It is impossible to describe the use he was at The Elms. He was never out of temper, and Ernest was very often out of temper. He was satisfied with all the arrangements made by the ladies, and Ernest found fault continually. Nelly, with a guilty sense of treachery in her mind, had felt herself turn to the man who was “a connexion” for rest and sympathy, when she could not turn to her lover. This was a very terrible state of affairs, but no one was quite conscious how far it had gone. Mrs. Frederick made her appearance in a dress of pink silk, with a train almost a yard long. Her beautiful shoulders were bare, and her arms. Her hair was dressed in the most elaborate way which an excited hairdresser could devise; a soft little curling fringe of it half covered her low but white forehead, and great golden billows rose above, increasing at once her height and the size of her head. All the glow of colour, all the roundness of outline, all the flush of physical beauty which had maddened Frederick, remained undimmed and undiminished; but Frederick stalked in behind her like a black shadow, gloomy, disappointed, dismal, more like Charles I. than ever. Wherever he went, all the ladies were sorry for Frederick. Poor fellow, he had made a mistake in his marriage, and how he felt it! He writhed when his Amanda began to talk fine, and to display her knowledge of great people. He looked at her morosely whenever she opened her lips, and followed her into the room with a gloom upon his countenance which here he did not think it necessary to conceal. His mother at least had forgiven all the faults that Frederick had ever committed against her, in consideration of his present sufferings. The fact that he was discontented with the toy for which he had paid so dear (and for which, alas! Mrs. Eastwood, too, was paying dear), seemed to cover all his previous sins. Had he put a better face upon it, and endured cheerfully the doom which he had brought upon himself, his mother, and womankind in general, would have thought less well of him; they would have concluded that he was happy, and would have despised him; but they were sorry for him now, and elevated him to the rank of a martyr, in consideration of his gloom and disgust. Nelly was almost the only rebel against this universal tenderness. “He married to please himself,” said Nelly; “he ought to make the best of it now, and not the worst. It is mean of him to pose in this gloomy way. I should like to shake him,” cried the impetuous girl. “Nelly, don’t be so hard-hearted,” her mother would say, with piteous looks. Thus Frederick was generally successful in his gloom--at least among the feminine half of society. He came in behind Amanda’s train, which he looked at with disgust, as it curled about his foot. Nevertheless he was pleased to see that his gorgeous wife made an impression on the old fogies who sat by his mother’s side--Sir Timothy and Lady Doul.