ecame
excessively intimate with most of the ladies; and, to my profound
astonishment, evinced no equivocal disposition to coquet with the men.
She amused us all very much. I say "amused," and scarcely know how to
explain myself. The truth is, I soon found that Mrs. W. was far oftener
laughed at than with. The gentlemen said little about her; but the
ladies in a little while pronounced her "a good-hearted thing, rather
indifferent-looking, totally uneducated, and decidedly vulgar." The
great wonder was, how Wyatt had been entrapped into such a match. Wealth
was the general solution, but this I knew to be no solution at all; for
Wyatt had told me that she neither brought him a dollar nor had any
expectations from any source whatever. "He had married," he said, "for
love, and for love only; and his bride was far more than worthy of his
love." When I thought of these expressions on the part of my friend, I
confess that I felt indescribably puzzled. Could it be possible that he
was taking leave of his senses? What else could I think? He, so refined,
so intellectual, so fastidious, with so exquisite a perception of the
faulty, and so keen an appreciation of the beautiful! To be sure, the
lady seemed especially fond of him, particularly so in his absence, when
she made herself ridiculous by frequent quotations of what had been said
by her "beloved husband, Mr. Wyatt." The word "husband" seemed forever,
to use one of her own delicate expressions,--forever "on the tip of her
tongue." In the meantime it was observed by all on board that he avoided
her in the most pointed manner, and, for the most part, shut himself up
alone in his stateroom, where, in fact, he might have been said to live
altogether, leaving his wife at full liberty to amuse herself as she
thought best in the public society of the main cabin.

My conclusion, from what I saw and heard, was that the artist, by some
unaccountable freak of fate, or perhaps in some fit of enthusiastic and
fanciful passion, had been induced to unite himself with a person
altogether beneath him, and that the natural result, entire and speedy
disgust, had ensued. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart, but could
not, for that reason, quite forgive his incommunicativeness in the
matter of the _Last Supper_. For this I resolved to have my revenge.

One day he came up on deck, and, taking his arm as had been my wont, I
sauntered with him backward and forward. His gloom, however (which I