Poor thing! a man who, as it was universally agreed, had broken his wife's heart, was not likely to regret her very deeply, or very long. But he was rougher and ruder than ever; the confusion into which his family matters immediately fell, the dishonesty of servants, the diabolical gastronomy of his _cuisine_, and the insufferable dullness of a home in which there was no family circle to be made uncomfortable and to be railed at every hour in the day, induced Charles Boldenough to mingle more freely in society, in order, as it was immediately said, that he might marry again. Many were the denunciations of wrath and sorrow to come, which were showered upon the head of that wretched woman who should accept Charles Boldenough's huge bony hand. He had the name of the worst of husbands, and it was confidently said that he would never succeed in contracting a second alliance: an assertion to which he gave the lie by espousing, one year after the death of the first Mrs. Boldenough, an intrepid successor, in the person of a damsel whom he had long been known to admire.
The second Mrs. Boldenough was a complete and entire contrast to the first. She was so nearly equal to her husband in stature and in size that she might almost have succeeded in giving him, what no person had ever been known to do, and what he certainly had long required: namely, a good flogging. She had a pair of cheeks like nothing in _this_ world except two prize Spitzenberg apples, black eyes, fierce and bright and far-seeing almost to a miracle, and a voice that went through your head like a milkman's whistle, whilst the continued sound of her conversation resembled a gong at the great hotels. Boldenough she was by name, and Boldenough by nature; her carriage, erect and firm, and rapid as a locomotive, seemed to require the ringing of a little bell before her, to keep the unwary off the tracks, after the manner of most railway trains. She was afraid of nothing in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. She could break the most unruly horse, fire at a mark with a perfect aim, and collar any man who should show her any impertinence, with a coolness and strength of limb perfectly wonderful to behold. Born to command, she was not angry but merely surprised that any one should dream of controlling her. It was only after a long resistance to her wishes that the full torrent of her rage burst forth, but with an overwhelming fury.