If, in some paroxysm of
senile folly, I should fall in love to-morrow, I shall still try and
think I have acquired the fee-simple of my charmer's heart;--not that
I am only a tenant, on a short lease, of an old battered furnished
apartment, where the dingy old wine-glasses have been clouded by scores
of pairs of lips, and the tumbled old sofas are muddy with the last
lodger's boots. Dear, dear nymph! Being beloved and beautiful! Suppose I
had a little passing passion for Glycera (and her complexion really
was as pure as splendent Parian marble); suppose you had a fancy for
Telephus, and his low collars and absurd neck;--those follies are all
over now, aren't they? We love each other for good now, don't we? Yes,
for ever; and Glycera may go to Bath, and Telephus take his cervicem
roseam to Jack Ketch, n'est-ce pas?

No. We never think of changing, my dear. However winds blow, or time
flies, or spoons stir, our potage, which is now so piping hot, will
never get cold. Passing fancies we may have allowed ourselves in former
days; and really your infatuation for Telephus (don't frown so, my
darling creature! and make the wrinkles in your forehead worse)--I
say, really it was the talk of the whole town; and as for Glycera, she
behaved confoundedly ill to me. Well, well, now that we understand each
other, it is for ever that our hearts are united, and we can look at Sir
Cresswell Cresswell, and snap our fingers at his wig. But this Maria of
the last century was a woman of an ill-regulated mind. You, my love, who
know the world, know that in the course of this lady's career a great
deal must have passed that would not bear the light, or edify in the
telling. You know (not, my dear creature, that I mean you have any
experience; but you have heard people say--you have heard your mother
say) that an old flirt, when she has done playing the fool with
one passion, will play the fool with another; that flirting is like
drinking; and the brandy being drunk up, you--no, not you--Glycera--the
brandy being drunk up, Glycera, who has taken to drinking, will fall
upon the gin. So, if Maria Esmond has found a successor for Harry
Warrington, and set up a new sultan in the precious empire of her heart,
what, after all, could you expect from her? That territory was like
the Low Countries, accustomed to being conquered, and for ever open to
invasion.

And Maria's present enslaver was no other than Mr. Geoghegan or Hagan,
the young actor who h