault of _mine_ we are
not oftener together.'

With that the gentleman goes away to keep an old appointment at his club,
and the lady hurries off to dress for Mrs. Mortimer's; and neither thinks
of the other until by some odd chance they find themselves alone again.

But it must not be supposed that the cool couple are habitually a
quarrelsome one. Quite the contrary. These differences are only
occasions for a little self-excuse,--nothing more. In general they are
as easy and careless, and dispute as seldom, as any common acquaintances
may; for it is neither worth their while to put each other out of the
way, nor to ruffle themselves.

When they meet in society, the cool couple are the best-bred people in
existence. The lady is seated in a corner among a little knot of lady
friends, one of whom exclaims, 'Why, I vow and declare there is your
husband, my dear!' 'Whose?--mine?' she says, carelessly. 'Ay, yours,
and coming this way too.' 'How very odd!' says the lady, in a languid
tone, 'I thought he had been at Dover.' The gentleman coming up, and
speaking to all the other ladies and nodding slightly to his wife, it
turns out that he has been at Dover, and has just now returned. 'What a
strange creature you are!' cries his wife; 'and what on earth brought you
here, I wonder?' 'I came to look after you, _of course_,' rejoins her
husband. Th