All spoke to me of Lady Merton; not as I loved to picture her to myself, pale and sorrowful, and brooding over my image; but gay, dissipated, the dispenser of smiles, the prototype of joy.

I contrasted this account of her with the melancholy and gloom of my own feelings, and I resented her seeming happiness as an insult to myself.
In this angry and fretful mood I returned to London.

My empire was soon resumed; and now, Linden, comes the most sickening part of my confessions.

Vanity is a growing and insatiable disease: what seems to its desires as wealth to-day, to-morrow it rejects as poverty.

I was at first contented to know that I was beloved; by degrees, slow, yet sure, I desired that others should know it also.