A perfect angel of peace and gentleness she was. She bore, with unexampled resignation, the thraldom which was destroying her health and comfort. She tried, with patience, every means of pleasing a man who never allowed her to know what he liked, as it would have taken away all room for grumbling. With scrupulous care she attended to his little vexatious wants, his epicurean tastes, his trifling whimsical peculiarities. If she wished to remain at home, he forced her to go abroad; if she were desirous of going out, he made her stay within doors. If she liked a person more than commonly, he, in the words of the vulgar, "made the house too hot to hold them." If, on the contrary, she was annoyed by the presence of one of his acquaintances, she had time and opportunity to get rid of her abhorrence, since she was continually visited with their company. He scolded, grumbled, and found fault with every thing she did; with her acts and her intentions alike. If she ordered a servant to perform any particular duty, he immediately countermanded the orders; if she made any change, however slight, in the family arrangements, no penance could expiate the offence. So she lived on, with almost a struggle for her existence, having learned the important mythological lesson, that Hymen, like Janus, wears two faces, and that the temple of the former god, unlike that of the latter, is _never_ closed. She had several children (who fortunately all died before their mother), but Boldenough, on the ground that women were not fit to bring up boys, constantly interfered in the education of the girls, and made his wife as wretched by this means as by any other. He punished when she rewarded, and indulged when she reproved; he sent them to school when she would have educated them at home, and reaped his reward, by having them secretly fear and hate him. Poor Mrs. Boldenough complained not, but she grew thinner and paler every year, and her voice, as if lost amid the loud tones, forever reverberating in her ears, became so low as to be scarcely audible.