Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. HUSBAND AND WIFE. Mr. And Mrs. Falconer were adjusting their angles to each other admirably. Indeed it seemed as if Dora had no angles to adjust to anyone or anything, she was so sweetly smooth and so gaily good-humoured. Her husband was almost startled, and very agreeably surprised at many unexpected developments of her character. He had been fascinated by Dora, he had admired her, he had been annoyed to find himself getting in love with her; but he had not known how fascinating, or how admirable, or how lovable she was until he married her. Indeed, under his auspices (or shall it be said under the auspices of altered circumstances and a definite fate,) Dora grew in all the good qualities that men find to be most essential in their wives. She knew when to give way. Better still she knew when to be firm. She was no slave wife, fearful of hazarding a contrary opinion or wish to the one expressed by her husband. All things were made so easy and pleasant in her well-ordered home that the cloven foot of her exacting selfishness was never lured into peeping out. Her theories were all excellent, and as to her practice ! well, the practice of a bride of a good degree who is implicitly believed has small temptation to be other than excellent too. After that visit to Court Royal, when Dora had definitely refused Helen's request to let Helen clear herself of that of which the girl felt intuitively she was accused, there had been no intercourse between the two houses until Christmas day, when the bride and bridegroom dined at Court Eoyal. Mrs. Bruton was there and Bertie Carlyon,and Dora's thoughts while dressing for the dinner had been very much bent upon these two. Not bent upon them painfully at all. Beautiful Mrs. Falconer only wanted to outshine the one, and impres...