how she was to submit to the
tiresome prosings of certain notorieties in respect of their
political or social eminence,--she certainly heard with most
exemplary resignation; but by no effort of her reason, nor, indeed, of
imagination, could she attain to the fact why any one should associate
with those distasteful to them, nor ever persuade herself that any
worldly distinction could possibly be worth having at such a price.

She was quite sure--indeed, her own experience proved it--"that the
world was full of pleasant people." Beauty to gaze on and wit to listen
to, were certainly not difficult to be found; why, then, any one should
persist in denying themselves the enjoyment derivable from such sources
was as great a seeming absurdity as that of him who, turning his back on
the rare flowers of a conservatory, would go forth to make his bouquet
of the wild flowers and weeds of the roadside. Besides this, in the
world wherein she had lived, her own gifts were precisely those which
attracted most admiration and exerted most sway; and it was somewhat
hard to descend to a system where such a coinage was not accepted as
currency, but rather regarded as gilded counters, pretty to look at,
but, after all, a mere counterfeit money, unrecognized by the mint.

My father saw all this when it was too late; but he lost no time in vain
repinings. On the contrary, having taken a cottage in a secluded part
of North Wales, by way of passing the honeymoon in all the conventional
isolation that season is condemned to, he devoted himself to that
educational process at which I have hinted, and began to instil those
principles, to the difficulty of whose acquirement I have just alluded.

I believe that his life at this period was one of as much happiness as
ever is permitted to poor mortality in this world; so, at least, his
letters to his friends bespeak it. It may be even doubted if the little
diversities of taste and disposition between himself and my mother did
not heighten the sense of his enjoyment; they assuredly averted that
lassitude and ennui which are often the results of a connubial duet
unreasonably prolonged. I know, too, that my poor mother often looked
back to that place as to the very paradise of her existence. My father
had encouraged such magnificent impressions of his ancestral house
and demesne that he was obliged to make great efforts to sustain the
deception. An entire wing had to be built to complete the symmetry of