Agatha's Husband A Novel

-If there ever was a woman thoroughly like her name, it was Agatha Bowen. She was good, in the first place-right good at heart, though with a slight external roughness (like the sound of the g in her name), which took away all sentimentalism. Then the vowels-the three broad rich a's-which no one can pronounce with nimini-pimini closed lips-how thoroughly they answered to her character!-a character in the which was nothing small, mean, cramped, or crooked. But if we go on unfolding her in this way, there will not be the slightest use in writing her history, or that of one in whom her life is beautifully involved and enclosed-as every married woman's should be- He was still in clouded mystery-an individual yet to be; and two other individuals had been "talking him over," feminine-fashion, in Miss Agatha Bowen's drawing-room, much to that lady's amusement and edification. For, being moderately rich, she had her own suite of rooms in the house where she boarded; and having no mother-sorrowful lot for a girl of nineteen!-she sometimes filled her drawing-room with very useless and unprofitable acquaintances. These two married ladies-one young, the other old-Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Thornycroft-had been for the last half-hour vexing their very hearts out to find Agatha a husband-a weakness which, it must be confessed, lurks in the heart of almost every married lady.