Still she would obey.  Let the task be as hard as it might, she would obey.  If he counselled her to do this or that, she would follow his counsel,—­because she owed him so much.  If she had accepted the half of all his wealth without loving him, she owed him the more on that account.  But she knew,—­she could not but know,—­that her intellect was brighter than his; and might it not be possible for her to lead him?  Then she made efforts to lead her husband, and found that he was as stiff-necked as an ox.  Mr. Kennedy was not, perhaps, a clever man; but he was a man who knew his own way, and who intended to keep it.

“I have got a headache, Robert,” she said to him one Sunday after luncheon.  “I think I will not go to church this afternoon.”

“It is not serious, I hope.”

“Oh dear no.  Don’t you know how one feels sometimes that one has got a head?  And when that is the case one’s armchair is the best place.”

“I am not sure of that,” said Mr. Kennedy.

“If I went to church I should not attend,” said Lady Laura.

“The fresh air would do you more good than anything else, and we could walk across the park.”

“Thank you;—­I won’t go out again to-day.”  This she said with something almost of crossness in her manner, and Mr. Kennedy went to the afternoon service by himself.

Lady Laura when she was left alone began to think of her position.  She was not more than four or five months married, and she was becoming very tired of her life.  Was it not also true that she was becoming tired of her husband?  She had twice told Phineas Finn that of all men in the world she esteemed Mr. Kennedy the most.  She did not esteem him less now.  She knew no point or particle in which he did not do his duty with accuracy.  But no person can live happily with another,—­not even with a brother or a sister or a friend,—­simply upon esteem.  All the virtues in the calendar, though they exist on each side, will not make a man and woman happy together, unless there be sympathy.  Lady Laura was beginning to find out that there was a lack of sympathy between herself and her husband.

She thought of this till she was tired of thinking of it, and then, wishing to divert her mind, she took up the book that was lying nearest to her hand.  It was a volume of a new novel which she had been reading on the previous day, and now, without much thought about it, she went on with her reading.  There came to her, no doubt, some dim, half-formed idea that, as she was freed from going to church by the plea of a headache, she was also absolved by the same plea from other Sunday hindrances.  A child, when it is ill, has buttered toast and a picture-book instead of bread-and-milk and lessons.  In this way, Lady Laura conceived herself to be entitled to her novel.