them,
recognizing the subjects, which were taken from Raphael's History of
Psyche.

"Beautiful! where did they come from?"

"William bought them of Lloyd, who had them long ago of the Emperor's
jeweller. They had been ordered for Marie Louise."

"And why didn't she have them, pray?"

"Just the question I asked. He said, 'Oh, because the Emperor was down
and the Allies in Paris, and the Emperor's jeweller nobody, and glad to
sell the cameos for one-third their cost, when they were finished.'"

"Oh, yes! I see,--at the time of Waterloo."

Mrs. Lewis looked at me again with the same knitted brow and flushed
cheek as before.

"All you say is Greek to me. I don't know what malachite is, nor who
Raphael is, nor who Psyche is, nor who Marie Louise is, scarcely who
Napoleon, and nothing about Waterloo. A pretty present to make to me, is
it not? I could make nothing of it. To you it is a whole volume."

I said, with some embarrassment, that it was easy to learn, and that if
she--that is, that women should endeavor to improve themselves, and so
on. She heard me through, and then said, dryly,--

"How old were you when you were married?"

"I was nearly twenty."

"Were you well-informed? had you read a great deal?"

"What one gets in a country-school,--and being fond of reading;--but
then I had always been in an atmosphere of books; and one takes in, one
knows not how, a thousand facts"--

I stopped; for I saw by her impatient nodding that she understood me.

"Yes, yes. I knew it must be so. Now, if William would ever bring me
books, instead of jewels, or talk to me and with me, I might have been a
rational being too, instead of being absolutely ashamed to open my
mouth!"

She clasped the jewel-case and went out; and I heard her chatting a
minute after with some gentlemen in the house, as if she were perfectly
and childishly happy.

IX.

How I wished I could give Mr. Lewis some hint of what had passed between
his wife and myself! But that I could not do. Besides that it was always
best to let matrimonial improvements originate with the parties
themselves, I had an inability to interfere usefully. I could talk to
her a little,--not at all to him. He seemed fond and proud of her as she
was, and her dissatisfaction with herself was a good sign. It was
strange to me, accustomed to intellectual sympathy, that he could do
without that of his wife. But I suppose he had come to feel that she
would not understand hi