is wealth. Nothing can
withstand us; nothing injure us; it is inexhaustible riches. So felt
Ferdinand Armine, though on the verge of a moral precipice. To-morrow!
what of to-morrow? Did to-morrow daunt him? Not a jot. He would wrestle
with to-morrow, laden as it might be with curses, and dash it to the
earth. It should not be a day; he would blot it out of the calendar
of time; he would effect a moral eclipse of its influence. He loved
Henrietta Temple. She should be his. Who could prevent him? Was he not
an Armine? Was he not the near descendant of that bold man who passed
his whole life in the voluptuous indulgence of his unrestrained
volition! Bravo! he willed it, and it should be done. Everything yields
to determination. What a fool! what a miserable craven fool had he been
to have frightened himself with the flimsy shadows of petty worldly
cares! He was born to follow his own pleasure; it was supreme; it was
absolute; he was a despot; he set everything and everybody at defiance;
and, filling a huge tumbler to the health of the great Sir Ferdinand, he
retired, glorious as an emperor.

On the whole, Ferdinand had not committed so great an indiscretion as
the reader, of course shocked, might at first imagine. For the first
time for some days he slept, and slept soundly. Next to wine, a
renovating slumber perhaps puts us in the best humour with our destiny.
Ferdinand awoke refreshed and sanguine, full of inventive life, which
soon developed itself in a flow of improbable conclusions. His most
rational scheme, however, appeared to consist in winning Henrietta
Temple, and turning pirate, or engaging in the service of some distant
and disturbed state. Why might he not free Greece, or revolutionize
Spain, or conquer the Brazils? Others had embarked in these bold
enterprises; men not more desperate than himself, and not better
qualified for the career. Young, courageous, a warrior by profession,
with a name of traditionary glory throughout the courts of Christendom,
perhaps even remembered in Asia, he seemed just the individual to carve
out a glorious heritage with his sword. And as for his parents, they
were not in the vale of years; let them dream on in easy obscurity, and
maintain themselves at Armine until he returned to redeem his hereditary
domain. All that was requisite was the concurrence of his adored
mistress. Perhaps, after all his foolish fears and all his petty
anxiety, he might live to replace upon her brow t