Anyhow, on the other side everybody was quite satisfied. Oswald, never ungenerous, made settlements upon his wife after they were married which filled the Burchell family with admiration. And they got a pretty little house, and made a kind of religion of furnishing it; and for every pretty thing they got, Agnes, compunctious, hurried down to the House and devised something for the orphans. Sister Mary Jane grew used to these visits, and, being a wise woman, restrained undue liberalities. She gave a great deal of good advice to the young wife. ‘If you take on another child for every bit of china,’ she said, ‘there will soon be no room for the girls, and no money left in the purse.’ ‘Oh, how can I let money be spent for nothings, when I know how much need there is in the world!’ cried Agnes. It was difficult to answer such arguments. As for Oswald, he never attempted to answer them. He gave her to understand that she was a mixture of a goose and an angel. ‘Both have wings, you know,’ he said, going away lighthearted to his pleasures, and understanding about as much of the more serious feelings in her mind as her baby did when she had one, which fortunately was in good time. He made the best of husbands, ever eager that she should spend more money on her dressmaker, entertain more, have all manner of pleasures. Louisa Burchell, who was the next sister, thought the little house in Mayfair was like heaven; and Mrs. Burchell kept a list of the important people to whose houses Agnes was asked, looking up her noble acquaintances in the peerage, and finding out the incomes of the rich ones, and the works of those who wrote or painted (though these last figured much less largely in her mind). And Agnes was happy; to have a husband you love, and in due time a pretty baby; and a delightful little house in Mayfair, and a pair of ponies, and more dresses and bonnets than you wish for--could there be a happier lot? If a young woman in such beatific circumstances got confused sometimes in her mind, and wondered whether it might not be better to walk about at the head of a procession of school girls in a black cloak and poke-bonnet, and to work in stuffy schoolrooms, and to have no more recreation than could be got among the girls in St. Cecilia, what could that be but momentary aberration or even a kind of temporary insanity? Is not a wife better than a Sister? Oswald had no kind of doubt on the subject when he saw his beautiful young wife at the head of his table, and reflected with inward complacency upon the aspect she bore when first he saw her, though at that time he had thought the poke-bonnet half-divine. But Agnes was not so sure, had not such unhesitating convictions as her husband, and wondered. This, perhaps, was the penalty she paid for her escapade. Oswald’s light-heartedness was alien to her serious mood. He took his existence so easily! and she knew that life was not so easy a