"You are pleased, my wife."
"I am delighted, Nelson."
"Nelson! when I call you wife?" he said, with reproachful tenderness.
"Well, husband."
As the word left her lips an unaccountable pallor spread over both their faces. Instead of the happiness he expected, the husband of two days felt a pang so heavy that it made him shrink; and the woman—she had uttered the word before, and under different surroundings!
With a sudden and heavy cloud upon them these persons turned from each other without speaking, and mounted the steps.
To have seen Mrs. Nelson passing along the tressellated floor of the vestibule, where the servants were gathered to receive her, you would have believed that she had trod on Gobelin carpets all her life. The good housekeeper, who had dwelt in the atmosphere of nobility from her cradle up, was absolutely struck dumb by the queenliness of her presence, and thought in her heart that the new mistress must have come from abroad, or at least have been educated there.
Mrs. Nelson saw the impression she had made, and this gave graciousness to her presence which completely subdued the group of dependants into admiration. She said a few patronizing words to each, and passing through the vestibule, entered upon her new life with a degree of graceful self-possession which astonished even her husband.
And now commenced a career such as few persons ever carried out so triumphantly. Mrs. Nelson had wealth, unbounded beauty, education quite sufficient for the demands of fashion, and a craving ambition for notoriety, which was sure to make its way. Gold, in America, proves a sure road to this kind of distinction, and the great lever of republican society was used without stint or measure in this singular household.
Mrs. Nelson had seized on the insinuation, half put as a question by the housekeeper, regarding her foreign appearance, and accepted it as a truth—nay, more—so absorbing was her vanity that she allowed it to be understood that the great wealth which astonished everybody came into Mr. Nelson's hands through her own munificent affection; an idea that Mr. Nelson rather encouraged by his silence and entire submission to her will in all things.