e had always been a sweet and
serious simplicity about her, an air of good sense and reasonableness,
which had attracted everybody whose opinion was worth having to Lucy;
but she was neither beautiful nor clever. She had been so brought up
that, though she was not badly educated, she had no accomplishments, and
not more knowledge than falls to the lot of an ordinary schoolgirl. The
farthest extent of her mild experiences was Sloane Street and Cadogan
Place: and there were people who thought it impossible that Sir Tom, who
had been everywhere, and run through the entire gamut of pleasures and
adventures, should find anything interesting in this bread-and-butter
girl, whom, of course, it was his duty to marry, and having married to
be kind to. But when he found himself set down in an English country
house with this little piece of simplicity opposite to him, what would
he do, the sympathising spectators said? Even his kind aunt, who felt
that she had brought about the marriage, and who, as a matter of fact,
had fully intended it from the first, though she herself liked Lucy, had
a little terror in her soul as she asked herself the same question. He
would fill the house with company and get over it in that way, was what
the most kind and moderate people thought. But Sir Tom laughed at all
their prognostications. He said afterwards that he had never known
before how pretty it was to know nothing, and to have seen nothing, when
these defects were conjoined with intelligence and delightful curiosity
and never-failing interest. He declared that he had never truly enjoyed
his own adventures and experiences as he did when he told them over to
his young wife. You may be sure there were some of them which were not
adapted for Lucy's ears: but these Sir Tom left religiously away in the
background. He had been a careless liver no doubt, like so many men, but
he would rather have cut off his right hand, as the Scripture bids, than
have soiled Lucy's white soul with an idea, or an image, that was
unworthy of her. She knew him under all sorts of aspects, but not one
that was evil. Their solitary evenings together were to her more
delightful than any play, and to him nearly as delightful. When the
dinner was over and the cold shut out, she would wait his appearance in
the inner drawing-room, which she had chosen for her special abode, with
some of the homely cares that had been natural to her former condition,
drawing his chair to the fir