minor comforts about him; besides, it was the greater contrast to his single life in chambers.
True, he married a girl without money; but then, as he calculated, she could make no demands for extra expences, prefacing each with "you should remember, sir, the fortune I brought you." Lastly, as the settlements were in his own power, he calculated that she would be more dependant on his good will and pleasure. In this he was somewhat mistaken; still he was fond of her after his fashion—she could flatter and persuade him a little. He took an odd sort of pride in her conquests; he considered them as so many proofs of his own good taste. Jealous he was not, for he only calculated, he never felt; and his sum total of the matter was, that his wife had too much to lose if she ran away from him. In some things he restrained her expences, while in others he was positively lavish. He objected to lace at two or three guineas a yard—that would wear out soon, and, once gone, "is gone for ever;" but he would load her with diamonds. The great object of his life was a peerage; the house of commons was too turbulent for a man of his quiet habits, but there was a repose in that of lords which suited him exactly. Besides, he felt the mercantile value of his title as a speculation—it told when he was elected chairman of a committee, or one of the directors of an insurance company.
It was wonderful how he had increased his private fortune; but in wealth, as with St. Denis, cest la pre-
