own name.  After a short visit to my wife, in whose constitution decline had now set in, and whom I ought not to have left, I returned to parliament, more than ever ambitious for distinction.  I must do myself the justice to say that I loved her tenderly; but at the same time I felt disappointed at not having a family.  On returning to London I found that my brother, who had opposed all notion of my marriage with peculiar bitterness, and never spoke of my wife with respect, was himself about to be married to one of the most fascinating creatures on whom my eyes ever rested; and, what was equally agreeable, she had an immense fortune in her own right, and was, besides, of a high and distinguished family.  She was beautiful, she was rich—­she was, alas! ambitious.  Well, we met, we conversed, we compared minds with each other; we sang together, we danced together, until at length we began to feel that the absence of the one caused an unusual depression in the other.  I was said to be one of the most eloquent commoners of the day—­her family were powerful—­my wife was in a decline, and recovery hopeless.  Here, then, was a career for ambition; but that was not all.  I was poor—­embarrassed almost beyond hope—­on the very verge of ruin.  Indeed, so poor, that it was as much owing to the inability of maintaining my wife in her proper rank, as to fear of my friends and the world, that I did not publicly acknowledge her.  But why dwell on this?  I loved the woman whose heart and thought had belonged to my brother—­loved her to madness; and soon perceived that the passion was mutual.  I had not, however, breathed a syllable of love, nor was it ever my intention to do so.  My brother, however, was gradually thrown off, treated with coldness, and ultimately with disdain, while no one suspected the cause.  It is painful to dwell upon subsequent occurrences.  My brother grew jealous, and, being a high-spirited young man, released Lady Emily from her engagement.  I was mad with love; and this conduct, honorable and manly as it was in him, occasioned an explanation between me and Lady Emily, in which, weak and vacillating as I was, in the frenzy of the moment I disclosed, avowed my passion, and—­but why proceed?  We loved each other, not ’wisely, but too well.’  My brother sought and obtained a foreign lucrative appointment, and left the country in a state of mind which it is very difficult to describe.  He refused to see me on his departure, and I have never seen him since.

“The human heart, my young friend, is a great mystery.  I now attached myself to Lady Emily, and was about to disclose my marriage to her; but as the state of my wife’s health was hopeless, I declined to do so, in the expectation that a little time might set me free.  My wife was then living in a remote little village in the south of France; most of her relatives were dead, and those who survived were at the time living in a part of Connaught, Galway, to which any kind of intelligence, much less foreign,