CHAPTER IX
It is not worth while to give any of Helen's letters to her family. Some years ago it was the fashion of all newly-married people to write word to their friends that they were the happiest of human creatures. Heaven alone knows if it were true, but so they always said. Now this romantic state of bliss has been laughed at in society, and sneered at in novels, till nobody dares say a word about it. It may be wiser, but it is not quite satisfactory. The domestic novels of the day have described with such accuracy, and with so much satire, all the little fidgety amiabilities of life, that a wife who is inclined to praise her husband checks herself, for fear she should be reckoned like Mrs. Major Waddell. An active mother has a suspicion that she is laughed at as a Mrs. Fairbairn, and the kindly affections of the heart are now so carefully wrapped up and concealed, that it seems just possible that they may die altogether of suffocation.
Helen did not commit herself by any asseverations of extraordinary happiness, and made no mention of any fresh trait of perfection that every day must have revealed in Lord Teviot's character; but there was St. Mary's to describe, and the neighbourhood to explain, and all the various congratulatory letters she received were duly quoted, and her own regularly ended wdth "Teviot's love to all"; and Lady Eskdale was satisfied. Amelia read her sister's letters with greater distrust. She thought they were written in a constrained, guarded tone, and she remembered the week that preceded the wedding with pain
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