d he was magnanimous: he was in the right, she in the
wrong; he had no desire to grapple with her, fling and humiliate. The
Sphinx of Mrs. Pagnell had been communing with himself unwontedly during
the recent weeks.

What was the riddle of him? That, he did not read. But, expecting an
assault, and relieved by his sister Charlotte's departure with Weyburn,
he went to the drawing-room, where he had seen her sniff her strong
suspicions of a lady coming to throne it. Charlotte could believe that he
flouted the world with a beautiful young woman on his arm; she would not
believe him capable of doing that in his family home and native county;
so, then, her shrewd wits had nothing or little to learn. But her
vehement fighting against facts; her obstinate aristocratic prejudices,
which he shared; her stinger of a tongue: these in ebullition formed a
discomforting prospect. The battle might as well be conducted through the
post. Come it must!

Even her writing of the pointed truths she would deliver was an
unpleasant anticipation. His ears heated. Undoubtedly he could crush her.
Yet, supposing her to speak to his ears, she would say: 'You married a
young woman, and have been foiling and fooling her ever since, giving her
half a title to the name of wife, and allowing her in consequence to be
wholly disfigured before the world--your family naturally her chief
enemies, who would otherwise (Charlotte would proclaim it) have been her
friends. What! your intention was (one could hear Charlotte's voice) to
smack the world in the face, and you smacked your young wife's instead!'

His intention had been nothing of the sort. He had married, in a foreign
city, a young woman who adored him, whose features, manners, and carriage
of her person satisfied his exacting taste in the sex; and he had
intended to cast gossipy England over the rail and be a traveller for the
remainder of his days. And at the first she had acquiesced, tacitly
accepted it as part of the contract. He bore with the burden of an
intolerable aunt of hers for her sake. The two fell to work to conspire.
Aminta 'tired of travelling,' Aminta must have a London house. She
continually expressed a hope that 'she might set her eyes on Steignton
some early day.' In fact, she as good as confessed her scheme to plot for
the acknowledged position of Countess of Ormont in the English social
world. That was a distinct breach of the contract.

As to the babble of the London world abou