im, for the airs he
gave himself?--Marry! No, not for the world; what man of sense would
bear the insolences, the petulances, the expensiveness of a wife! He
could not for the heart of him think it tolerable, that a woman of equal
rank and fortune, and, as it might happen, superior talents to his own,
should look upon herself to have a right to share the benefit of that
fortune which she brought him.

So, after he had fluttered about the town for two or three years, in all
which time he had a better opinion of himself than any body else had,
what does he do, but enter upon an affair with his fencing-master's
daughter?

He succeeds; takes private lodgings for her at Hackney; visits her by
stealth; both of them tender of reputations that were extremely tender,
but which neither had quite given up; for rakes of either sex are always
the last to condemn or cry down themselves: visited by nobody, nor
visiting: the life of a thief, or of a man bested by creditors, afraid to
look out of his own house, or to be seen abroad with her. And thus went
on for twelve years, and, though he had a good estate, hardly making both
ends meet; for though no glare, there was no economy; and, beside, he had
ever year a child, and very fond of his children was he. But none of
them lived above three years. And being now, on the death of the
dozenth, grown as dully sober, as if he had been a real husband, his good
Mrs. Thomas (for he had not permitted her to take his own name) prevailed
upon him to think the loss of their children a judgment upon the parents
for their wicked way of life; [a time will come, Lovelace, if we live to
advanced years, in which reflection will take hold of the enfeebled
mind;] and then it was not difficult for his woman to induce him, by way
of compounding with Heaven, to marry her. When this was done, he had
leisure to sit down, and contemplate; an to recollect the many offers of
persons of family and fortune to which he had declined in the prime of
life: his expenses equal at least: his reputation not only less, but
lost: his enjoyments stolen: his partnership unequal, and such as he had
always been ashamed of. But the woman said, that after twelve or
thirteen years' cohabitation, Tony did an honest thing by her. And that
was all my poor cousin got by making his old mistress his new wife--not a
drum, not a trumpet, not a fife, not a tabret, nor the expectation of a
new joy, to animate him on!

What Belton w