me. No merit could accrue to me from this source. I was exposed to no
temptation. I had passed the feverish period of youth. No contagious
example had contaminated my principles. I had resisted, the allurements
of sensuality and dissipation incident to my age. My dwelling was in
pomp and splendour. I had amassed sufficient to secure me, in case of
unforeseen accidents, in the enjoyment of competence. My mental
resources were not despicable, and the external means of intellectual
gratification were boundless. I enjoyed an unsullied reputation. My
character was well known in that sphere which my lady occupied, not only
by means of her favourable report, but in numberless ways in which it
was my fortune to perform personal services to others.




Chapter V.


Mrs. Lorimer had a twin-brother. Nature had impressed the same image
upon them, and had modelled them after the same pattern. The resemblance
between them was exact to a degree almost incredible. In infancy and
childhood they were perpetually liable to be mistaken for each other. As
they grew up, nothing, to a superficial examination, appeared to
distinguish them, but the sexual characteristics. A sagacious observer
would, doubtless, have noted the most essential differences. In all
those modifications of the features which are produced by habits and
sentiments, no two persons were less alike. Nature seemed to have
intended them as examples of the futility of those theories which
ascribe every thing to conformation and instinct and nothing to external
circumstances; in what different modes the same materials may be