ctable young man who was; a young man in
Smithfield Market with whom she had walked out, and you could never have
told. Which means that this young man disguised himself so subtly on
Sunday to go into Society, that none would have guessed that he passed
the week in contact with grease and blood, and dared to twist the tails
of bullocks in revolt against their fate, shrinking naturally from the
axe. His intentions were, nevertheless, honourable, and Polly, the
barmaid at the One Tun Inn, honoured them, while her affections were
disposed towards her Australian suitor whose intentions were not. The
young reprobate, however, had to climb down; but he made his surrender
conditional on one thing--that his marriage with Polly should remain a
secret. No doubt parallel enterprises would have been interrupted by its
publication. Anyhow, his mother never knew of his marriage, nor set eyes
on her daughter-in-law.

His marriage was, in fact, merely a means to an end, and was a most
reluctant concession to circumstances on his part. It was true he
deprived himself of all chance of offering the same terms again for the
same goods, unless, indeed, he ran the risks of a bigamist. But what can
a man do under such circumstances? He is what he is, and it does seem a
pity sometimes that he was made in the image of God, whether for God's
sake or his own. Young Daverill's end attained, he flung away his prize
almost without a term of intermediate neglect to save his face. She,
poor soul, who had lived under the impression that all men were "like
that" but that honourable marriage "reformed" them, was desperate at
first when she found her mistake. Her "lawful husband," having attained
his end, announced his weariness of lawful marriage with a candour even
coarser than that of Browning's less lawful possessor of Love--he who
"half sighed a smile in a yawn, as 'twere." He replied, to all Polly's
passionate claims to him as a legal right, and hints that she could and
would enforce her position:--"Try it on, Poll--you and your lawyers!"
And, indeed, we have never been able to learn how the strong arm of the
Law enforces marital obligations; barring mere cash payments, of which
Polly's attitude was quite oblivious. Moreover, he was at that time
prepared with money, and did actually maintain his wife up to the point
of every possible legal compulsion until the end of his solvency, not a
very long period.

For his life-drama, or the first act of it,