"Quite possible; get in. Coachman, home! Yes, Mr. Chillingly, you meet again that giddy creature whom you threatened to thrash; it would have served her right. I ought to feel so ashamed to recall myself to your recollection, and yet I am not a bit ashamed. I am proud to show you that I have turned out a steady, respectable woman, and, my husband tells me, a good wife." "You have only been six months married, I hear," said Kenelm, dryly. "I hope your husband will say the same six years hence." "He will say the same sixty years hence, if we live as long." "How old is he now?" "Thirty-eight." "When a man wants only two years of his hundredth, he probably has learned to know his own mind; but then, in most cases, very little mind is left to him to know." "Don't be satirical, sir; and don't talk as if you were railing at marriage, when you have just left as happy a young couple as the sun ever shone upon; and owing,--for Mrs. Somers has told me all about her marriage,--owing their happiness to you." "Their happiness to me! not in the least. I helped them to marry, and in spite of marriage they helped each other to be happy." "You are still unmarried yourself?" "Yes, thank Heaven!" "And are you happy?" "No; I can't make myself happy: myself is a discontented brute." "Then why do you say 'thank Heaven'?" "Because it is a comfort to think I am not making somebody else unhappy." "Do you believe that if you loved a wife who loved you, you should make her unhappy?" "I am sure I don't know; but I have not seen a woman whom I could love as a wife. And we need not push our inquiries further. What has become of that ill-treated gray cob?" "He was quite well, thank you, when I last heard of him." "And the uncle who would have inflicted me upon you, if you had not so gallantly defended yourself?" "He is living where he did live, and has married his housekeeper. He felt a delicate scruple against taking that step till I was married myself and out of the way."