compact, and laugh outright. "Well, in those wild and headstrong days of
youthful ardour, I fell in love--desperately in love--and as always is, I
believe, the case with our early experiments in that unfortunate passion,
the object of my affection was in every way unsuited to me. She was a
tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed maiden, with a romantic imagination, and a
kind of a half-crazed poetic fervour, that often made me fear for her
intellect. I'm a short, rather fat--I was always given this way"--here
he patted a waistcoat that would fit Dame Lambert--"happy-minded little
fellow, that liked my supper of oysters at the Pigeon-house, and my other
creature-comforts, and hated every thing that excited or put one out of
one's way, just as I would have hated a blister. Then, the devil would
have it--for as certainly as marriages are made in heaven, flirtations
have something to say to the other place--that I should fall most
irretrievably in love with Lady Agnes Moreton. Bless my soul, it
absolutely puts me in a perspiration this hot day, just to think over all
I went through on her account; for, strange to say, the more I appeared
to prosper in her good graces, the more did she exact on my part; the
pursuit was like Jacob's ladder--if it did lead to heaven it was
certainly an awfully long journey, and very hard on one's legs. There
was not an amusement she could think of, no matter how unsuited to my
tastes or my abilities, that she did not immediately take a violent fancy
to; and then there was no escaping, and I was at once obliged to go with
the tide, and heaven knows if it would not have carried me to my grave if
it were not for the fortunate (I now call it) accident that broke off the
affair for ever. One time she took a fancy for yachting, and all the
danglers about her--and she always had a cordon of them--young
aides-de-camp of her father the general, and idle hussars, in clanking
sabertasches and most absurd mustachios--all approved of the taste, and
so kept filling her mind with anecdotes of corsairs and smugglers, that
at last nothing would satisfy her till I--I who always would rather have