be her
greatest ambition to help her husband in his work, and she had read
all the letters from the MacNabs and MacFies, asking to be made
gaugers and landing-waiters, with an assumed interest. But the work
palled upon her very quickly. Her quick intellect discovered soon
that there was nothing in it which she really did. It was all form
and verbiage, and pretence at business. Her husband went through it
all with the utmost patience, reading every word, giving orders as
to every detail, and conscientiously doing that which he conceived
he had undertaken to do. But Lady Laura wanted to meddle with high
politics, to discuss reform bills, to assist in putting up Mr. This
and putting down my Lord That. Why should she waste her time in
doing that which the lad in the next room, who was called a private
secretary, could do as well?

Still she would obey. Let the task be as hard as it might, she would
obey. If he counselled her to do this or that, she would follow his
counsel,--because she owed him so much. If she had accepted the half
of all his wealth without loving him, she owed him the more on that
account. But she knew,--she could not but know,--that her intellect
was brighter than his; and might it not be possible for her to lead
him? Then she made efforts to lead her husband, and found that he was
as stiff-necked as an ox. Mr. Kennedy was not, perhaps, a clever man;
but he was a man who knew his own way, and who intended to keep it.

"I have got a headache, Robert," she said to him one Sunday after
luncheon. "I think I will not go to church this afternoon."

"It is not serious, I hope."

"Oh dear no. Don't you know how one feels sometimes that one has got
a head? And when that is the case one's armchair is the best place."

"I am not sure of that," said Mr. Kennedy.

"If I went to church I should not attend," said Lady Laura.

"The fresh air would do you more good than anything else, and we
could walk across the park."

"Thank you;--I won't go out again to-day." This she said with
something almost of crossness in her manner, and Mr. Kennedy went to
the afternoon service by himself.

Lady Laura when she was left alone began to think of her position.
She was not more than four or five months married, and she was
becoming very tired of her life. Was it not also true that she was
becoming tired of her husband? She had twice told Phineas Finn that
of all men in the world she esteemed Mr. Kennedy the most. She did