worse air; he was not, however, deficient in wit: a long residence
in Italy had made him ceremonious in his commerce with men, and jealous
in his connection with women: he had been much hated by the king; because
he had been much beloved by Lady Castlemaine: it was reported that he had
been in her good graces prior to her marriage; and as neither of them
denied it, it was the more generally believed.

He had paid his devoirs to the eldest daughter of the Duke of Ormond,
while his heart was still taken up with his former passion: the king's
love for Lady Castlemaine, and the advancement he expected from such an
alliance, made him press the match with as much ardour as if he had been
passionately in love: he had therefore married Lady Chesterfield without
loving her, and had lived some time with her in such coolness as to leave
her no room to doubt of his indifference. As she was endowed with great
sensibility and delicacy, she suffered at this contempt: she was at first
much affected with his behaviour, and afterwards enraged at it; and, when
he began to give her proofs of his affection, she had the pleasure of
convincing him of her indifference.

They were upon this footing, when she resolved to cure Hamilton, as she
had lately done her husband, of all his remaining tenderness for Lady
Castlemaine. For her it was no difficult undertaking: the conversation
of the one was disagreeable, from the unpolished state of her manners,
her ill-timed pride, her uneven temper, and extravagant humours Lady
Chesterfield, on the contrary, knew how to heighten her charms with all
the bewitching attractions in the power of a woman to invent who wishes
to make a conquest.

Besides all this, she had greater opportunities of making advances to him
than to any other: she lived at the Duke of Ormond's, at Whitehall, where
Hamilton, as was said before, had free admittance at all hours: her
extreme coldness, or rather the disgust which she showed for her
husband's returning affection, wakened his natural inclination to
jealousy: he suspected that she could not so very suddenly pass from
anxiety to indifference for him, without some secret object of a new
attachment; and, according to the maxim of all jealous husbands, he
immediately put in practice all his experience and industry, in order to
make a discovery, which was to destroy his own happiness.

Hamilton, who knew his disposition, was, on the other hand, upon his
guard, and the more he