took what you would call a most English strain, about domestic felicity; and he spoke in a tone of such strong personal feeling of the cruel opposition of circumstance to affection! I have arranged his little romance in my own mind. Has he not for years 'dragged at each remove the lengthened chain' of an early and vain attachment—too poor to marry?"
"Nothing like the couleur de rose of the imagination—I wish it could be condensed into curtains for my dressing-room. This gentleman, who has so excited your sympathy as too poor to marry, has only about ten thousand a-year; but, as he once observed, wives and servants are so expensive now-a-days, they require almost as much as one's self."
"Who is that gentleman who has just entered, with such an air of captivating condescension? He always gives me the idea of having stepped out of the Spectator—one of the Cleontes and Orlandos of other days, whose very bow annihilated one's peace of mind. I have a vision of him, with lace ruffles, and his mistress's portrait on his snuff-box—keeping a portfolio of billets doux, and talking of the last sweet creature that died for him, with a 'Well, it was really too cruel!'"
