They were married on a fine spring morning, about the very
time at which the unfortunate Sir William discovered her preference
for him, and was beginning to hasten home from a foreign court to
declare his unaltered devotion to her. On his arrival in England he
learnt the sad truth.
If Sir William suffered at her precipitancy under what she had
deemed his neglect, the Lady Penelope herself suffered more. She
had not long been the wife of Sir John Gale before he showed a
disposition to retaliate upon her for the trouble and delay she had
put him to in winning her. With increasing frequency he would tell
her that, as far as he could perceive, she was an article not worth
such labour as he had bestowed in obtaining it, and such snubbings
as he had taken from his rivals on the same account. These and
other cruel things he repeated till he made the lady weep sorely,
and wellnigh broke her spirit, though she had formerly been such a
mettlesome dame. By degrees it became perceptible to all her
friends that her life was a very unhappy one; and the fate of the
fair woman seemed yet the harder in that it was her own stately
mansion, left to her sole use by her first husband, which her second
had entered into and was enjoying, his being but a mean and meagre
erection.
But such is the flippancy of friends that when she met them, and
secretly confided her grief to their ears, they would say cheerily,
'Lord, never mind, my dear; there's a third to come yet!'--at which
maladroit remark she would show much indignation, and tell them they
should know better than to trifle on so solemn a theme.
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