The Heart-Fiend Finds an Echo from the Fiend Without

And a spectacle it was! Mrs. Clifford, about to become Mrs.
Delaney, was determined that the change in her situation should
be distinguished by becoming eclat. Always a silly woman, fond of
extravagance and show, she prepared to celebrate an occasion of the
greatest folly in a style of greater extravagance than ever. She
accordingly collected as many of her former numerous acquaintances
as were still willing to appear within a circle in which wealth
was no longer to be found. Her house was small, but, as has been
elsewhere stated in this narrative, she had made it smaller by
stuffing it with the massive and costly furniture which had been
less out of place in her former splendid mansion, and had there much
better accorded with her fortunes. She now still further stuffed
it with her guests. Of course, many of those present, came only to
make merry at her expense.

Her husband was almost entirely unknown
to any of them; and it was enough to settle his pretensions in
every mind, that, in the vigor of his youth, a really fine-looking,
well-made person of twenty-five, he was about to connect himself,
in marriage, with a haggard old woman of fifty, whose personal
charms, never very great, were nearly all gone; and whose mind and
manners, the grace of youth being no more, were so very deficient
in all those qualities which might commend one to a husband. So
far as externals went, Mr. Delaney was a very proper man. He behaved
with sufficient decorum, and unexpected modesty; and went through
the ordeal as composedly as if the occurrence had been frequently
before familiar; as indeed we shall discover in the sequel, was
certainly the case. But this does not concern us now.