lay at her feet. She soon began to find sinister meaning in the
jocular speeches that are current in the world as to the inconstancy
of men. She made no complaints, but her demeanor conveyed reproach.

Three years after her marriage this pretty young woman, who dashed
past in her handsome carriage, and lived in a sphere of glory and
riches to the envy of heedless folk incapable of taking a just view of
the situations of life, was a prey to intense grief. She lost her
color; she reflected; she made comparisons; then sorrow unfolded to
her the first lessons of experience. She determined to restrict
herself bravely within the round of duty, hoping that by this generous
conduct she might sooner or later win back her husband's love. But it
was not so. When Sommervieux, fired with work, came in from his
studio, Augustine did not put away her work so quickly but that the
painter might find his wife mending the household linen, and his own,
with all the care of a good housewife. She supplied generously and
without a murmur the money needed for his lavishness; but in her
anxiety to husband her dear Theodore's fortune, she was strictly
economical for herself and in certain details of domestic management.
Such conduct is incompatible with the easy-going habits of artists,
who, at the end of their life, have enjoyed it so keenly that they
never inquire into the causes of their ruin.

It is useless to note every tint of shadow by which the brilliant hues
of their honeymoon were overcast till they were lost in utter
blackness. One evening poor Augustine, who had for some time heard her
husband speak with enthusiasm of the Duchesse de Carigliano, received
from a friend certain malignantly charitable warnings as to the nature
of the attachment which Sommervieux had formed for this celebrated
flirt of the Imperial Court. At one-and-twenty, in all the splendor of