THE YOUJSra 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 neigh- 

 bourhood. 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-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 un- 

 reasonable fellow ; if not by every one, at least by that com- 

 plex "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. 



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



