foreign experience. He had dissipated his small
paternal inheritance of a younger brother's portion, and, as truth must be
told, was no better than a hanger-on of ordinaries, and a brawler about
Alsatia and the Friars, when he bethought him of a means of mending his
fortune.

His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody's word but her
own for the beauty which she said she once possessed. She was lean, and
yellow, and long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the toy-shops
in London could not make a beauty of her--Mr. Killigrew called her the
Sibyl, the death's-head put up at the king's feast as a _memento mori_,
&c.--in fine, a woman who might be easy of conquest, but whom only a very
bold man would think of conquering. This bold man was Thomas Esmond. He
had a fancy to my Lord Castlewood's savings, the amount of which rumour
had very much exaggerated. Madam Isabel was said to have royal jewels of
great value; whereas poor Tom Esmond's last coat but one was in pawn.

My lord had at this time a fine house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, nigh to the
Duke's Theatre and the Portugal ambassador's chapel. Tom Esmond, who had
frequented the one as long as he had money to spend among the actresses,
now came to the church as assiduously. He looked so lean and shabby, that
he passed without difficulty for a repentant sinner; and so, becoming
converted, you may be sure took his uncle's priest for a director.

This charitable father reconciled him with the old lord his uncle, who a
short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my lord's
coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his
nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his
rapier sticking out of the scabbard--to his twopenny ordinary in Bell Yard.

Thomas Esmond, after this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began
to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and clean
linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week to be sure; but he made amends on
the other days: and, to show how great his appetite was, Mr. Wycherley
said, he ended by swallowing that fly-blown rank old morsel his cousin.
There were endless jokes and lampoons about this marriage at Court: but
Tom rode thither in his uncle's coach now, called him father, and having
won could afford to laugh. This marriage took place very shortly before
King Charles died: whom the Viscount of Castlewood speedily followed.

The