little system of tender remonstrance; but the slightest insinuation
of a difference of opinion was sufficient to fan the embers of
Henrietta's distemperature into a conflagration. The blaze was not
strong, indeed; for the lady had always been accustomed to find a fit
of wilfulness, or of affected despondency, more available and becoming
than one of hasty anger. But she was tolerably expert in those piquant
flippancies of speech which harass the enemy like a straggling fire;
and could contrive, when it suited her purpose, to make herself as
disagreeable as if her face had not been that of a cherub, or her
voice seraphic.

"'A woman,' quoth La Bruyere, 'must be charming indeed, whose husband
does not repent, ten times a day, that he is a married man.' Sir Henry
Wellwood would have scoffed at the axiom. The 'idol of his soul' was
still an idol; although, like the votaries of old, he had managed to
discover that it was not wholly formed of precious metals; that its
feet were of clay! He still fancied himself the happiest of mortals;
particularly when Henrietta, in her best looks and spirits, was riding
by his side through the Wellwood plantations, listening to the project
of his intended improvements;--or seated in her boudoir sketching
designs and modelling plans for his two new lodges. Sometimes after
dinner she would busy herself with her guitar, and insist on his
attempting a second to her Italian notturno; sometimes she persuaded
him to lend her his arm towards the village, to assist in executing
that easy work of benevolence, the deplenishment of her silken purse.
At such, moments she was indeed enchanting;--and the fascinated
Wellwood was quite willing to echo the chorus of Mrs. Delafield's
visiters, that he had 'drawn a prize.'

"But the sands of life are not formed exclusively of diamond sparks.
Flint and granite mingle in the contents of the hour-glass; and Sir
Henry often found himself required to listen to fractious complaints
of old Roddington's innovations, of Lawford's negligence--of roses
that would not blow at the gardener's bidding,--of London booksellers,
who would not send down the new novels in proper time,--of old women
who refused to be cured of their rheumatism, and young ones
who declined becoming scholars at her platting school. His own
misdemeanours, too, were frequent and unpardonable. He had a knack of
carrying off the very volume she was reading,--of losing _her_ place,
and leaving his own ma