"It will be much, _much_ better, and a far more sensible plan for both of us," he continues, cheerfully. "Where would be the use of exposing you to the discomfort and misery of what you hate most on earth for no possible profit? I shall not be long away, shall be back almost before you realize that I am gone, and meanwhile I should be far happier thinking of you merry, and enjoying yourself with your brothers and sisters at Tempest, than I should be seeing you bored and suffering, with no one but me to amuse you--you know, dear--" (smiling pensively); "do not be angry with me, it was no fault of yours; but you _did_ grow rather tired of me at Dresden." "I did not! I did not!" cry I, bursting into a passion of tears, and asseverating all the more violently because I feel, with a sting of remorse, that there is a tiny grain of truth--not so large a one as he thinks, but still a _grain_ in his accusations. "It seemed rather _quiet_ at first--I had always been used to such a noisy house, and I missed the boys' chatter a little, perhaps; but _indeed_, INDEED, that was all!" "Was it? I dare say! I dare say!" he says, soothingly. "You shall _not_ leave me behind," say I, still weeping with stormy bitterness. "I _will not_ be left behind! What business have you to go without me? Am I to be only a fair-weather wife to you? to go shares in all your pleasant things, and then--when any thing hard or disagreeable comes--to be left out. I tell you" (looking up at him with streaming eyes) "that I _will not_! I WILL NOT!" "My darling!" he says, looking most thoroughly concerned, I do not fancy that crying women have formed a large part of his life-experience--"you misunderstand me! I will own to you, that five minutes ago I did you an injustice; but _now_ I know, I am thoroughly convinced, that you would follow me without a murmur or a sulky look to the world's end--and" (laughing) "be frightfully sea-sick all the way; but" (kindly patting my heaving shoulder) "do you think that I want to be hampered with a little invalid? and, supposing that I took you with me, whom should I have to look after things at Tempest, and keep them straight for me against I come home?" "I know what it is," I cry, passionately clinging round his neck, "you think I do not like you! I _see_ it! twenty times a day, in a hundred things that you do and leave undone! but indeed, _indeed_, you never were more mistaken in all your life! I will own to you that I did not care _very_ much about you at first. I thought you good, and kind, and excellent, but I was not _fond_ of you; but _now_, every day, every hour that I live, I like you better! Ask Barbara, ask the boys if I do not! I like you ten thousand times better than I did the day I married you!"