Their existence was romantic and absurd. Cut off from all support by the implacable anger of old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, they depended on a combined income of £380 a year and whatever the husband could make to increase it. Accordingly they took a huge country house, Woodcot in Oxon, and lived at the rate of several thousands a year. There they basked in an affluent splendour of bad taste which reminds us of nothing in the world so much as of those portions of _The Lady Flabella_ which Mrs. Wititterly was presently to find so soft and so voluptuous. The following extract from one of Rosina's lively letters-and she was a very sprightly correspondent--gives an example of her style, of her husband's Pelhamish extravagance, and of the gaudy recklessness of their manner of life. They had now been married nearly two years:-- "How do you think my audacious husband has spent his time since he has been in town? Why, he must needs send me down what he termed a little Christmas box, which was a huge box from Howel and James's, containing only eight Gros de Naples dresses of different colours not made up, four Gros des Indes, two merino ones, four satin ones, an amber, a black, a white and a blue, eight pocket handkerchiefs that look as if they had been spun out of lilies and air and _brodée_ by the fairies, they are so exquisitely fine and so beautifully worked. Four pieces (16 yards in each) of beautiful white blonde, two broad pieces and two less broad, a beautiful and very large blue real cashmere shawl, a Chantilly veil that would reach from this to Dublin, and six French long pellerines very richly embroidered on the finest India muslin, three dozen pair of white silk stockings, one dozen of black, a most beautiful black satin cloak with very pretty odd sort of capes and trimmed round and up the sides with a very broad band of a new kind of figured plush--I forget what they call it (it came from Paris), and a hat of the same--such a hat as can only be made in the Rue Vivienne. You would think that this 'little Christmas box' would have been enough to have lasted for some time. However, he thought differently, for on New Year's morning before I was out of bed, there came a parcel by the mail, which on opening proved to be a large red Morocco case containing a bright gold chain, a yard and a half long, with the most beautiful and curious cross to it that I ever saw--the chain is as thick as my dead gold necklace, and you may guess what sort of a thing it is when I tell you that I took it to a jeweller here to have it weighed, and it weighed a pound all but an ounce. The man said it never was made for less than fifty guineas, but that he should think it had cost more."