The adventure I was about to engage in suggested to my mind a thousand associations, into which many of the scenes I have already narrated entered.

I thought how frequently I had myself been on the verge of that state which Curzon was about to try, and how it always happened that when nearest to success, failure had intervened.

From my very school-boy days my love adventures had the same unfortunate abruptness in their issue; and there seemed to be something very like a fatality in the invariable unsuccess of my efforts at marriage.

I feared, too, that my friend Curzon had placed himself in very unfortunate hands--if augury were to be relied upon.

Something will surely happen, thought I, from my confounded ill luck, and all will be blown up.