mockery of every monster shewn in drawing-rooms since her marriage,
threw herself in his way, and did all but put on the dress of a
mountebank, to attract his notice:--- though in vain:--- when she
stood before him, though his eyes were apparently fixed upon her's,
still it seemed as if they were unperceived;---even her unappalled
impudence was baffled, and she left, the field. But though the common
adultress could not influence even the guidance of his eyes, it was
not that the female sex was indifferent to him: yet such was the
apparent caution with which he spoke to the virtuous wife and innocent
daughter, that few knew he ever addressed himself to females. He had,
however, the reputation of a winning tongue; and whether it was that
it even overcame the dread of his singular character, or that they
were moved by his apparent hatred of vice, he was as often among those
females who form the boast of their sex from their domestic virtues,
as among those who sully it by their vices.

About the same time, there came to London a young gentleman of the
name of Aubrey: he was an orphan left with an only sister in the
possession of great wealth, by parent» who died while he was yet in
childhood. Left also to himself by guardians, who thought it their
duty merely to take care of his fortune, while they relinquished the
more important charge of his mind to the care of mercenary subalterns,
he cultivated more his imagination than his judgment. He had, hence,
that high romantic feeling of honour and candour, which daily ruins so
many milliners' apprentices. He believed all to sympathise with
virtue, and thought that vice was thrown in by Providence merely for
the picturesque effect of the scene, as we see in romances: he thought
that the misery of a cottage merely consisted in the vesting of
clothes, which were as warm, but which were better adapted to the
painter's eye by their irregular folds and various coloured patches.