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Poor Emily! her love of gayety had now, it is true, but little scope for its display; but it was still strongly apparent, in the rapturous regret with which she referred to pleasures past, and the rapturous delight with which she greeted certain occasional breaks in the monotony of a country life. An approaching dinner-party would raise her tide of spirits, and a, distant ball or bow-meeting make them swell into a flood. On one or two of such occasions, we fancied that F–, though never stern, looked grave–grave enough to have been set down as an unreasonable fellow; if not by every one, at least by that complex “everybody” who declared that his wife was “one of the prettiest and sweetest little women in the world,” and, as everybody must be right, so of course it was.

Rarely, indeed, had our gentle Benedick beheld the face of his “Young May Moon” absolutely obscured; but then it had always been his care to chase away from it every passing or even approaching cloud; and he would certainly have liked, in return, that its very brightest rays should have shone on him direct, instead of reaching him only, as it were, reflected from what in his eyes, certainly, were very inferior objects.

We had passed some weeks at our entertainer’s cottage when rumours got afloat, such as had not disturbed for many a year the standing and sometimes stagnant pool of Goslington society. The son of Lord W–was about to come of age, and the event was to be celebrated by grand doings; a varied string of entertainments, to be wound up, so it was whispered, by a great parti-coloured or fancy ball. Rumours were soon silenced by certainty, and our friends were amongst those who received an invitation to meet all the world of Goslington and a fragment of the world of London, about to be brought into strange conjunction at W–Castle. What shapes! grotesque, and gay, and gorgeous–ghosts of things departed–started up before the sparkling eyes of Emily, as she put the reviving talisman into F–‘s hand. No wonder that her charmed sight failed to discover what was, however, sufficiently apparent, that her husband’s delight at the honour done them by no means equalled hers. Indeed, we were pretty certain that not merely dissatisfaction, but even dissent, was to be read in his compressed lip, and, for once, forbidding eye.

Nothing was said then upon the subject; but we saw the next morning something very like coolness on the part of F–towards his wife, which was returned on hers by something very like petulance. Ah! thought we, it all comes of this unlucky fancy ball! We had often heard it declared by our friend that he hated every species of masquerade, and would never allow (though this as certainly before his marriage) either sister, wife, or daughter of his to attend one. But, besides this aversion for such entertainments in general, he had reasons, as we afterwards gathered, for disliking, in particular, this fancy ball of Lord W–‘s. Amongst the “London World” Emily would be sure to meet several of her quondam acquaintances, perhaps admirers; and though he was no jealous husband, he preferred, on many accounts, that such meetings should be avoided.

The slight estrangement spoken of did not wholly pass away, though so trifling were its tokens that no eye less interested than our own might have noticed their existence. Indeed, neither of the parties seemed really angry with the other, appearing rather to think it incumbent on them to keep up a certain show of coolness; but whenever the sunny smile of Emily broke even partially through the half-transparent cloud, it dissolved in an instant the half-formed ice of her husband’s manner. By mutual consent the subject of the fancy ball seemed left in abeyance, and while in every circle, for miles round, it formed the central topic, in ours it was the theme forbid. Thence we tried to infer that it was a matter abandoned, and that Emily’s better judgment, if not her good feeling, had determined her to give up her own liking, on this the very first occasion on which, we believe, her husband had ever thwarted it.