Look at my tailor's bill! I positively _haven't_ any tailor's bill. Helena spends more on dress in a month than I do in a year. And then her jeweller's bill! She spends hundreds of pounds on jewellery, and I never spend one penny. Every time she goes to a Drawing-room she has all her old jewels pulled to pieces and set afresh, and it costs nobody knows what--it does. I'll have my four-in-hand properly horsed with horses of my own, by George! and none of those confounded Sootythorn hacks any more; and Helena shall keep her carriage-horses all to herself, and drive about all day long if she likes. Of course I can't take her carriage-horses--she's right there." On her own part, her ladyship was steadily resolved not to be deprived of any of those belongings which naturally appertained to a person of her rank and consideration; and there had existed in her mind for several years a feeling of jealous watchfulness, which scrutinized at the same time John Stanburne's projects of economy and his projects of expense. It had happened several times within the experience of this couple that the husband had taken little fits of parsimony, during which he attacked the expenditure he least cared for, but which, by an unfortunate fatality, always seemed to his wife to be most reasonable and necessary. It might perhaps have been more favorable to his tranquillity to ally himself with some country girl acclimatized to the dulness of a thoroughly provincial existence, and satisfied with the position of mistress of Wenderholme Hall, who would have let him spend his money in his own way, and would never have dragged him beyond the circle of his tastes and inclinations. He hated London, especially during the season; and though he enjoyed the society of people whom he really knew something about, he disliked being in a crowd. Lady Helena, on the other hand, was fond of society, and even of the spectacle of the court. John Stanburne had regularly accompanied his wife on these annual visits to the metropolis until this year, when the militia afforded an excellent pretext for staying in the country; but every year he had given evidence of an increasing disposition to evade the performance of his duties; and it had come to this at last, that Lady Helena was obliged to go about with the Adisham family, since John Stanburne could not be made to go to parties any more. He grumbled, too, a good deal about the costliness of these London expeditions, and sometimes talked of suppressing them altogether. There was another annual expedition that he disliked very much, namely, a winter expedition to Brighton; and it had come to pass that a coolness had sprung up between John Stanburne and the Adisham family (who went to Brighton every year), because his indisposition to meet them there had been somewhat too openly manifested. His old mother was the confidant of these rebellious sentiments. She lived in a picturesque cottage situated