ds look upon him most coldly; when they
speak of his capacities of rising the most despondingly; when they are
most inclined, in short, to set him down as a silly sort of fellow, whom
it is no use inconveniencing one's self to assist,--it is at that moment
when he has made what the said friends are pleased to term an imprudent
marriage! It was, therefore, no remarkable instance of good luck that
the express time for announcing that I had contracted that species of
marriage was the express time for my wanting the assistance of those
kind-hearted friends. Then, too, by the pleasing sympathies in worldly
opinion, the neglect of one's friends is always so damnably neighboured
by the exultation of one's foes! Never was there a man who, without
being very handsome, very rude, or very much in public life, had made
unto himself more enemies than it had been my lot to make. How the
rascals would all sneer and coin dull jests when they saw me so down in
the world! The very old maids, who, so long as they thought me single,
would have declared that the will was a fraud, would, directly they
heard I was married, ask if Gerald was handsome, and assert, with a wise
look, that my uncle knew well what he was about. Then the joy of the
Lady Hasselton, and the curled lip of the haughty Tarleton! It is a very
odd circumstance, but it is very true, that the people we most despise
have the most influence over our actions; a man never ruins himself
by giving dinners to his father, or turning his house into a palace in
order to feast his bosom friend: on the contrary, 'tis the poor devil
of a friend who fares the worst, and starves on the family joint, while
mine host beggars himself to banquet "that disagreeable Mr. A., who is
such an insufferable ass," and mine hostess sends her husband to the
Fleet by vying with "that odious Mrs. B., who was always her aversion!"

Just in the same manner, no thought disturbed me, in the step I was
about to take, half so sorely as the recollection of Lady Hasselton the
coquette and Mr. Tarleton the gambler. However, I have said somewhere
or other that nothing selfish on a small scale polluted my love for
Isora,--nor did there. I had resolved to render her speedy and full
justice; and if I sometimes recurred to the disadvantages to myself, I
always had pleasure in thinking that they were _sacrifices_ to her. But
to my great surprise, when I first announced to Isora my intention of
revealing our marriage, I pe