he had placed himself in
rivalship,--sat down to calculate chances with all the zeal of Demoivre,
tired of the drudgery in half-an-hour, and refused to see the zealous
agent whom he had employed in the city, because he was busily engaged in
writing a new lampoon.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Ah! changeful head, and fickle heart!
--PROGRESS OF DISCONTENT.

No event is more ordinary in narratives of this nature, than the
abduction of the female on whose fate the interest is supposed to turn;
but that of Alice Bridgenorth was thus far particular, that she was
spirited away by the Duke of Buckingham, more in contradiction than in
the rivalry of passion; and that, as he made his first addresses to her
at Chiffinch's, rather in the spirit of rivalry to this Sovereign, than
from any strong impression which her beauty had made on his affections,
so he had formed the sudden plan of spiriting her away by means of his
dependents, rather to perplex Christian, the King, Chiffinch, and all
concerned, than because he had any particular desire for her society at
his own mansion. Indeed, so far was this from being the case, that
his Grace was rather surprised than delighted with the success of the
enterprise which had made her an inmate there, although it is probable
he might have thrown himself into an uncontrollable passion, had he
learned its miscarriage instead of its success.

Twenty-four hours had passed over since he had returned to his own roof,
before, notwithstanding sundry hints from Jerningham, he could even
determine on the exertion necessary to pay his fair captive a visit; and
then it was with the internal reluctance of one who can only be stirred
from indolence by novelty.

"I wonder what made me plague myself about this wench," said he, "and
doom myself to encounter all the hysterical rhapsodies of a country
Phillis, with her head stuffed with her grandmother's lessons about
virtue and the Bible-book, when the finest and best-bred women in town
may be had upon more easy terms. It is a pity one cannot mount the
victor's car of triumph without having a victory to boast of; yet,
faith, it is what most of our modern gallants do, though it would not
become Buckingham.--Well, I must see her," he concluded, "though it were
but to rid the house of her. The Portsmouth will not hear of her
being set at liberty near Charles, so much is she afraid of a new fair
seducing the old