At home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to her husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was occupied- that is, was reading or writing in his study.
When her next baby was born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her husband himself- who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious- she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her babies herself.
she said to herself, and she began asking her husband how Seryozha had got on without her.
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband's, and the center of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with which Anna was, through her husband, in the closest relations.
I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually waking; to reveal it, which would have been some ease to me, I could not find would be to any purpose, and yet to conceal it would be next to impossible; nay, I did not doubt but I should talk of it in my sleep, and tell my husband of it whether I would or no.
On the other hand, if she had questioned or doubted me, I had been undone, for the bare suggestion would have immediately separated me from my husband, without gaining my mother or him, who would have been neither a husband nor a brother; so that between the surprise on one hand, and the uncertainty on the other, I had been sure to be undone.
Her husband, joining us, added his entreaties to ours.
They are related, without suppression or reserve, in a little narrative which my husband wrote, at the time of our marriage, for the satisfaction of one of his absent relatives, whose good opinion he was unwilling to forfeit.
In a year's time the money in the bank was gone; and my husband was out of employment.
I ran up stairs, and found my husband on the landing.
After much admonition for what was past, and much good advice to Mr Partridge for his future behaviour, the company at length departed, and left the husband and wife to a personal conference together, in which Mr Partridge soon learned the cause of all his sufferings.
To this the women made no other answer, than that it was a pity it had not come from his heart, instead of his face; all declaring, that, if their husbands should lift their hands against them, they would have their hearts' bloods out of their bodies.
She knew him, and called him by his name, but appeared to think it right that she should explain everything to him; and again, and again, begged him to explain everything to her
husband.
In this mood she left her
husband and her guest, for the most part, alone together.
The anti-climax would be too intolerable; and her return might bring reproach upon her idolized
husband.
