THE YOUNG WIFE. 177 



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 neighbour- 

 hood. 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 gaiety 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-rneeting 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 " every body," who declared that his wife was " one 

 of the prettiest and sweetest little women in the world," and, 

 as every body must be right, so of course it was. 



Rarely, indeed, had our gentle Benedict beheld the face of 



