So spake Geraldine's _sposo_ that was to be, on the evening before his
marriage-day, lying on his sofa in his Cashmere dressing-gown, his gold
embroidered slippers, and his velvet smoking-cap, puffing largely at his
meerschaum, and unbosoming his private sentiments and emotions to the
(on this score) sufficiently sympathetic listeners, Gower and I.

"I don't pity you!" said Tom, contemptuously, who had as much disdain
for a man who married as for one who bought gooseberry for champagne, or
Cape for comet hock, and did not know the difference--"I don't pity you
one bit. You've put the curb on yourself; you can't complain if you get
driven where you don't like."

"But, my dear fellow, _can_ one help it?" expostulated Belle,
pathetically. "When a little winning, bewitching, attractive little
animal like that takes you in hand, and traps you as you catch a pony,
holding out a sieve of oats, and coaxing you, and so-ho-ing you till
she's fairly got the bridle over your head, and the bit between your
teeth, what is a man to do?"

"Remember that as soon as the bit is in your mouth, she'll never trouble
herself to give you any oats, or so-ho you softly any more, but will
take the whip hand of you, and not let you have the faintest phantom of
a will of your own ever again," growled the misogamistic Tom.

"Catch a man's remembering while it's any use," was Belle's very true
rejoinder. "After he's put his hand to a little bill, he'll remember
it's a very green thing to do, but he don't often remember it before, I
fancy. No, in things like this, one can't help one's self; one's time is
come, and one goes down before fate. If anybody had told me that I
should go as spooney about any woman as I have about that little girl
Geraldine, I'd have given 'em the lie direct; I would, indeed! But then
she made such desperate love to me, took such a deuced fancy to me, you
see: else, after all, the women _I_ might have chosen----By George! I
wonder what Lady Con, and the little Bosanquet, and poor Honoria, and
all the rest of 'em will say?"

"What?" said Gower; "say 'Poor dear fellow!' to you, and 'Poor girl, I
pity her!' to your wife. So you're going to elope with Miss Geraldine? A
man's generally too ready to marry his daughters, to force a fellow to
carry them off by stealth. Besides, as Bulwer says somewhere,
'_Gentlemen_ don't run away with the daughters of gentlemen.'"

"Pooh, nonsense! all's fair in love or war," returned Belle, g