The end of the honeymoon saw Mrs Theobald the most devotedly obsequious
wife in all England. According to the old saying, Theobald had killed
the cat at the beginning. It had been a very little cat, a mere kitten
in fact, or he might have been afraid to face it, but such as it had been
he had challenged it to mortal combat, and had held up its dripping head
defiantly before his wife's face. The rest had been easy.
Strange that one whom I have described hitherto as so timid and easily
put upon should prove such a Tartar all of a sudden on the day of his
marriage. Perhaps I have passed over his years of courtship too rapidly.
During these he had become a tutor of his college, and had at last been
Junior Dean. I never yet knew a man whose sense of his own importance
did not become adequately developed after he had held a resident
fellowship for five or six years. True--immediately on arriving within a
ten mile radius of his father's house, an enchantment fell upon him, so
that his knees waxed weak, his greatness departed, and he again felt
himself like an overgrown baby under a perpetual cloud; but then he was
not often at Elmhurst, and as soon as he left it the spell was taken off
again; once more he became the fellow and tutor of his college, the
Junior Dean, the betrothed of Christina, the idol of the Allaby
womankind.
Pages:
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114