one drawing-room,
where he and his wife are sitting, so pleasant has she made it look,
in spite of the plainness of the furniture. A bright log-fire is
burning on the hearth. There are a few good books too, and a few
handsome prints; while some really valuable nick-nacks are set out,
with pardonable ostentation, on a little table covered with crimson
velvet. It is only cotton velvet, if you look close at it; but the
things are pretty enough to catch the eye of all visitors; and Mrs.
Heale, the Doctor's wife (who always calls Mrs. Vavasour "my lady,"
though she does not love her), and Mrs. Trebooze, of Trebooze, always
finger them over when they have any opportunity, and whisper to each
other half contemptuously,--"Ah, poor thing! there's a sign that she
has seen better days."

And better days, in one sense, Mrs. Vavasour has seen. I am afraid,
indeed, that she has more than once regretted the morning when she ran
away in a hack-cab from her brother Lord Scoutbush's house in Eaton
Square, to be married to Elsley Vavasour, the gifted author of "A
Soul's Agonies and other Poems." He was a lion then, with foolish
women running after him, and turning his head once and for all; and
Lucia St. Just was a wild Irish girl, new to London society, all
feeling and romance, and literally all; for there was little real
intellect underlying her passionate sensibility. So when the
sensibility burnt itself out, as it generally does; and when children,
and the weak health which comes with them, and the cares of a
household, and money difficulties were absorbing her little powers,
Elsley Vavasour began to fancy that his wife was a very commonplace
person, who was fast losing even her good looks and her good temper.
So, on the whole, they were not happy. Elsley was an affectionate man,
and honourable to a fantastic nicety; but he was vain, capricious,
over-sensitive, craving for admiration and distinction; and it was not
enough for him that his wife loved him, and bore him children, kept
his accounts, mended and moiled all day long for him and his; he
wanted her to act the public for him exactly when he was hungry for
praise; and that not the actual, but an altogether ideal, public; to
worship him as a deity, "live for him and him alone," "realise" his
poetic dreams of marriage bliss, and talk sentiment with him, or
listen to him talking sentiment to her, when she would much sooner be
safe in bed burying all the petty cares of the day, an