ed to defer the
engagement. And he was magnanimous: he was in the right, she in the
wrong; he had no desire to grapple with her, fling and humiliate. The
Sphinx of Mrs. Pagnell had been communing with himself unwontedly during
the recent weeks.

What was the riddle of him? That, he did not read. But, expecting an
assault, and relieved by his sister Charlotte's departure with Weyburn,
he went to the drawing-room, where he had seen her sniff her strong
suspicions of a lady coming to throne it. Charlotte could believe that
he flouted the world with a beautiful young woman on his arm; she would
not believe him capable of doing that in his family home and native
county; so, then, her shrewd wits had nothing or little to learn.
But her vehement fighting against facts; her obstinate aristocratic
prejudices, which he shared; her stinger of a tongue: these in
ebullition formed a discomforting prospect. The battle might as well be
conducted through the post. Come it must!

Even her writing of the pointed truths she would deliver was an
unpleasant anticipation. His ears heated. Undoubtedly he could crush
her. Yet, supposing her to speak to his ears, she would say: 'You
married a young woman, and have been foiling and fooling her ever
since, giving her half a title to the name of wife, and allowing her
in consequence to be wholly disfigured before the world--your family
naturally her chief enemies, who would otherwise (Charlotte would
proclaim it) have been her friends. What! your intention was (one could
hear Charlotte's voice) to smack the world in the face, and you smacked
your young wife's instead!'

His intention had been nothing of the sort. He had married, in a
foreign city, a young woman who adored him, whose features, manners, and
carriage of her person satisfied his exacting taste in the sex; and he
had intended to cast gossipy England over the rail and be a traveller
for the remainder of his days. And at the first she had acquiesced,
tacitly accepted it as part of the contract. He bore with the burden
of an intolerable aunt of hers for her sake. The two fell to work to
conspire. Aminta 'tired of travelling,' Aminta must have a London
house. She continually expressed a hope that 'she might set her eyes on
Steignton some early day.' In fact, she as good as confessed her scheme
to plot for the acknowledged position of Countess of Ormont in the
English social world. That was a distinct breach of the contract.

As to the