d marry; and, strange as it may seem, for love,--at least
for that brute-like love, of which alone he was capable. After a few
years of ill-usage on his side, and endurance on his wife's, they
parted. Tired of her person, and profiting by her gentleness of temper,
he sent her to an obscure corner of the country, to starve upon the
miserable pittance which was all he allowed her from his superfluities.
Even then--such is the effect of the showy proprieties of form and
word--Mr. Crauford sank not in the estimation of the world.

"It was easy to see," said the spectators of his domestic drama, "that
a man in temper so mild, in his business so honourable, so civil of
speech, so attentive to the stocks and the sermon, could not have
been the party to blame. One never knew the rights of matrimonial
disagreements, nor could sufficiently estimate the provoking disparities
of temper. Certainly Mrs. Crauford never did look in good humour, and
had not the open countenance of her husband; and certainly the very
excesses of Mr. Crauford betokened a generous warmth of heart, which the
sullenness of his conjugal partner might easily chill and revolt."

And thus, unquestioned and unblamed, Mr. Crauford walked onward in
his beaten way; and, secretly laughing at the toleration of the crowd,
continued at his luxurious villa the orgies of a passionless yet brutal
sensuality.

So far might the character of Richard Crauford find parallels in
hypocrisy and its success. Dive we now deeper into his soul. Possessed
of talents which, though of a secondary rank, were in that rank
consummate, Mr. Crauford could not be a villain by intuition or the
irregular bias of his nature: he was a villain upon a grander scale; he
was a villain upon system. Having little learning and less knowledge,
out of his profession his reflection expended itself upon apparently
obvious deductions from the great and mysterious book of life. He saw
vice prosperous in externals, and from this sight his conclusion was
drawn. "Vice," said he, "is not an obstacle to success; and if so, it
is at least a pleasanter road to it than your narrow and thorny ways of
virtue." But there are certain vices which require the mask of virtue,
and Crauford thought it easier to wear the mask than to school his soul
to the reality. So to the villain he added the hypocrite. He found the
success equalled his hopes, for he had both craft and genius; nor was he
naturally without the minor amiabil