dissolving, tried to shake her off, but the
goose would cry and embrace the dragon till it melted.

By and by Mr. Vane's uncle died suddenly and left him the great
Stoken Church estate, and a trunk full of Jacobuses and Queen Anne's
guineas--his own hoard and his father's--then the dragon spake
comfortably and said: "My child, he is now the richest man in
Shropshire. He will not think of you now; so steel your heart."

Then Mabel, contrary to all expectations, did not cry; but, with
flushing cheek, pledged her life upon Ernest's love and honor: and
Ernest, as soon as the funeral, etc., left him free, galloped to Mabel,
to talk of our good fortune. The dragon had done him injustice; that
was not his weak point. So they were married! and they were very, very
happy. But, one month after, the dragon died, and that was their first
grief; but they bore it together.

And Vane was not like the other Shropshire squires. His idea of pleasure
was something his wife could share. He still rode, walked, and sat with
her, and read to her, and composed songs for her, and about her, which
she played and sang prettily enough, in her quiet, lady-like way, and in
a voice of honey dropping from the comb. Then she kept a keen eye upon
him; and, when she discovered what dishes he liked, she superintended
those herself; and, observing that he never failed to eat of a certain
lemon-pudding the dragon had originated, she always made this pudding
herself, and she never told her husband she made it.

The first seven months of their marriage was more like blue sky than
brown earth; and if any one had told Mabel that her husband was a
mortal, and not an angel, sent to her that her days and nights might
be unmixed, uninterrupted heaven, she could hardly have realized the
information.

When a vexatious litigant began to contest the will by which Mr. Vane
was Lord of Stoken Church, and Mr. Vane went up to London to concert
the proper means of defeating this attack, Mrs. Vane would gladly have
compounded by giving the man two or three thousand acres or the whole
estate, if he wouldn't take less, not to rob her of her husband for
a month; but she was docile, as she was amorous; so she cried (out of
sight) a week; and let her darling go with every misgiving a loving
heart could have; but one! and that one her own heart told her was
impossible.

The month rolled away--no symptom of a return. For this, Mr. Vane was
not, in fact, to blame; but, toward