cted. At home, with her mother, there had always been people
around her, but they had not always been such as she herself would
have chosen for her companions. She had thought that, when married,
she could choose and have those about her who were congenial to her:
but she found that none came to her. Her sister, who was a wiser
woman than she, had begun her married life with a definite idea, and
had carried it out; but this poor creature found herself, as it were,
stranded. When once she had conceived it in her heart to feel anger
against her husband,--and she had done so before they had been a week
together,--there was no love to bring her back to him again. She did
not know that it behoved her to look pleased when he entered the
room, and to make him at any rate think that his presence gave her
happiness. She became gloomy before she reached her new house, and
never laid her gloom aside. He would have made a struggle for some
domestic comfort, had any seemed to be within his reach. As it was,
he struggled for domestic propriety, believing that he might so best
bolster up his present lot in life. But the task became harder and
harder to him, and the gloom became denser and more dense. He did not
think of her unhappiness, but of his own; as she did not think of his
tedium, but of hers. "If this be domestic felicity!" he would say to
himself, as he sat in his arm-chair, striving to fix his attention
upon a book.

"If this be the happiness of married life!" she thought, as she
remained listless, without even the pretence of a book, behind her
teacups. In truth she would not walk with him, not caring for such
exercise round the pavement of a London square; and he had resolutely
determined that she should not run into debt for carriage hire. He
was not a curmudgeon with his money; he was no miser. But he had
found that in marrying an earl's daughter he had made himself a poor
man, and he was resolved that he would not also be an embarrassed
man.

When the bride heard that her mother and sister were about to escape
to Baden-Baden, there rushed upon her a sudden hope that she might
be able to accompany the flight. She would not be parted from her
husband, or at least not so parted that the world should suppose
that they had quarrelled. She would simply go away and make a long
visit,--a very long visit. Two years ago a sojourn with her mother
and Margaretta at Baden-Baden would not have offered to her much that
was attracti