r in Keppel Street.

Mrs. Furnival in discussing her grievances would attribute them
mainly to port wine. In his early days Mr. Furnival had been
essentially an abstemious man. Young men who work fifteen hours a day
must be so. But now he had a strong opinion about certain Portuguese
vintages, was convinced that there was no port wine in London equal
to the contents of his own bin, saving always a certain green cork
appertaining to his own club, which was to be extracted at the rate
of thirty shillings a cork. And Mrs. Furnival attributed to these
latter studies not only a certain purple hue which was suffusing his
nose and cheeks, but also that unevenness of character and those
supposed domestic improprieties to which allusion has been made. It
may, however, be as well to explain that Mrs. Ball, the old family
cook and housekeeper, who had ascended with the Furnivals in the
world, opined that made-dishes did the mischief. He dined out too
often, and was a deal too particular about his dinner when he dined
at home. If Providence would see fit to visit him with a sharp attack
of the gout, it would--so thought Mrs. Ball--be better for all
parties.

Whether or no it may have been that Mrs. Furnival at fifty-five--for
she and her lord were of the same age--was not herself as attractive
in her husband's eyes as she had been at thirty, I will not pretend
to say. There can have been no just reason for any such change in
feeling, seeing that the two had grown old together. She, poor woman,
would have been quite content with the attentions of Mr. Furnival,
though his hair was grizzled and his nose was blue; nor did she ever
think of attracting to herself the admiration of any swain whose
general comeliness might be more free from all taint of age. Why then
should he wander afield--at the age of fifty-five? That he did wander
afield, poor Mrs. Furnival felt in her agony convinced; and among
those ladies whom on this account she most thoroughly detested was
our friend Lady Mason of Orley Farm. Lady Mason and the lawyer had
first become acquainted in the days of the trial, now long gone
by, on which occasion Mr. Furnival had been employed as the junior
counsel; and that acquaintance had ripened into friendship, and now
flourished in full vigour,--to Mrs. Furnival's great sorrow and
disturbance.

Mrs. Furnival herself was a stout, solid woman, sensible on most
points, but better adapted, perhaps, to the life in Keppel Street
th