The worthy magistrate was not in the best of all possible humours when the shooting season was over, and her ladyship, who made it a frequent subject of sneering complaint that she had so little of her husband’s company, was generally most out of humour when she had most of his company. Lady Aimwell usually employed her time in reading; and her favorite books were Stackhouse’s History of the Bible, and Richardson’s Novels, and when employed in this pursuit, she was very partial to an empty apartment or a silent companion. But her most amiable lord and master did not always indulge his better half with this desired luxury. So it came to pass that the neighbours used in the plenitude of their wisdom, and in the impertinence of their criticism, to remark that Sir George and Lady Aimwell did not live happily together. But they who made that remark were very superficial and unreflecting observers. It is not to be called a strange notion, because it is a very common and almost universal notion, that nobody can be happy who does not live according to our own notions of happiness. To be sure they did not know how happy they were, and while they were grumbling and growling at each other they possessed a satisfaction in, and derived a pleasure from, that growling and grumbling which they professed to regard as a calamity. And we cannot think it possible that any beings in possession of their senses would voluntarily and repeatedly do that which afforded them no pleasure. Sir George and his lady grumbled at one another, and they liked grumbling, and they were happy in grumbling. One morning, very soon after Colonel Crop had revealed to Sir George the object which detained him at Smatterton, the baronet introduced himself, unasked, into the drawing-room, where her ladyship was sitting with her favorite folio displayed before her. And her ladyship lifted up her eyes and saw the worthy baronet, and spoke not to him, but continued her reading. The baronet also looked at her ladyship and was also silent. The baronet walked up and down the room with heavy monotonous tread, and ever and anon her ladyship looked at him as if wishing that he would have the goodness to take himself off. But the baronet would not take himself off; and then her ladyship frowned and sighed; and in that sigh there was nothing of tenderness; but its tone, if a sigh can have a tone, was indicative of sulkiness and mortification. The baronet heard the sigh and saw the frowns, but would not take any notice of them. When the baronet was tired of pacing up and down the room, he threw himself upon a sofa; and then her ladyship looked at the baronet’s boots, and the boots bore evident symptoms of having been in the stable, and as they came into seriously close contact with the fine chintz cover of the sofa, her ladyship grew more sulky, and from the thick smoke of her sulkiness there broke forth at length the fire of angry words; and her ladyship said: