houses of neighbouring squires, to whom his reputation
as a magistrate, conjoined with his solemn exterior, made him one of
those oracles by which men consent to be awed on condition that the awe
is not often inflicted. And though he opened his house three times
a week, it was only to a select few, whom he first fed and then
biologized. Electro-biology was very naturally the special entertainment
of a man whom no intercourse ever pleased in which his will was not
imposed upon others. Therefore he only invited to his table persons whom
he could stare into the abnegation of their senses, willing to say that
beef was lamb, or brandy was coffee, according as he willed them to say.
And, no doubt, the persons asked would have said anything he willed,
so long as they had, in substance, as well as in idea, the beef and the
brandy, the lamb and the coffee. I did not, then, often meet Mr. Vigors
at the houses in which I occasionally spent my evenings. I heard of his
enmity as a man safe in his home hears the sough of a wind on a common
without. If now and then we chanced to pass in the streets, he looked
up at me (he was a small man walking on tiptoe) with a sullen scowl of
dislike; and from the height of my stature, I dropped upon the small man
and sullen scowl the affable smile of supreme indifference.

CHAPTER IV.

I had now arrived at that age when an ambitious man, satisfied with
his progress in the world without, begins to feel in the cravings of
unsatisfied affection the void of a solitary hearth. I resolved to
marry, and looked out for a wife. I had never hitherto admitted into my
life the passion of love. In fact, I had regarded that passion, even
in my earlier youth, with a certain superb contempt,--as a malady
engendered by an effeminate idleness, and fostered by a sickly
imagination.

I wished to find in a wife a rational companion, an affectionate and
trustworthy friend. No views of matrimony could be less romantic, more
soberly sensible, than those which I conceived. Nor were my requirements
mercenary or presumptuous. I cared not for fortune; I asked nothing
from connections. My ambition was exclusively professional; it could be
served by no titled kindred, accelerated by no wealthy dower. I was
no slave to beauty. I did not seek in a wife the accomplishments of a
finishing-school teacher.

Having decided that the time had come to select my helpmate, I imagined
that I should find no difficulty in a choice