In vain did she urge the excess of affection she had for him as meriting some return of tenderness and condescension: he was even proof against certain menacing hints she gave touching the resentment of a slighted woman; and he stood out against all the considerations of dignity or disgrace like a bulwark of brass.

Neither was he moved to any indecent or unkind expressions of contradiction, even when she upbraided him with his sordid disposition, and put him in mind of the fortune and honour he had acquired by his marriage, but seemed to retire within himself, like a tortoise when attacked, that shrinks within its shell, and silently endured the scourge of her reproaches, without seeming sensible of the smart.
This, however, was the only point in which she had been baffled since her nuptials; and as she could by no means digest the miscarriage, she tortured her invention for some new plan by which she might augment her influence and authority.

What her genius refused was supplied by accident; for she had not lived four months in the garrison, when she was seized with frequent qualms and retchings; in a word, she congratulated herself on the symptoms of her own fertility; and the commodore was transported with joy at the prospect of an heir of his own begetting.
She knew this was the proper season for vindicating her own sovereignty, and accordingly employed the means which nature had put in her power.
There was not a rare piece of furniture or apparel for which she did not long; and one day, as she went to church, seeing Lady Stately's equipage arrive, she suddenly fainted away.

Her husband, whose vanity had never been so perfectly gratified as with this promised harvest of his own sowing, took the alarm immediately; and in order to prevent relapses of that kind, which might be attended with fatal consequence to his hope, gave her leave to bespeak a coach, horses, and liveries, to her own liking.

Thus authorized, she in a very little time exhibited such a specimen of her own taste and magnificence as afforded speculation to the whole country, and made Trunnion's heart quake within him; because he foresaw no limits to her extravagance which also manifested itself in the most expensive preparations for her lying-in.
Her pride, which had hitherto regarded the representative of her father's house, seemed now to lose all that hereditary respect, and prompt her to outshine and undervalue the elder branch of her family.
She behaved to Mrs.Pickle with a sort of civil reserve that implied a conscious superiority; and an emulation in point of grandeur immediately commenced between the two sisters.