A Sylvan Morality; or, A Word To Wives - Page 2

in their make, or to discover where they girted, were matters on which it required more time to form a decided judgment. One thing, however, was pretty obvious. With her matronly title, Emily had not assumed an atom of that seriousness--not sad, but sober--which became her new estate; nor did she, as we shrewdly suspected, pay quite as much attention to the cares of her little menage as was rendered incumbent by the limited amount of her husband's income. She seemed, in short, the same thoughtless pleasure-loving, pleasure-seeking girl as ever; now that she was captured, the same volatile butterfly as when surrounded and chased by butterflies like herself. But her captor? asks some modern Petruchio--had he not, or could he not contrive to clip her pinions?

Poor F--! not he! he would have feared to "brush the dust" from off them; and, from something of this over-tenderness, had been feeding, with the honeyed pleasures of the French capital, those tastes which (without them) might have been reconciled already to the more spare and simple sociabilities of a retired English neighbourhood. He was only now trying the experiment which should have been made a year ago, and that with a reluctant and undecided hand.

Poor Emily! her love of gayety had now, it is true, but little scope for its display; but it was still strongly apparent, in the rapturous regret with which she referred to pleasures past, and the rapturous delight with which she greeted certain occasional breaks in the monotony of a country life. An approaching dinner-party would raise her tide of spirits, and a, distant ball or bow-meeting make them swell into a flood. On one or two of such occasions, we fancied that F--, though never stern, looked grave--grave enough to have been set down as an unreasonable fellow; if not by every one, at least by that complex "everybody" who declared that his wife was "one of the prettiest and sweetest little women in the world," and, as everybody must be right, so of course it was.

Rarely, indeed, had our gentle Benedick beheld the face of his "Young May Moon" absolutely obscured; but then it had always been his care to chase away from it every passing or even approaching cloud; and he would certainly have liked, in return, that its very brightest rays should have shone on him direct, instead of reaching him only, as it were, reflected from what in his eyes, certainly, were very inferior objects.

We had passed some weeks at our entertainer's cottage when rumours got afloat, such as had not disturbed for many a year the standing and sometimes stagnant pool of Goslington society. The son of Lord W--was about to come of age, and the event was to be celebrated by grand doings; a varied string of entertainments, to be wound up, so it was whispered, by a great parti-coloured or fancy ball. Rumours were soon silenced by certainty, and our friends were amongst those who received an