What could be said after this? Laurence Desmond felt that this lonely lady’s life wanted a something that gives form and purpose to the lives of other women. Existence for Emily Jerningham had been made too easy, and, extremes meeting in this as in all other cases, it was fast becoming difficult. She was like some dowager sultana, weaned of palace and gardens, fountains and slaves, peacocks and birds of paradise. All the ease and luxury of her life palled on her, and that most fatal of moral diseases, discontent, was fast gaining a hold upon her mind. That old story of the greedy apprentice in the pastrycook’s shop is a fable of wide application. The boy fancies he can never be weary of an existence that is all raspberry-tarts and bath-buns; and being let loose in his master’s shop, makes himself bilious in a week, and hates the sight of a raspberry-tart ever afterwards. There had been a time when Miss Jerningham, sadly restricted in all the aspirations of young-ladyhood, had believed that an open account with a West-end milliner, a perfectly appointed barouche for the Park, and a miniature brougham for shopping, must constitute the supreme good of earthly existence; but after half a dozen years’ enjoyment of these blessings, she discovered that the most accomplished of milliners, and the most perfect of establishments, cannot give happiness. The toy-villa at Hampton was a place to dream of; but its mistress found the hours intolerably long in those Paradisaic gardens, the evenings unutterably weary in that fairy drawing-room, the drives by Bushey and Richmond, Kingston and Chertsey, very little gayer than the prisoner’s tramp in the grim gaol-yard, under surveillance of a hard-visaged warder. The lady had nothing to do. If she read a volume of a novel, and paid a few visits, or received a few callers, to-day, she could only look forward to another volume, and another visit, or visitor, to-morrow. The days were all alike, and they left no mark behind them. When a year came to an end, Mrs. Jerningham told herself that she was twelve months older than when it began, and that was the sole effect the passage of time could exercise upon her fate. “It is all very well for Laurence to be happy and active,” she said to herself. “He has that odious _Areopagus_ to interest him, and the hope of going into parliament by and by. He is getting rich, and has had the excitement of earning his money. He has his social triumphs and his literary successes, the friendship of great men. It is always the same story. _They_ have ‘the court, camp, church; the vessel and the mart; sword, gown, gain, glory;’ and we have only the London Library and Jaques’s croquet.”