CHAPTER XXIV.
A LITTLE INNOCENT.
Every house has its skeleton in it somewhere, and it may be a comfort to some unhappy folks to think that the luckiest and most wealthy of their neighbors have their miseries and causes of disquiet. Our little innocent muse of a Blanche, who sang so nicely and talked so sweetly, you would have thought she must have made sunshine where-ever she went, was the skeleton, or the misery, or the bore, or the Nemesis of Clavering House, and of most of the inhabitants thereof. As one little stone in your own shoe or your horse's, suffices to put either to torture and to make your journey miserable, so in life a little obstacle is sufficient to obstruct your entire progress, and subject you to endless annoyance and disquiet. Who would have guessed that such a smiling little fairy as Blanche Amory could be the cause of discord in any family?
"I say, Strong," one day the baronet said, as the pair were conversing after dinner over the billiard-table, and that great unbosomer of secrets, a cigar; "I say, Strong, I wish to the doose your wife was dead."
"So do I. That's a cannon, by Jove. But she won't; she'll live forever—you see if she don't. Why do you wish her off the hooks, Frank, my boy?" asked Captain Strong.
"Because then, you might marry Missy. She ain't bad-looking. She'll have ten thousand, and that's a good bit of money for such a poor old devil as you," drawled out the other gentleman. "And gad, Strong, I hate her worse and worse every day. I can't stand her, Strong, by gad, I can't."