Of course this query could have no reference to my situation.
Yet, unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings
were not altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs.
Bullfrog mine. True, she was a sweet woman and an angel of a
wife; but what if a Gorgon should return, amid the transports of
our connubial bliss, and take the angel's place. I recollected
the tale of a fairy, who half the time was a beautiful woman and
half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that very fairy to
be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras were
flitting across my fancy I began to look askance at Mrs.
Bullfrog, almost expecting that the transformation would be
wrought before my eyes.

To divert my mind, I took up the newspaper which had covered the
little basket of refreshments, and which now lay at the bottom of
the coach, blushing with a deep-red stain and emitting a potent
spirituous fume from the contents of the broken bottle of
Kalydor. The paper was two or three years old, but contained an
article of several columns, in which I soon grew wonderfully
interested. It was the report of a trial for breach of promise of
marriage, giving the testimony in full, with fervid extracts from
both the gentleman's and lady's amatory correspondence. The
deserted damsel had personally appeared in court, and had borne
energetic evidence to her lover's perfidy and the strength of her
blighted affections. On the defendant's part there had been an
attempt, though insufficiently sustained, to blast the
plaintiff's character, and a plea, in mitigation of damages, on
account of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was suggested by
the lady's name.