Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/62

64 devoted to his business, but rushed up to Saratoga every Saturday night, to console his lovely wife, who was, by the by, very much more consoled all the week in his absence; but she did not let him know that. The Monday morning cars took away the husband to his business, and brought back her weekly consolation in the shape of a favorite lover, who as regularly disappeared in the Saturday evening cars. It was curious to see the sober dress and quiet habits of the lady while the poor old husband was by; and the transition to gayety was just as curious when the husband was gone and the lover came. Sometimes, it is true, suspicions of her affection occurred even to him; but all disappeared before her devoted attentions to his comfort, and her well-disguised penchant for anybody else. Her beauty fascinated him, and her arts deceived him to perfection. The utter indifference of this lady to her loving old husband, was, however, a well-established fact at Saratoga, though she managed the thing too dextrously to occasion anything more than whispers here and there. But this was only one affair among a thousand I could name, just as well carried on, at Saratoga as other places, public and private.

Our American ladies are greatly taken by hyfalutin prefixes to names; they perfectly glory in being gallanted by counts and dukes, but the affections of European noblemen are generally pretty well frittered out by the time they are of age, and they rarely seek American wives, except to recruit their fallen fortunes. Saratoga is full of this sort of interesting strangers every season. Sometimes it happens they are married and bring their countesses and duchesses along; but