id Lord
Beaumanoir, smiling sorrowfully.

'Cracked heads are much commoner,' said Edith, 'you may rely upon it.
The only man I really know with a broken heart is Lord Fitz-Booby. I do
think that paying Mount-Dullard's debts has broken his heart. He takes
on so; 'tis piteous. "My dear Mrs. Coningsby," he said to me last night,
"only think what that young man might have been; he might have been a
lord of the treasury in '35; why, if he had had nothing more in '41,
why, there's a loss of between four and five thousand pounds; but with
my claims--Sir Robert, having thrown the father over, was bound on
his own principle to provide for the son--he might have got something
better; and now he comes to me with his debts, and his reason for paying
his debts, too, Mrs. Coningsby, because he is going to be married; to
be married to a woman who has not a shilling. Why, if he had been in
office, and only got 1,500L. a year, and married a woman with only
another 1,500L., he would have had 3,000L. a year, Mrs. Coningsby; and
now he has nothing of his own except some debts, which he wants me to
pay, and settle 3,000L. a year on him besides."'

They all laughed.

'Ah!' said Mrs. Coningsby, with a resemblance which made all start, 'you
should have heard it with the Fitz-Booby voice.'

The character of a woman rapidly develops after marriage, and sometimes
seems to change, when in fact it is only complete. Hitherto we have
known Edith only in her girlhood, bred up in a life of great simplicity,
and under the influence of a sweet fancy, or an absorbing passion.
Coningsby had been a hero to her before they met, the hero of nursery
hours and nursery tales. Experience had not disturbed those dreams.
From the moment they encountered each other at Millbank, he assumed that
place in her heart which he had long occupied in her imagination; and,
after their second meeting at Paris, her existence was merged in love.
All the crosses and vexations of their early affection only rendered
this state of being on her part more profound and engrossing.

But though Edith was a most happy wife, and blessed with two children
worthy of their parents, love exercises quite a different influence
upon a woman when she has married, and especially when she has assumed
a social position which deprives life of all its real cares. Under any
circumstances, that suspense, which, with all its occasional agony, is
the great spring of excitement, is over; but, generally