"Sir Boyvill, then Mr. Neville, for he inherited his baronetcy only a few years ago, had advanced beyond middle age when he first married. He was a man of the world, and of pleasure; and being also clever, handsome, and rich, had great success in the circles of fashion. He was often involved in liaisons with ladies, whose names were rife among the last generation for loving notoriety and amusement better than duty and honour. As he made a considerable figure, he conceived that he had a right to entertain a high opinion of himself, and not without some foundation; his good sayings were repeated; his songs were set to music, and sung with enthusiasm in his own set--he was courted and feared. Favoured by women, imitated by men, he reached the zenith of a system, any connexion with which is considered as enviable. "He was some five-and-forty when he fell in love, and married. Like many dissipated men, he had a mean idea of female virtue--and especially disbelieved that any portion of it was to be found in London; so he married a country girl, without fortune, but with beauty and attractions sufficient to justify his choice. I never saw his lady; but several of her early friends have described her to me. She was something like Gerard--yet how unlike! In the colour of the eyes and hair, and the formation of the features, they resembled; but the expression was wholly different. Her clear complexion was tinged by a pure blood, that ebbed and flowed rapidly in her veins, driven by the pulsations of her soul, rather than of her body. Her large dark eyes were irresistibly brilliant; and opened their lids on the spectator with an effect such as the sun has, when it drops majestically below a heavy cloud, and dazzles the beholder with its unexpected beams. She was vivacious--nay, wild of spirit; but though raised far above the dull monotony of common life by her exuberant joyousness of soul, yet every thought and act was ruled by a pure unsullied heart. Her impulses were keen and imperative; her sensibility, true to the touch of nature, was tremblingly alive; but their more dangerous tendencies were guarded by excellent principles, and a truth never shadowed by a cloud. Her generous and confiding heart might be duped--might spring forward too eagerly--and she might be imprudent; but she was never false. An ingenuous confession of error, if ever she fell into it, purged away all suspicion that anything mysterious or forbidden lurked in her most thoughtless acts. Other women, who, like her, are keenly sensitive, and who are driven by ungovernable spirits to do what they afterward repent, and are endowed, as she was, with an aptitude to shame when rebuked, guard their dignity or their fears by falsehood; and while their conduct is essentially innocent, immesh themselves in such a web of deceit, as not only renders them absolutely criminal in the eyes of those who detect them, but in the end hardens and perverts their better nature. Alithea Neville never