At last she died. When it became necessary to inform him of the danger she was in, he was at first stupefied by the unexpected intelligence, and the feeling that he was to lose a household object, which time had rendered not dear, but familiar. Then he flew into a violent rage, quarreled with the attendants, servants, even the friends and relatives. Having recovered from the shock in some degree, he set about persecuting his poor wife during her last moments, in the same manner he had done while she enjoyed her health, with this difference: that it was now killing with kindness. He sent away in a rage the family physician, although his dying wife begged him, almost with tears, to retain him. He brought strange attendants to wait upon her, and insisted upon her eating when she had no appetite, and when the very sight of food created disgust. The sight of his big, cross, burly countenance, perpetually haunting her, and his loud questions, to which he _would_ have answers, and the eternal remedies, which he disturbed her feverish sleep that she might swallow--were causes, as the nurse averred, which positively sent the poor lady out of the world--"for he wouldn't," said that worthy person, "he wouldn't have let her get well, even if she'd been a mind to." Poor thing! a man who, as it was universally agreed, had broken his wife's heart, was not likely to regret her very deeply, or very long. But he was rougher and ruder than ever; the confusion into which his family matters immediately fell, the dishonesty of servants, the diabolical gastronomy of his _cuisine_, and the insufferable dullness of a home in which there was no family circle to be made uncomfortable and to be railed at every hour in the day, induced Charles Boldenough to mingle more freely in society, in order, as it was immediately said, that he might marry again. Many were the denunciations of wrath and sorrow to come, which were showered upon the head of that wretched woman who should accept Charles Boldenough's huge bony hand. He had the name of the worst of husbands, and it was confidently said that he would never succeed in contracting a second alliance: an assertion to which he gave the lie by espousing, one year after the death of the first Mrs. Boldenough, an intrepid successor, in the person of a damsel whom he had long been known to admire.