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The room still smelt of the dinner, divers garments were strewed upon the chairs, and it was thus I discovered the once gay Melford, proverbial for his elegance of dress and manner, and happy, cheerful aspect, reduced to be hen-pecked, not even by a wife.

"He started when he saw me, and his lady, snatching up her child, ran slip-shod out of the room, followed by her soubrette. Poor Melford looked heartily ashamed, and could scarcely give me the common compliments of reception. But when I told him the message I was charged with, which was in truth couched in the most kind and friendly terms, for I was bidden to lament, in my uncle's name, that they should be separated, and intreat him to return to the old footing, he became unusually and violently affected. He strode across the room, struck his forehead more than once, and casting his eyes upon parts of his child's dress and a coral which were left behind, he heaved a deep sigh, and squeezing me by the hand, said,

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My dear friend, I am not worthy of it. This sad affair with Hortense! I dare not present myself at the park, the abode of all that is pure and virtuous-there is no disguising it, I DARE not come. Tell them not how you found me; yet that I am greatly obliged, and sorry that I cannot accept

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"Here he stopt, and in effect, pitying him from

my soul, I could not attempt to persuade him. We soon therefore parted, and I left him to such happiness as Hortense could give him.”

"And yet," observed I," you say Hortense was beautiful and accomplished."

"She was attractingly, nay, voluptuously so, and her eye fascinating as a basilisk's when she pleased. Off his guard, therefore, and perhaps seeking refuge in sophistry, to escape from his disappointment with Bertha, he persuaded himself, that his connection with a well-bred, handsome courtezan, ranked with, and gave as much pleasure as a more legitimate attachment. I have heard him hold something like it, when, in a fit of resentment against the whole sex, he has said, as none of them have any heart, without which their virtue is of little consequence, it is quite unnecessary either to seek or expect more happiness than a beautiful exterior and accomplished manners can supply. The scene, however, I have described told a different story as to his feelings."

"Yet you say he is not recovered, but has fallen into downright libertinism. How is that possible for one who ever loved or understood Bertha?"

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"I fear," replied Granville, "it is becausewhile tied to this woman (by whom he has another child), and who now rules him despotically-he thinks he has nothing left for it but to follow up

his doctrine of 'I take her body, you her mind ; which has the better bargain?'”

"The truth I fear is, that, though no one can dispute that he loved Bertha, and, had he gained her, would have made a happy husband, his love was not unmixed with the pride which success with one so beautiful, well-born, and rich would have made him feel. Hence the madness caused by his disappointment was not for disappointment in love alone, but very strongly mixed with mortified vanity. Perhaps, also, his love was more sensual than pure, and in that case, his love of pleasure, as well as his hurt pride, drove him originally to this mode of revenge-for revenge he thought it. Had his affection for her been as pure as yours, he never would have stooped to such unworthy means of shewing his resentment.

"We shall, however, perhaps know more of him to-day, if the bottle, to which I am sorry to find he has too often recourse, in order to forget himself, will permit it."

Much impressed by this story, I thanked Granville for his good opinion, and became almost impatient for his dinner party.

We were all assembled some time before Sir Harry made his appearance, and when he did so, I was shocked. Not only he had slouched in, as he said himself, in the deshabille in which he had

passed the whole morning, without the least attention even to cleanliness, but his features, formerly so composed with tranquil good-breeding, seemed wild and haggard, his brow knit, and his cheek flushed, as if he had been engaged in altercation. He made, however, no apology for being so late; saying bluntly enough, that as he had done dressing, even for the ladies, and knew he was to meet nobody but a set of bachelors, he thought they would rather admit him as a sloven, than be kept waiting."

"If you have consulted your own comfort in this," observed Granville (ambiguously, as I thought), we have nothing to say."

And we took our places at the table.

As he came so late, there had not been time for introductions, and it was only upon Granville's calling upon me casually by name that Sir Harry seemed to notice me with his glass-when I could plainly perceive, by the effect it had upon him, that he had made me out as the person of possibly what he thought an equivocal description, between gentleman and humble friend, whom he had formerly met, in doubtful circumstances, at York.

The remembrance certainly affected him, for he looked intensely at me, sighed, and was silent, and seemed to wish to drown thought by a rapid challenge of bumpers with every one at the table.

Not content with this, at the dessert he made a

desperate attack on a vase of brandy cherries, confirming uncomfortably the account Granville had heard of his disposition to raise artificial spirits from these libations.

By those means, though at first he had been almost sullenly silent, he grew in the end loquacious upon almost all the subjects that were started, particularly on one, which not unnaturally, in a company of young men, almost all unmarried, turned upon the character, power, and influence of women.

This, always interesting to me, was rendered peculiarly so by the manner in which he treated it, as I could never forget that he had been the sincere lover of Bertha, and therefore most likely to do justice to the question. How was I surprised and disappointed, notwithstanding Granville's forewarning, to hear what I did! How did I lament what seemed to me the overthrow of a mind, which, I agreed with Granville in thinking, was made for better things.

The conversation turning, I know not by what introduction, upon the licentiousness of the times of Charles II. and Louis XIV., and the manners and engagements of women in those days, Sir Harry professed himself their unqualified admirer, as the only example of real freedom of life, unrestrained by musty rules, made only, he said, to tyrannize over the young and ardent of both sexes, under sophistical pretences.

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