"Why, my dear Lady Mary," exclaimed Henrietta, laughing, "do you not represent one of your father's boroughs?"
"Why, indeed!" returned her companion. "I would bring in a bill every session; people grant more favours from being tired of refusing, than from any other motive. In life it is the irrevocable that is terrible: while there is change, there is hope. We should keep each other in much better order if, at the end of seven years, there were to be a reckoning of grievances. It would be a good moral lesson to many a husband, to come down on the seventh anniversary and find his tea not made, and his muffin not buttered. These are the things that come home to a man's feelings!"
"And what," asked Henrietta, "if it were the gentleman who was reported missing?"
"Upon my honour," cried Lady Mary, "I cannot look on that in any other point of view than as a relief!"
Henrietta did not say how entirely she was of the same way of thinking.
"What is a woman's stronghold? Her
