Insensible and morose as Mr. Munden was, he could not avoid, on this obliging behaviour in his fair wife, being touched in reality with some soft emotions, which he so well knew how to magnify the appearance of, that not only herself, but the bye-standers, imagined he was the most transported man alive.
Impossible it is to express how much Sir Ralph, and his good lady, rejoiced to see this happy event: they entertained them very elegantly at dinner, in the afternoon they went all together to take the air in Kensington Gardens; and a great deal of company coming in the evening to visit Lady Trusty, every thing contributed to keep up the spirit and good-humour of the newly re-united pair.
CHAPTER XI
Contains some few particulars which followed the reconciliation
Though this reconciliation was not altogether sincere on the side of Mr. Munden, yet being made in the presence of Sir Ralph and Lady Trusty, it kept him from giving any flagrant remonstrations, at present, that it was not so; and he continued to live with his amiable wife in the most seeming good harmony for some time.
She, on her part, performed with the utmost exactitude all she had promised to him; and though she could not be said to feel for him all that warmth of affection which renders the discharge of our duty so great a pleasure to ourselves, yet her good-nature and good-sense well supplied that deficiency, and left him no room to accuse her of the least failure in what might be expected from the best of wives.
During this interval of tranquillity, she lost the society of two persons, the tenderness of whose friendship for her she had experienced in a thousand instances: Mr. Francis Thoughtless, who had stayed so long in town, merely through the indulgence of his commanding officer, was now obliged to repair to his regiment, then quartered at Leeds in Yorkshire; and Sir Ralph Trusty, having finished his affairs in town, his lady returned with him to their country-seat.
Thus was she almost at once deprived of the only two persons to whom she could impart her mind without reserve, or on whose advice she could depend in any exigence whatever; for, as to her elder brother, he was too eager in the pursuit of his pleasures, and too much absorbed in them, to be truly solicitous for any thing that did not immediately relate to them; she saw him but seldom, and, when she did so, there was a certain distance in his behaviour towards her which would not permit her to talk to him with that freedom she could have wished to do.