her bosom. When affronted she would speak out, whether to her
husband, or to another,--using irony rather than argument to
support her cause and to vindicate her ways. The shafts of
ridicule hurled by her against her husband in regard to his
voluntary abasement had been many and sharp. They stung him, but
never for a moment influenced him. It was her nature to say such
things,--and he knew that they came rather from her uncontrolled
spirit than from any malice. She was his wife too, and he had an
idea that of little injuries of that sort there should be no end
of bearing on the part of a husband. Sometimes he would
endeavour to explain to her the motives which actuated him; but
he had come to fear that they were and must be unintelligible to
her. But he credited her with less than her real intelligence.
She did understand the nature of his work and his reasons for
doing it; and, after her own fashion, did what she conceived to
be her own work in endeavouring to create within his bosom a
desire for higher things. 'Surely,' she said to herself, 'if a
man of his rank is to be a minister, he should be a great
minister;--at any rate as great as his circumstances will make
him. A man never can save his country by degrading himself.' In
this he would probably have agreed; but his idea of degradation
and hers hardly tallied.

When therefore she asked him what they were going to make him, it
was as though some sarcastic housekeeper in a great establishment
should ask the butler,--some butler too prone to yield in such
matters,--whether the master had appointed him lately to the
cleaning of shoes or the carrying of coals. Since these knots
had become so very tight, and since the journeys to Windsor had
become so very frequent, her Grace had asked many such questions,