"Oh! cela va sans dire, of course such a young and handsome husband is taken into the account; but, my dear young friend, vous ne voulez pas vous donner des ridicules, much less render your husband the laughing-stock of all the world, by setting yourself up with him en scène de Berger et Bergere; besides, permit me to say, that is just the way to lose him. If you are always at his elbow, watching him en furet, depend upon it he will soon think you are jealous, and following him out of curiosity. Now there is nothing a man can so ill bear as the idea of being watched, particularly by a wife; besides, all his male friends would avoid him if they saw he had such an Argus—for, beautiful as you are, you must not have an hundred eyes, to spy out every thing your husband does; no no, my dear, when you are en tête-à-tête, it is all well enough, this new-married fondness; but it will soon evaporate, take my word for it, and then you will be dying to break the troublesome habit de part et d'autre, and will not know how to set about it: take great care, ma chère ladi, to begin as you mean to go on."
"Certainly," replied Lady Glenmore, "I have but one meaning, one intention—that is, to love and be loved; and I shall never, I hope, do any thing which can run counter to that prime business, that prime duty of my life."
"Oh!" cried Lady Tenderden, perceiving she had gone too far, "it is quite delightful to hear you. You are, I am sure, destined to be a phœnix" (sneeringly); "and proud indeed must any woman be to view one of her own sex so well calculated to be a glory and honour to it. I was only warning you against certain appearances, certain misapprehensions, which persons of your turn of mind are liable to fall into, and which might be the very means of depriving you of that which you are so anxious to retain. I know the world, believe me, my dear young friend, and there is nothing in it I can so ill endure to see, as an assumption of a happiness which is out of the common line. If you enjoy such a superlative felicity, tant mieux pour vous, but do not make an étalage of it, for either its reality will be questioned, or they will take care it shall not long be one; whereas if you do as other people do, you will be allowed to go on quietly, and you may perhaps carry on this sort of romantic view of life much longer than persons in general do."
Lady Glenmore, who had listened with painful earnestness to this insidious advice, now felt her heart swell, and the tears bursting from her eyes. "And must I really," she said in a voice of suffocation, "pretend to be indifferent to my husband, in order to retain his love?"
"Certainly, my dear child; peut on être si enfant" (observing her emotion), "as to allow yourself to be thus moved about such a trifle; take my advice, and you will never lose that sort of hold over his affections which it is so charming, I allow, to possess. Shew him that you can have other men at your feet—that you are not, in short, dependent upon him for any thing faites vous un sort, in short, et vous ne vous en répentirez pas."
"And pray, how am I to set about this sort of life?"
"Why nothing so easy; simply, go constantly out, and take care to have one or two young men de la première volée always about you; never be reduced to be handed out or into any public place by Lord Glenmore; only now and then pour faire beau voir, and to shew that you have des procédés honnêtes one to the other—or else par hasard, but never as a thing of course. Another point is, you must establish an apartment of your own; for you cannot think between married persons how necessary that is, and what an independence it gives to both. It is so very disagreeable to have the exact moment of our going in and coming out commented upon."
"Dear no, pardon me, not at all. I am always glad when Lord Glenmore says, 'Where have you been so long, Georgina?' because that shews he misses me."
"Oh, of course," said Lady Tenderden, as she always said when she did not know what to say; and inwardly she thought what a world of nature must here be overturned, before any thing artificial can be sown in such a soil! "Well, my dear Lady Glenmore, you come to the Hamlet Vernon's to-morrow night?"
"Yes, I believe so; that is to say, if Lord Glenmore is disengaged."