"From the first months of his domestication with his wife at Wellwood
Abbey, Sir Henry Wellwood had intended, had _longed_, to commence his
little system of tender remonstrance; but the slightest insinuation
of a difference of opinion was sufficient to fan the embers of
Henrietta's distemperature into a conflagration. The blaze was not
strong, indeed; for the lady had always been accustomed to find a fit
of wilfulness, or of affected despondency, more available and becoming
than one of hasty anger. But she was tolerably expert in those piquant
flippancies of speech which harass the enemy like a straggling fire;
and could contrive, when it suited her purpose, to make herself as
disagreeable as if her face had not been that of a cherub, or her
voice seraphic.
"'A woman,' quoth La Bruyere, 'must be charming indeed, whose husband
does not repent, ten times a day, that he is a married man.' Sir Henry
Wellwood would have scoffed at the axiom. The 'idol of his soul' was
still an idol; although, like the votaries of old, he had managed to
discover that it was not wholly formed of precious metals; that its
feet were of clay! He still fancied himself the happiest of mortals;
particularly when Henrietta, in her best looks and spirits, was riding
by his side through the Wellwood plantations, listening to the project
of his intended improvements;--or seated in her boudoir sketching
designs and modelling plans for his two new lodges.
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