a jam-pot; to a “salvage”, or green, man caught in a web of nymphs and made to go the paces.  Willoughby was inexhaustible in the happy similes he poured out to Miss Durham across the lines of Sir Roger de Coverley, and they were not forgotten, they procured him a reputation as a convivial sparkler.  Rumour went the round that he intended to give Laetitia to Vernon for good, when he could decide to take Miss Durham to himself; his generosity was famous; but that decision, though the rope was in the form of a knot, seemed reluctant for the conclusive close haul; it preferred the state of slackness; and if he courted Laetitia on behalf of his cousin, his cousinly love must have been greater than his passion, one had to suppose.  He was generous enough for it, or for marrying the portionless girl himself.

There was a story of a brilliant young widow of our aristocracy who had very nearly snared him.  Why should he object to marry into our aristocracy?  Mrs. Mountstuart asked him, and he replied that the girls of that class have no money, and he doubted the quality of their blood.  He had his eyes awake.  His duty to his House was a foremost thought with him, and for such a reason he may have been more anxious to give the slim and not robust Laetitia to Vernon than accede to his personal inclination.  The mention of the widow singularly offended him, notwithstanding the high rank of the lady named.  “A widow?” he said.  “I!” He spoke to a widow; an oldish one truly; but his wrath at the suggestion of his union with a widow led him to be for the moment oblivious of the minor shades of good taste.  He desired Mrs. Mountstuart to contradict the story in positive terms.  He repeated his desire; he was urgent to have it contradicted, and said again, “A widow!” straightening his whole figure to the erectness of the letter I. She was a widow unmarried a second time, and it has been known of the stedfast women who retain the name of their first husband, or do not hamper his title with a little new squire at their skirts, that they can partially approve the objections indicated by Sir Willoughby.  They are thinking of themselves when they do so, and they will rarely say, “I might have married;” rarely within them will they avow that, with their permission, it might have been.  They can catch an idea of a gentleman’s view of the widow’s cap.  But a niceness that could feel sharply wounded by the simple rumour of his alliance with the young relict of an earl was mystifying.  Sir Willoughby unbent.  His military letter I took a careless glance at itself lounging idly and proudly at ease in the glass of his mind, decked with a wanton wreath, as he dropped a hint, generously vague, just to show the origin of the rumour, and the excellent basis it had for not being credited.  He was chidden.  Mrs. Mountstuart read him a lecture.  She was however able to contradict the tale of the young countess.  “There is no fear of his marrying her, my dears.”