shop, how lucky you're here!"

Though the trials of married life have been classified and catalogued
with exhaustive accuracy, there is one form of conjugal misery which
has perhaps received inadequate attention; and that is the suffering of
the versatile woman whose husband is not equally adapted to all her
moods. Every woman feels for the sister who is compelled to wear a
bonnet which does not "go" with her gown; but how much sympathy is
given to her whose husband refuses to harmonize with the pose of the
moment? Scant justice has, for instance, been done to the misunderstood
wife whose husband persists in understanding her; to the submissive
helpmate whose taskmaster shuns every opportunity of browbeating her;
and to the generous and impulsive being whose bills are paid with
philosophic calm. Mrs. Fetherel, as wives go, had been fairly exempt
from trials of this nature, for her husband, if undistinguished by
pronounced brutality or indifference, had at least the negative merit
of being her intellectual inferior. Landscape gardeners, who are aware
of the usefulness of a valley in emphasizing the height of a hill, can
form an idea of the account to which an accomplished woman may turn
such deficiencies; and it need scarcely be said that Mrs. Fetherel had
made the most of her opportunities. It was agreeably obvious to every
one, Fetherel included, that he was not the man to appreciate such a
woman; but there are no limits to man's perversity, and he did his best
to invalidate this advantage by admiring her without pretending to
understand her. What she most suffered from was this fatuous approval:
the maddening sense that, however she conducted herself, he would
always admire her. Had he belonged to the class whose conversational
supplies are drawn from the domestic circle, his wife's name would
never have been off his lips; and to Mrs. Fetherel's sensitive
perceptions his frequent silences were indicative of the fact that she
was his one topic.

It was, in part, the attempt to escape this persistent approbation that
had driven Mrs. Fetherel to authorship. She had fancied that even the
most infatuated husband might be counted onto resent, at least
negatively, an attack on the sanctity of the hearth; and her
anticipations were heightened by a sense of the unpardonableness of her
act. Mrs. Fetherel's relations with her husband were in fact
complicated by an irrepressible tendency to be fond of him; and there
was a certa