He had ill-used his wife, and had continued a long-continued liaison with a complaisant friend.
This had lasted some twenty years of his life, and had been to him an intolerable burden.

He had come to see the necessity of employing his good looks, his conversational powers, and his excellent manners on a second marriage which might be lucrative; but the complaisant lady had stood in his way.

Perhaps there had been a little cowardice on his part; but at any rate he had hitherto failed.

The season for such a mode of relief was not, however, as yet clean gone with him, and he was still on the look out.

There are women always in the market ready to buy for themselves the right to hang on the arm of a real gentleman.