him. They do
say he lived with the girl at the time he was at college, and married
her at last because her brother threatened to kick him."

"Nonsense, Planner."

"Why nonsense? More than half the marriages you hear of are scarcely a
whit better. What are the rules for a correct match? Who obeys them?
Where do you ever hear, now-a-days, of a proper marriage? People are
inconsistent in this respect as in other things. A beauty marries a
beast. A philosopher weds a fool. They can't tell you why, but they do
it. It's the perversity of human nature."

"I shall look sharp after Brammel."

"Take my advice, Michael, and look after the mines. Brammel can take
care of himself, or his wife and brother-in-law can do it. The timber on
the property will realize the purchase money."

"Well, we shall see; but here is Mr Bellamy. Mind you write to me, and
be explicit and particular."

"I shall do it, Michael."

"And mark, Planner; prudence--prudence."

And so saying, Michael advanced to Bellamy with a smiling countenance.
An hour afterwards, both he and his lovely bride were comfortably seated
in a post-chaise and four, admiring the garden-land of Kent, and
speeding to Dover fast as their horses could carry them.

CHAPTER III.

A SWEET COUPLE.

The very emphatic and somewhat vulgar expression of Mr Planner, was by
no means ill-chosen to express the character of Augustus Theodore
Brammel. He had been lovingly spoiled from his cradle--humoured and
ruined with the most praiseworthy care and perseverance. His
affectionate parents had studiously neglected the few goodly shoots
which the youth had brought into the world with him, and had embarked
all their energies in the cultivation of the weeds that grew noxious and
numerous around the unhappy boy's heart. His mother lived to see her
darling expelled from Eton--the father to see much worse, and yet not
the worst that the hopeful one was doomed to undergo. Gross vices, if
not redeemed, are rendered less hideous by intellectual power and
brilliancy. Associated with impotency and ignorance, they are disgusting
beyond expression. Augustus Brammel was the most sensual and
self-engrossed of men--the most idle and dissipated; and, as if these were
not enough to render him an object of the deepest aversion, he was as
self-willed, thick-headed, overbearing a dunce as ever moved a man to
that contempt "which wisdom holds unlawful ever;" and Brammel was not
only a fool, but a conceit