to what a wife ought to be, had married from pure fancy; finding
too late that she whom he took for a companion was a mere
plaything--a doll to be dressed up and sent out into the
fashionable world, where alone her happiness could be found. Still
the disappointment to such is not the less bitter, because others,
too, are suffering from the effect of a like hallucination, and
Howard Hastings felt it most keenly. He loved, or fancied he
loved, Ella Grey devotedly, and when in her soft flowing robes of
richly embroidered lace, with the orange blossoms resting upon her
golden curls, and her long eyelashes veiling her eyes of blue, she
had stood at the altar as his bride there was not in all New York
a prouder or a happier man. Alas, that in the intimate relations
of married life, there should never be brought to light faults
whose existence was never suspected! Yet so it is, and the
honeymoon had scarcely waned ere Mr. Hastings began to feel a very
little disappointed, as, one after another, the peculiarities of
his wife were unfolded to his view.

In all _his_ pictures of domestic bliss, there had ever been
a home of his own, a cheerful fireside, to which he could repair,
when the day's toil was done, but Ella would not hear of
housekeeping. To be sure, it would be very pleasant to keep up a
grand establishment and give splendid dinner-parties, but she knew
that Howard, with his peculiar notions, would expect her to do
just as his "dear, fussy old mother did," and that, she wouldn't
for a moment think of, for she really "did not know the
_names_ of one-half the queer-looking things in the kitchen."

"She will improve as she grows older--she is very young yet, but
little more than eighteen," thought Mr. Hastings; and his heart