Though Adolphe has become prudent, this reply awakens Caroline’s susceptibilities. A mother is very willing to think exclusively of her child, but she does not want him to be preferred to herself. She is silent; the next day, she is tired to death of the country. Adolphe being absent on business, she waits for him from five o’clock to seven, and goes alone with little Charles to the coach office. She talks for three-quarters of an hour of her anxieties. She was afraid to go from the house to the office. Is it proper for a young woman to be left alone, so? She cannot support such an existence. The country house now creates a very peculiar phase; one which deserves a chapter to itself. TROUBLE WITHIN TROUBLE. Axiom.--There are parentheses in worry. EXAMPLE--A great deal of evil has been said of the stitch in the side; but it is nothing to the stitch to which we now refer, which the pleasures of the matrimonial second crop are everlastingly reviving, like the hammer of a note in the piano. This constitutes an irritant, which never flourishes except at the period when the young wife’s timidity gives place to that fatal equality of rights which is at once devastating France and the conjugal relation. Every season has its peculiar vexation. Caroline, after a week spent in taking note of her husband’s absences, perceives that he passes seven hours a day away from her. At last, Adolphe, who comes home as gay as an actor who has been applauded, observes a slight coating of hoar frost upon Caroline’s visage. After making sure that the coldness of her manner has been observed, Caroline puts on a counterfeit air of interest,--the well-known expression of which possesses the gift of making a man inwardly swear,--and says: “You must have had a good deal of business to-day, dear?” “Oh, lots!” “Did you take many cabs?” “I took seven francs’ worth.” “Did you find everybody in?” “Yes, those with whom I had appointments.” “When did you make appointments with them? The ink in your inkstand is dried up; it’s like glue; I wanted to write, and spent a whole hour in moistening it, and even then only produced a thick mud fit to mark bundles with for the East Indies.” Here any and every husband looks suspiciously at his better half. “It is probable that I wrote them at Paris--” “What business was it, Adolphe?” “Why, I thought you knew. Shall I run over the list? First, there’s Chaumontel’s affair--” “I thought Monsieur Chaumontel was in Switzerland--” “Yes, but he has representatives, a lawyer--” “Didn’t you do anything else but business?” asks Caroline, interrupting Adolphe. Here she gives him a direct, piercing look, by which she plunges into her husband’s eyes when he least expects it: a sword in a heart. “What could I have done? Made a little counterfeit money, run into debt, or embroidered a sampler?” “Oh, dear, I don’t know. And I can’t even guess. I am too dull, you’ve told me so a hundred times.”