of his youth, impatient for wealth and ambitious of power, he had
tied himself to a rich dowager of quality, whose age, though sixty-
seven, was but among the smaller species of her evil properties, her
disposition being far more repulsive than her wrinkles. An
inequality of years so considerable, had led him to expect that the
fortune he had thus acquired, would speedily be released from the
burthen with which it was at present incumbered; but his
expectations proved as vain as they were mercenary, and his lady was
not more the dupe of his protestations than he was himself of his
own purposes. Ten years he had been married to her, yet her health
was good, and her faculties were unimpaired; eagerly he had watched
for her dissolution, yet his eagerness had injured no health but his
own! So short-sighted is selfish cunning, that in aiming no further
than at the gratification of the present moment, it obscures the
evils of the future, while it impedes the perception of integrity
and honour.

His ardour, however, to attain the blessed period of returning
liberty, deprived him neither of spirit nor inclination for
intermediate enjoyment; he knew the world too well to incur its
censure by ill-treating the woman to whom he was indebted for the
rank he held in it; he saw her, indeed, but seldom, yet he had the
decency, alike in avoiding as in meeting her, to shew no abatement
of civility and good breeding: but, having thus sacrificed to
ambition all possibility of happiness in domestic life, he turned
his thoughts to those other methods of procuring it, which he had so
dearly purchased the power of essaying.

The resources of pleasure to the possessors of wealth are only to be
cut off by the satiety of which they are productive: a satiety which