Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/61

 50 night alone would have convinced any one but a warm admirer like you. Her every motion was that of a practised flirt” ”

Treason! treason!” laughingly exclaimed Howard, “treason against one of the brightest of her scx. I nee we shall never agree, Stanhope, on the merits of Miss Ferney, so we had better pass to some other theme. ‘What say you to dropping iu at Parkinson’s?”

Thenceforth the two friends studiously avoided the subject, but Stanhope saw, with pain, that Howard be- came daily more attentive to Miss Femey. We say with pain, for Charlotte Femey was all that Stanhope had said, Beautiful, witty, and an only child, she had grown up a petted and spoiled darling, proud, vain, and selfish. Her coming out produced no little sensation in the fashionable world, for who could refuse to admire the brilliant Misa Ferney ? Flattery was her daily food. At seventeen she hed refused a dozen offers, ‘Triumphing in the admiration she excited, she began at length to think that the other sex was fit only to be trampled on, and from being a careless flirt, she became a practised coquette.

But if her selfish heart was susceptible of love, Albert Howard had at length roused its affections; and almost from the hour when she first met him she leamed to think of him differently from others of his sex. Yet, even to him, sho waa often wilful, and capricious, Howard, however, admired her too unreservedly to per- ceive these faults, and intoxicated by the praises bestowed on her beauty, he urged his suit ao skilfully and persevo- ingly that at length Miss Ferney consented to become his wife.

For a while the newly married pair lived huppily, for their time was spent in an uninterrupted round, of amusements,—the flattery poured into her ears abroad, and the almost idolatrous attentions of her husband at home, suflicing to keep the bride in good humor. But this could not always last, ‘The entertainments ensuing on her marriage were at length over, and the newly wedded wife had now to settle down into the monoto- hous, matter-of-fact routine of fife. Of housewitery she was completely ignorant, 90 that her servants constantly imposed on her, to her husband's chagrin, end often dis- quiet; while accustomed to habits of unlimited indul- gence, she could not bring herself down to the sacrifices of time which her duties required of her, so that even those mattere which she did understand were almost daily neglected. She had alwuys spent her mornings in promenading the most fashionable street, and av she could not bring herself to give up the custom, she waa often absent when her husband came home to dinner, so that he either had to await her return, or order the meal himself to be brought up. Nor was this all. Even in the evening the young wife found it impossible to remain at home contented. “She was not,” she suid “of a domestic character: it would kill her to be cooped op at home, and sit moping a whole evening alone.” Her husband was consequently forced to yield to her wishes. Instead of enjoying the quiet repose which he delighted in. after the toils of the day, and which he had pictured to himself as one of the greatest pleasures of a married life, he was now dragged to the theatre, the ball room, con- certs, or wherever else his wife could Ay from her own hearth. In these places, too, her husband was only a secondary character. Thirsting for triumph es much as over, she artfully drew around a crowd of admirers, and enjoyed the pique which she thus inflicted on younger and unmarried women. In vain her ushand expostu- lated, she declared that he was no better than a jailor; and in these altercations Howard felt the full benefit of that wit he had so much admired, Instead of yielding to her husband's little humors, Mes, Howard exacted submission in every thing from him as the price of peace, so that, though a man of strong mind, be, at length, bee came the mere slave of his wife. Every attempt, too, to release himself proved fruith for he found he could do 0 only at the cost of continual discord. His love soon perished under these circumstances, and he grew wholly indifferent to his bride, spending his time away from her side, in the billiard room, the bar-room, and other places of resort His happiness for life was ruined. His dreams of domestic felicity were over, and he sought companionship among the vicious and abandoned. But we will not longer trace his bistory. We will give it in the words of his old friend Stankope, who, ono night, as he sat by his wife's side—for he had long been married to one who combined his ideas of a trac companion — related it to her.

“Alas! poor Howard,” he eaid, in reply to a question of his wife, asking why he was so sad, “it is his fate which makes me 20. You know how unhappily he married, and how he haa sinee given himeclf up to habits of dissipation. It is long since his practice hus deverted hitn, and he has been for # year a common drunkard, Every effort to reform him has proved uscless. At times he would edmit his error, and shed maudlin tears over its but the next day he would be as inebriated “as ever. His wife's father, you knove, died poor, and she has long subsisted on the charity of her relatives. She saw her error, it is said, but it was too lato; for her husband wan irretrievably a drunkard. Today he was found drowned, and whether it is a suicide or not God only knows. His wife, on hearing the news, fell into violent hysterics, and I have just learned hus since died, leaving her little family to the charity of strangers. And all this comes of being a coquette.””

But it is not always so,” said Stanhope’s wife, her eyes suffused with tears, “you should not judge poor Mrs. Howard so hardly.”

Perhaps not,—but when I think of the ruin of my

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