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the position. I stared at my bride, and suddenly observed a masculine imperviousness in her countenance that surprised me; a determination of chin that I wondered I had not noticed before. A vague feeling of alarm ran through me like a cold shiver. Had I made a mistake after all in my choice of a wife? And was this fine bouncing creature-this splendidly-developed, vigorously healthy specimen of womanhood going to prove too much for me? I recoiled from my own painful thoughts. I had always laughed to scorn those weakspirited men who allowed themselves to be mastered by their wives. Now, was I also destined to become a laughing-stock for others? And should I also be ruled

with the female rod of iron?

would rebel-I would protest!

Never, never, never! I

But in the meantime—

well, I was just married, and, as a perfectly natural consequence, I dared not speak my mind!

CHAPTER II.

THAT evening-the evening of my marriage day-I beheld a strange and remarkable spectacle. It was after dinner in our private sitting-room (we had engaged apartments at a very charming hotel down at Tenby, where we meant to pass the honeymoon), and my wife had just left me, saying she would return in an instant. I drew a chair up to the window and gazed at the sea; and, after a little while, I felt in my pocket and pulled out my cigar-case. I looked at it affectionately, but I resisted the temptation to smoke. I made up my mind that I would not be the first to suggest the idea to Honoria. For if she had fallen into such an unwomanly vice, then it was clearly my duty as her husband to get her out of it. Here some captious readers may say: "Well, if you didn't mind her going about with a gun, you ought to have been prepared for her having other masculine accomplishments as well." Now, just allow me to explain. I did mind her going about with a gun; I minded it very much; but then, I was always an old-fashioned sort of fellow with old-fashioned notions (I am trying to break myself of them by degrees), and one of these notions was a deep respect and chivalrous

homage for the ladies of the English aristocracy. I believed them to be the ne plus ultra of everything noble and grand in woman, and I felt that whatever they did must be right, and not only right, but perfectly well-bred, since it is their business and prerogative to furnish models of excellent behaviour to all their sex. And when Honoria was still Miss Maggs, and made her mark as a sportswoman, she was only imitating the example (for I read it in the society papers) of three of the most exalted ladies of title in the land. Moreover, I thought that after all it was merely a high-spirited girl's freak, just to show that she could, on occasion, shoot as well as a man. I felt quite sure that when Miss Maggs became Mrs. Hatwell-Tribkin (William Hatwell-Tribkin is my name), she would, to speak poetically, lay aside the gun for the needle, and the game bag for the household linen. Such was my limited conception of the female temperament and intelligence. But I know better now! And since I have learned that the "highest ladies in the land" smoke as well as shootwell, I will not say openly what I think! I will merely assure those who may be interested in my feelings on the subject, that I have now no old-fashioned partiality whatever for such aristocratic personages; let them do as they like and sink to whatever level they choose, only for Heaven's sake let them not be taken as the best examples we can show of England's wives and

mothers! Several persons who have recently aired their opinions in the roomy columns of the Daily Telegraph (all honour to that blessed journal, which provides so wide and liberal a pasture land gratis for sheep-like souls to graze upon!) have advocated smoking for women as a perfectly harmless and innocent enjoyment, tending to promote pleasant good-fellowship between the sexes. All I can say is, let one of these special pleaders marry an inveterate woman-smoker, and try it!

The evening of one's marriage day is not exactly an evening to quarrel upon, and so I could not quarrel with Honoria, when she treated me to the amazing spectacle alluded to at the commencement of this chapter the spectacle of herself, transformed. She came back into the sitting-room with that cheerful, wholesome laugh of hers (Oscar Wilde and others might think it a trifle too loud, still it was lively), and said:

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"Now I'm comfortable! Got a chair for me? That's right! Push it up in that corner, and let's be chummy!" I gazed at her as she spoke, and my voice died away in my throat; I could almost feel my hair rising slowly from my scalp in amazement and horror. -what did my Honoria-my bride, whom I had lately seen a rustling vision of white silk and lace and orangeblossoms, what did she look like? Like a man! gods! yes, though she had petticoats on-like a man!

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She had changed her pretty travelling dress for a short and extremely scanty brown tweed skirt; with this she wore a very racy-looking jacket of coarse flannel, patterned all over with large horse shoes on a blue ground. On her head she had perched a red smoking-cap with a long tassel that bobbed over her left eyebrow, and she surveyed me as she sat down, with an air of bland unconsciousness, as though her costume were the most natural thing in the world. I said nothing; she did not expect me to say anything, I suppose. She glanced at the sea, shining with a lovely purple in the evening light, and said briefly:

"Looks dull rather, doesn't it? Wants a few racers about. Fancy! I had no yachting this year,—all the boys went away to Ireland instead."

"What boys?" I murmured faintly, still staring at her with dazed bewildered eyes. She was a boy herself, or very like one!

Again that cheerful laugh vibrated in my ears.

"What boys? Good gracious, Willie, if I were to run over all their names, it would be like an hotel visitors' list! I mean the boys. All the men who used to take me about, don't you know?"

A kind of resolution fired my blood at this.

"They will hardly take you about now," I said, with, I hope, a gentle severity. "You are married now, Honoria, and it will be my proud privilege to take you

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