Had he ever known the veritable passion after Browny sank from his ken?
Let it be confessed, never.

His first love was his only true love, despite one shuddering episode, oddly humiliating to recollect, though he had not behaved badly.

So, then, by right of his passion, thus did eternal justice rule it: that Browny belonged, to Matey Weyburn, Aminta to Lord Ormont.

Aminta was a lady blooming in the flesh, Browny was the past's pale phantom; for which reason he could call her his own, without harm done to any one, and with his usual appetite for dinner, breakfast, lunch, whatever the meal supplied by the hour.
It would somewhat alarmingly have got to Mr.Weyburn's conscience through a disturbance of his balance, telling him that he was on a perilous road, if his relish for food had been blunted.

He had his axiom on the subject, and he was wrong in the general instance, for the appetites of rogues and ogres are not known to fail.