after a time a proud, defiant resistance, cold and hard as iron. The
easy-going, sunshiny, enthusiastic girl changed--and changed pretty
rapidly--into a grave, proud, reticent woman, burying deep in her own
heart all her hopes, her fears, and her disillusions. I must have been
a very unsatisfactory wife from the beginning, though I think other
treatment might gradually have turned me into a fair imitation of the
proper conventional article. Beginning with the ignorance before
alluded to, and so scared and outraged at heart from the very first;
knowing nothing of household management or economical use of money--I
had never had an allowance or even bought myself a pair of
gloves--though eager to perform my new duties creditably; unwilling to
potter over little things, and liking to do swiftly what I had to do,
and then turn to my beloved books; at heart fretting for my mother but
rarely speaking of her, as I found my longing for her presence raised
jealous vexation; with strangers about me with whom I had no sympathy;
visited by ladies who talked to me only about babies and
servants--troubles of which I knew nothing and which bored me
unutterably--and who were as uninterested in all that had filled my
life, in theology, in politics, in science, as I was uninterested in
the discussions on the housemaid's young man and on the cook's
extravagance in using "butter, when dripping would have done perfectly
well, my dear"; was it wonderful that I became timid, dull, and
depressed?

All my eager, passionate enthusiasm, so attractive to men in a young
girl, were doubtless incompatible with "the solid comfort of a wife,"
and I must have been inexpressibly tiring to the Rev. Frank Besant.
And, in truth, I ought never to have married, for under the soft,
loving, pliable girl there lay hidden, as much unknown to herself as to
her surroundings, a woman of strong dominant will, strength that panted