"My reputation for imbecility in these matters was perhaps advantageous. He
did not shun me as he did the tribe of knowing ones; a hundred reports flew
about concerning him, settling in one, that he was resolved never to marry.
Yet he was a passionate admirer of beauty and grace, and it was said that
he had never been unsuccessful where he had wished to please. The secret of
his resolution against marriage was accounted for by the gossiping public
in many ways variously absurd. The fact was, that in his own family, and in
that of a particular friend, there had been about this time two or three
scandalous intrigues, followed by 'the public brand of shameful life.' One
of these 'sad affairs,' as they are styled, was marked with premeditated
treachery and turpitude. The lady had been, or had seemed to be, for years
a pattern wife, the mother of several children; yet she had long betrayed,
and at last abandoned, a most amiable and confiding husband, and went
off with a man who did not love her, who cared for nought but himself, a
disgusting monster of selfishness, vanity, and vice! This woman was said to
have been once good, but to have been corrupted and depraved by residence
abroad--by the contagion of foreign profligacy. In the other instance, the
seduced wife had been originally most amiable, pure-minded, uncommonly
beautiful, loved to idolatry by her husband, Clarendon's particular friend,
a man high in public estimation. The husband shot himself. The seducer was,
it's said, the lady's first love. That these circumstances should have made
a deep impression on Clarendon, is natural; the more feeling--the stronger
the mind, the more deep and lasting it was likely to be. Besides his
resolution against marriage in general, we heard that he had specially
resolved against marrying any travelled lady, and most especially against
any woman with whom there was danger of a first love. How this danger was
to be avoided or ascertained, mothers and daughters looked at one another,
and did not ask, or at least did not answer.