CHAPTER II.

CHARLES Soon recovered the gaiety of which the loss of his son had, for a time, robbed him; and with his spirits, as might have been expected, returned his usual occupations and pleasures. He had, indeed, so far abided by his promises of reformation, as to gather together all his unpaid bills, and passed three mornings, or at least such a portion of them as was undisturbed by visitors, in trying to discover the amount of the demands which were made upon his fortune. But he found himself so much more involved than he expected, that, with his customary plan of postponing every thing, particularly what had a chance of proving unpleasant, he put off this very disagreeable examination, till he and Matilda were on their summer destination by the side of the sea, in a very retired, and consequently, cheap watering-place; such being, he assured her, his plan for the season which was now again fast approaching, it being already the latter end of May.

Things were, therefore, pretty well restored to their old state, excepting that Matilda, in his incorrigible thoughtlessness, found matter for apprehension, which oppressed her mind with a weight she could scarcely for a moment escape from. As far as ceaseless good-humour, and unremitting endeavours to discover what could make her smile and be

happy, or promote her pleasure and comfort, could proceed, he had certainly done his utmost. Hearing her repeatedly avow her perfect acquiescence in the dispensation which had disappointed her hopes in the loss of her son, and not comprehending the real source of her continual dejection, he began to shew symptoms of weariness at it; and, in occasional moments of irritation, threw out something like complaint of his possessing a dissatisfied and unhappy tempered wife. Such accusations were as yet too vague and indirect for Matilda to appropriate them to herself, unless she had been gifted with a disposition to cultivate disputes and arguments: a faculty of mind much valued and encouraged by some matrimonial people-upon what principle, it is not perhaps so easy to define.

But as she was naturally of a yielding and meek temper, preferring from her childhood, as it was very fortunate in her particular case she should do, to be accused unjustly, than to have to defend her. self stoutly (the only sort of defence, generally speaking, that is of any service,) she never nourished the slight dissatisfaction of her husband into any definite or lasting sentiment, by opposing it with discussion. And though he was often vexed that she could not be gav, and enjoy society as he did, and when things went cross with him, as from the increasing embarrassment of his affairs, they now very did, he was sometimes irritated to use unkind expressions towards her, Charles still, upon the whole, estimated his wife as she deserved, and would have been inclined to exterminate from the face of the

earth, any human being who gave her half the anxiety he himself occasioned her.

The period for Epsom races was now approaching, a time when he was more than commonly animated and engaged; and Matilda, disliking bustle and noise, and heat, and dust, and clamour, and confusion of every sort, was, on her part, a degree or two more pensive and uncomfortable than she was wont to be. They had hitherto made a party to the races with their friends the Willetts; and it had become to be a sort of thing understood, that they were annually to unite in the same project. But latterly a degree of coolness had sprung up in the intimacy between them-how or when originated Matilda could not discover, though she had not much difficulty in believing it to arise from a sense of dissatisfaction on Mr. Willett's part, to the style of living her husband had adopted, and the utter inattention it betrayed to the counsels and opinion of his former guardian. Charles, on his side, had adopted, with the habits of his gay and young associates, most of their sentiments; and the latter, being universally of a kind to scout a thriving, straight-forward citizen, who drank no burgundy or champagne, and who wanted his dinner, at the latest, at five o'clock, it was not much to be wondered at, that he gradually came to consider the passing a day in ThrogmortonStreet, to be little less than an infliction.

"I suppose we must ask the Willetts to go with us as usual to the races,” said he one morning to Matilda, a few days before they were to take place.

"If we go, we certainly must; but I would much

rather stay at home; and really we have seen so little of the Willetts lately, that-I don't know-"

"The less the better," he exclaimed, interrupting her. "I do declare to you, Matty, that, whether it is that I am so accustomed to see those elegant girls, the Hunters, that I cannot bear any thing unfashionable; or whether it is, that Jane Willett does grow more fal-de-ral and foolish in her taste every day that she lives, I cannot tell; but I verily believe, if I thought there was a chance of my having to sit upon a barouche-box at Epsom races by the side of her green spencer and yellow bonnet, I could not go-I could not-and that is the truth."

"But how came you to fancy any thing about her green spencer and yellow bonnet? I have never seen her in any thing of the sort," said Matilda.

"Olord! I have! I have!" and he lifted up his hands and eyes as if the recollection inspired a kind of shuddering. "It was only yesterday morning, as I was walking down Cheapside, I thought. I saw something on the other side of the way, simpering and smiling, and nodding, from under a Vesuvius kind of bonnet, all flame and fire. It can be nobody but Jane Willett, to be sure, I thought, and I began to bustle in a straight forward direction: for I thought of Epsom races directly, and I hoped I had escaped her; but, as the devil would have it, Tom Carlton met me before I had advanced three yards, and the street being clear she crossed over, and nailed us both for at least a quarter of an hour; and there she would have had us now, I believe, if I had not at last got away from her, by promising to call, and let her know all about our plans for the races ;

at which, I suppose, all this green and yellow paraphernalia is to be let off."

"Charles, I cannot bear to hear you-I really cannot ;" and Matilda spoke in such a tone of vexation, that he began to palliate as well as he could.

"But she really is so very tedious and tiresome, Matilda, and she does make such a tom-fool of herself in her dress?"

"She has her failings, perhaps ; and if they do not exceed a mistake in the colour of a bonnet, they are of a very pardonable kind.”

"Oh, excuse me! an error in dress is far from a pardonable error in a woman'; and, now we are talking about that, Matilda, I have not been quite satisfied with your appearance of late. It is quite time that old bonnet and pelisse of yours were laid by, or given to your maid. You have associated with those tasteless girls, till you have insensibly adopted some of their Cheapside notions. I will get Bell Hunter to go with me to her milliner, in AlbemarleStreet, and together we will find something fit for you to be seen in."

"My dear Charles, if you don't wish to vex me too much, pray don't talk so. I want nothing new; I have things by me now which you have given me, more than I can wear out in the next five years; it is necessary expenses that we must think of now."

"It is necessary that you should have a hat to put upon your head."

"It is--but it is not necessary that I should give five guineas for one, as Miss Hunter would give for me without hesitation. It is in vain, Charles, for us to trifle with our situation any longer; we must re