Sebastian on his part owned that Emma was occasionally quite exasperating to him; but he also acknowledged her entire goodness of heart and the excellence of her housekeeping. Their marriage in fact was just one of the ordinary ruck of marriages; not unhappy, not ideal—merely a little disappointing to Emma, a little hardening and coarsening to Sebastian. The great bone of contention was of a social nature. For gentility was dear as life itself to Emma, while to Sebastian all the little affectations and conventions which his wife valued so highly were the merest moonshine. He submitted graciously enough to correction in matters of etiquette, and laughed with imperturbable good humour when Emma called him to task for eating with his knife and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. But when it came to the question of friends and acquaintances matters were more complicated. Emma had, so to speak, passed her acquaintances through a fine sieve, and the sifted few who came through, they, and they alone, were her intimates. Sebastian, on the other hand, had only one reason for making friends with any one—whether he liked them or not. As a matter of fact he liked the greater part of the world, and was liked by them in return, but anything like an ulterior end in making acquaintances was unknown to him. Emma’s rules for the making of so-called friends, therefore, filled him with amazement; while Emma, on her part, looked with little short of dismay upon the men whom Sebastian welcomed to his table. Certainly there was scarcely one among all his acquaintance that could have been called a gentleman. ‘As why should they, Emma? I am no gentleman myself,’ Sebastian had retorted when taxed with his preference for low company. Emma objected most of all to the soldiers whom her husband had known abroad, and who were continually coming to the house; she might be entertaining her most select lady-friends to a dish of tea, and talking the latest Court gossip with them, when, into this refined circle, and quite undismayed by its frigidly genteel atmosphere, would enter Sebastian, bringing with him, as likely as not, his friend Sergeant Cartwright, or young Tillet the bugler, who played at Ramillies. The Sergeant had lost an arm at Blenheim, and Emma shrank away instinctively from the empty sleeve he wore pinned across his breast; no historic association could reconcile her to the presence of these men in her parlour, and when they were bidden to supper Mrs. Shepley sat at the head of the table with an air of studied aloofness that was fine to see. Now and then she would raise her pretty eyebrows expressively, as when Cartwright spat on the floor, or Tillet made use of expressions not usually heard in parlours; but she came at last to see that remonstrance with Sebastian on this score was useless, and resigned herself as best she might to see the hero of her first love make merry with such friends.