alvern to her carriage with a
little sigh. The whole party was soon driving home. Lady Malvern and
Hilda had a small victoria to themselves. As soon as ever they left the
rest of the party, the older woman turned and gave a full glance at the
girl by her side.

"Hilda," she said suddenly, "you look better than you did this morning."

"Oh, I feel better," she replied. "You have done me lots of good," she
continued, raising her eyes with an affectionate light in them to Lady
Malvern's kind face.

"I am delighted to have helped you, my love," replied the elder lady;
"and now, Hilda, I want to say something. You have been married very
little over three months. It is a very common illusion with girls to
imagine that married life is a time of perpetual bliss."

Hilda opened her lips to say something, but Lady Malvern interrupted.

"My dear," she said, "you must hear me out. Married life is not a bed of
roses, and the first year which a young couple spend together is
generally the hardest of all."

"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Quentyns. "Why the first year?"

"Because, my dear, the glamour is gradually being removed. The girl is
finding that the hero whom she married is a right good fellow, but still
that he is human; that he has his faults and his aggravations; that he
needs to be humored and consulted and petted, and to have his
smallnesses--yes, my dear, mark the word, his smallnesses--attended to.
The husband is making similar discoveries with regard to the lovely
angel whom he took to his arms. She, too, is mortal--affectionate, of
course, and sweet and womanly, and ten thousand times better than a real
angel would be to him, but still with her faults, her tempers, and her
fads. The young couple discover these things in each other during the
first two or three months of married life. All their future happiness
depends on how they both act, under the influence of these discoveries.
They have got to learn that, though they are made one by the priest,
they are both of them distinct individualities. If they are to be happy
together, they must both give and take. I know a married couple who are
now the happiest, prosiest, most attached old pair in the world, who
went through no end of storms during their first eventful year. But they
learned a lesson and profited by it. The wife does not now think her
husband the greatest hero that ever set foot on this earth, and the
husband does not call his wife an angel; but I thi