an that to which she had now been promoted. As Kitty Blacker she
had possessed feminine charms which would have been famous had
they been better known. Mr. Furnival had fetched her from farther
East--from the region of Great Ormond street and the neighbourhood of
Southampton Buildings. Her cherry cheeks, and her round eye, and her
full bust, and her fresh lip, had conquered the hard-tasked lawyer;
and so they had gone forth to fight the world together. Her eye
was still round, and her cheek red, and her bust full,--there had
certainly been no falling off there; nor will I say that her lip had
lost its freshness. But the bloom of her charms had passed away, and
she was now a solid, stout, motherly woman, not bright in converse,
but by no means deficient in mother-wit, recognizing well the duties
which she owed to others, but recognizing equally well those which
others owed to her. All the charms of her youth--had they not been
given to him, and also all her solicitude, all her anxious fighting
with the hard world? When they had been poor together, had she not
patched and turned and twisted, sitting silently by his side into the
long nights, because she would not ask him for the price of a new
dress? And yet now, now that they were rich--? Mrs. Furnival, when
she put such questions within her own mind, could hardly answer this
latter one with patience. Others might be afraid of the great Mr.
Furnival in his wig and gown; others might be struck dumb by his
power of eye and mouth; but she, she, the wife of his bosom, she
could catch him without his armour. She would so catch him and let
him know what she thought of all her wrongs. So she said to herself
many a day, and yet the great deed, in all its explosiveness, had
never yet been done. Small attacks of words there had been many, but
hitherto the courage to speak out her griefs openly had been wanting
to her.

I can now allow myself but a small space to say a few words of Sophia
Furnival, and yet in that small space must be confined all the direct
description which can be given of one of the principal personages
of this story. At nineteen Miss Furnival was in all respects a
young woman. She was forward in acquirements, in manner, in general
intelligence, and in powers of conversation. She was a handsome, tall
girl, with expressive gray eyes and dark-brown hair. Her mouth, and
hair, and a certain motion of her neck and turn of her head, had come
to her from her mother, bu