sure of her husband's society; and never had he rendered it so agreeable since "he was the bright, particular star" who alone illumined the dull dwelling in Welbeck Street. Mary managed to prove the truth of her own assertions, by enabling Isabella to speak with more freedom than usual in the presence of her husband, for whom she had too much admiring reverence for the ease and freedom necessary to domestic intercourse. This had been more felt, and therefore more acted upon, since her marriage than before, because she had become properly sensible that her sphere of action was enlarged, that she had new duties to fulfil, and that, as the mistress of an important establishment, the wife of a man whom every one looked up to, she ought to assume, with modest propriety, the consequence that belonged to her. Considering it was time to "put away childish things," her husband never called her a child, or referred to her as one, but she felt it as the harshest remonstrance, the cruellest reproach he could use, and preferred being silent in general to saying any thing which might be construed into that which was her innocent fault, her positive, yet not irremediable misfortune. She neither dared be playful, nor enjoy the playfulness of another; yet, being utterly devoid of dissimulation in repressing the natural buoyancy of her spirits, she only half succeeded, and, whilst she suppressed the laugh of gaiety, failed to display the womanly composure, or the imposing gravity, she sought to obtain and to exhibit.
