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again," and that lie hoped my brother also would "forget and forgive."
On occasions that really were "frivolous," he was not less tyrannical. His sister came to stay with us for three or four months, in London; and he notified to me that I should go nowhere unless she was invited with us. I pleaded that her eccentricities prevented my friends from inviting her; that she dressed differently to other ladies; wearing a sort of Bloomer costume, a short dress with trowsers, and her hair cropped like a man's; and altogether affected masculine singularities, which astonished and repelled persons who had the usual habits of society. Mr. Norton, however, held firm to his determination, and declared he would sooner "cut the traces of the carriage" than allow me to go without her.
The year after the scene of breaking open the door, my sisters, brother-in-law, and brother, planned a tour in Germany, and I was very anxious to be of the party. Mr Norton consented, provided that I would defray the expense of the tour. I provided for it, by an agreement with Messrs. Saunders and Otley, for a novel called "The Wife and Woman's Reward," and we set out and joined my family at Antwerp. We proceeded, however, no further than Aix la Chapelle, when Mr Norton became ill with a lameness which made him unwilling to travel, and the others went on without us. I defy any wife to have shown more unselfish or devoted attention to a husband, than I did to Mr Norton under these circumstances, although assured that there was not the slightest cause for anxiety in his indisposition. We were without servants,—the courier and lady's maid having accompanied the main party. Mr Norton would scarcely permit any attendance from the domestics of the hotel,—he spoke no foreign language, and the misunderstandings irritated him. I combined therefore in my own person, by his desire, the functions of sick-nurse, valet, and chambermaid. I solemnly declare that there was no task, however menial or laborious, that I was not expected to per-
