were real and vast: he made
inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and daughter; and he learned
from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty
thousand pounds: that sufficed. When I left college, I was sent out to
Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said
nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of
Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine
woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her
family wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she.
They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her
alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered
me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and
accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy
me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being
ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no
folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience,
the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its
commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she
allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh,
I have no respect for myself when I think of that act!--an agony of
inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not
even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her
nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor
refinement in her mind or manners--and, I married her:--gross,
grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might
have--But let me remember to whom I am speaking."

"My bride's mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The
honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a
lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too--a complete dumb idiot.
The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor
all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble
mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister,
and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in
the same state one day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this;
but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the
plot against me."

"These were vile discoveries; but except for the