Heart of Mid Lothian.
“Well, Charlotte,” said Mr. Gilmer, after they had been married about six weeks, “I suppose our wedding gaieties are nearly over?”
“Oh! I hope not,” cried she, looking almost aghast at the idea. “Why they have scarcely more than begun. There would be very little use in being a bride indeed, if it were to end so soon,” she continued.
“So soon!” replied her husband. “Why I should think that even you would be tired of this incessant gaiety. I fairly long for one quiet dinner and evening at home.”
“I agree with you,” she returned, “the dinners are bores. To be obliged to sit four or five mortal hours and talk is very dull. But the balls are delightful, and I hope may continue these three months. You don’t dance, however,” she added, “and I don’t wonder you find it tiresome. Mamma used to complain of it too, and I dare say it is dull to you old folks who look on. But to us who waltz, you don’t know how charming it is,” and as she shook back her curls and looked up in his face, with such an expression of youthful delight, he was compelled to swallow with good humor the being classed with “Mamma” and the “old folks,” unpleasant as it might be, in the hope that she would soon weary of this heartless gaiety, and ceasing to be a child, “put away childish things.”
Finding, however, that her youth was more than a match for his patience, he soon wearied of playing the indulgent lover, and within two months after their marriage he said,
“Charlotte, after to-night we go to no more evening parties. I am thoroughly tired of them, and you have had enough for this season.”
She would have remonstrated, but the decision, almost amounting to sternness with which he spoke, startled her, and she only pouted without replying. Her usual resource, to complain of her husband to her mother, was left her, and Mrs. Vivian’s spirit quickly fired at seeing her darling child thwarted, and she said with the feeling more natural than judicious in a mother-in-law,
“Tell your husband, Charlotte, that if he does not wish to go, I am always ready to accompany you,” and the young wife returned triumphantly to her husband to say, “that mamma would take her to Mrs. Johnson’s.” Mr. Gilmer could not reasonably object to the arrangement, little as he liked it; but thus Mrs. Vivian laid the foundation of a dislike between her son-in-law and self that took root but to flourish and strengthen with time.
Mrs. Vivian calling soon after on her daughter, found her poring over a large volume most intently.