The gossips at a noted watering-place where I once spent a summer,
found infinite amusement in the ways of a married heiress, whose
fortune was settled so securely upon herself by her father that her
husband could not touch the bulk of it with, or without her consent.
Her spouse was an ease-loving man of fashion, and accommodated himself
gracefully to this order of things. She loved him better than she
loved her money, for she "kept" him well and grudged him nothing. It
was in accordance with her wishes that he made no pretence of business
or profession. "Why should he when she had enough for both?" she
urged, amiably. His handsome allowance was paid on the first of every
month, and she exacted no account of expenditures. Yet she contrived
to make him and herself the laughing stock of the place by her _naïve_
ignorance of the truth that the situation was peculiar. She sportively
rated her lord in the hearing of others, for extravagance in dress,
horses and other entertainments; affected to rail at the expense of
"keeping a husband," and, now and then, playfully threatened to "cut
off supplies" if he did not do this or that. In short, with
unintentional satire, she copied to the letter the speech and tone of
the average husband to his dependent wife.

"Only that and nothing more." Her purse-pride was obvious, but as
inoffensive as purse-pride can be. She lacked refinement, but she did
not lack heart. She would have resented the imputation that she
reduced her good-looking, well-clothed, well-fed, well-mounted
"Charley" to a state of vassalage against which any man of spirit
would have rebelled. He knew that he could have whatever it was within
her power to bestow, to the half of her kingdom. Her complaints of his
prodigality meant as little as her menace of retrenchment, and nobody
comprehended this better than he. The owner of the money-bags is
entitled by popular verdict to his or her jest. Her pretended railing