Occasionally, indeed, men do love fools in an enduring fashion, which is perhaps the most evil fate that can be laid upon them.

For what can be worse than to waste what is deep and real upon a thing of flesh without a soul, an empty, painted bubble, which evades the hand, or bursts if it is grasped?
Those are the real unfortunates, who have sold themselves for a mess of potage, that for the most part they are never even allowed to eat, since before the bell rings it has probably been deposited by heaven knows what hand of Circumstance in someone else's plate, or gone stale and been thrown away.
Godfrey was not one of these, because the hand of Circumstance had managed his affairs otherwise.

Isobel was no mess of potage, but with all her faults and failings, a fair and great inheritance for him who could take seisin of her.

Still, as he believed, she had first treated him badly, then utterly neglected him whose pride she had outraged, by not even taking the trouble to write him a letter, and finally, had vanished away.

And he was young, with manhood advancing in his veins, like the pulse of spring, and women are many in the world, some of whom have pretty faces and proper figures.