He had a very agreeable face, a fine head of hair, an indifferent shape, and a worse air; he was not, however, deficient in wit: a long residence in Italy had made him ceremonious in his commerce with men, and jealous in his connection with women: he had been much hated by the king; because he had been much beloved by Lady Castlemaine: it was reported that he had been in her good graces prior to her marriage; and as neither of them denied it, it was the more generally believed. He had paid his devoirs to the eldest daughter of the Duke of Ormond, while his heart was still taken up with his former passion: the king's love for Lady Castlemaine, and the advancement he expected from such an alliance, made him press the match with as much ardour as if he had been passionately in love: he had therefore married Lady Chesterfield without loving her, and had lived some time with her in such coolness as to leave her no room to doubt of his indifference. As she was endowed with great sensibility and delicacy, she suffered at this contempt: she was at first much affected with his behaviour, and afterwards enraged at it; and, when he began to give her proofs of his affection, she had the pleasure of convincing him of her indifference. They were upon this footing, when she resolved to cure Hamilton, as she had lately done her husband, of all his remaining tenderness for Lady Castlemaine. For her it was no difficult undertaking: the conversation of the one was disagreeable, from the unpolished state of her manners, her ill-timed pride, her uneven temper, and extravagant humours Lady Chesterfield, on the contrary, knew how to heighten her charms with all the bewitching attractions in the power of a woman to invent who wishes to make a conquest. Besides all this, she had greater opportunities of making advances to him than to any other: she lived at the Duke of Ormond's, at Whitehall, where Hamilton, as was said before, had free admittance at all hours: her extreme coldness, or rather the disgust which she showed for her husband's returning affection, wakened his natural inclination to jealousy: he suspected that she could not so very suddenly pass from anxiety to indifference for him, without some secret object of a new attachment; and, according to the maxim of all jealous husbands, he immediately put in practice all his experience and industry, in order to make a discovery, which was to destroy his own happiness. Hamilton, who knew his disposition, was, on the other hand, upon his guard, and the more he advanced in his intrigue, the more attentive was he to remove every degree of suspicion from the Earl's mind: he pretended to make him his confidant, in the most unguarded and open manner, of his passion for Lady Castlemaine: he complained of her caprice, and most earnestly desired his advice how to succeed with a person whose affections he alone had entirely possessed.