meditation; perhaps she did not understand
much of what she was reading, and her thoughts were elsewhere: but the
sleep project, with poor Mick's nightcap there on the pillow, was quite
a vain one. So it is in the world. Jack or Donald marches away to
glory with his knapsack on his shoulder, stepping out briskly to the
tune of "The Girl I Left Behind Me." It is she who remains and
suffers--and has the leisure to think, and brood, and remember.

Knowing how useless regrets are, and how the indulgence of sentiment
only serves to make people more miserable, Mrs. Rebecca wisely
determined to give way to no vain feelings of sorrow, and bore the
parting from her husband with quite a Spartan equanimity. Indeed
Captain Rawdon himself was much more affected at the leave-taking than
the resolute little woman to whom he bade farewell. She had mastered
this rude coarse nature; and he loved and worshipped her with all his
faculties of regard and admiration. In all his life he had never been
so happy, as, during the past few months, his wife had made him. All
former delights of turf, mess, hunting-field, and gambling-table; all
previous loves and courtships of milliners, opera-dancers, and the like
easy triumphs of the clumsy military Adonis, were quite insipid when
compared to the lawful matrimonial pleasures which of late he had
enjoyed. She had known perpetually how to divert him; and he had found
his house and her society a thousand times more pleasant than any place
or company which he had ever frequented from his childhood until now.
And he cursed his past follies and extravagances, and bemoaned his vast
outlying debts above all, which must remain for ever as obstacles to
prevent his wife's advancement in the world. He had often groaned over
these in midnight conversations with Rebecca, although as a bachelor
they had never given him any disquiet. He himself was struck with this
phenomenon. "Hang it," he would say (or perhaps use a still stronger
expression out of his simple vocabulary), "before I was married I
didn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as Moses would
wait or Levy would renew for three months, I kept on never minding.
But since I'm married, except renewing, of course, I give you my honour
I've not touched a bit of stamped paper."

Rebecca always knew how to conjure away these moods of melancholy.
"Why, my stupid love," she would say, "we have not done with your aunt
yet. If she fails us,