ch they are going to dry by machinery. There is a great
variety of muddy lanes in which to ride. There is a post-office seven
miles off, and a telegraph-station fifteen miles farther off. The
_ensemble_ is not animated. When you go out you see very sleek cattle,
very white sheep, very fat children. You may meet at intervals
laboring-people, very round-shouldered and very sulky. You also meet, if
you are in luck's way, with a traction-engine; and wherever you look you
perceive a church-steeple. It is all very harmless, except the
traction-engine, but it is not animated, or enlivening. You will not
wonder that I soon came to the end of my French novels. The French
novels have enabled me to discover that my angel is very easily ruffled.
In fact, she is that touchy thing, a saint. I had no idea that she was a
saint when I saw her drinking her cup of tea in that garden on the
Thames. True, she had her lovely little serene, holy, _noli-me-tangere_
air; but I thought that would pass. It does not pass. And when I wanted
her to laugh with me at "Autour du Mariage," she blushed up to the eyes,
and was offended. What am I to do? I am no saint. I cannot pretend to be
one. I am not worse than other men, but I like to amuse myself. I cannot
go through life singing a _miserere_. I am afraid we shall quarrel. You
think that very wholesome. But there are quarrels and quarrels. Some
clear the air like thunderstorms. Ours are little irritating
differences, which end in her bursting into tears, and in myself looking
ridiculous and feeling a brute. She has cried quite a number of times in
the last fortnight. I dare say, if she went into a rage, as you justly
say Nicoletta would do, and, you might have added, you have done, it
would rouse me, and I should be ready to strike her, and should end in
covering her with kisses. But she only turns her eyes on me like a dying
fawn, bursts into tears, and goes out of the room. Then she comes in
again--to dinner, perhaps, or to that odd ceremony, five-o'clock
tea--with her little sad, stiff, reproachful air as of a martyr, answers
meekly, and makes me again feel a brute. The English sulk a long time, I
think. We are at daggers drawn one moment, but then we kiss and forget
the next. We are more passionate, but we are more amiable. I want to get
away, to go to Paris, Homburg, Trouville, anywhere, but I dare not
propose it. I only drop adroit hints. If I should die of _ennui_, and be
buried under the wet m