CHAPTER VI.
"THE LADIES THERE MUST NEEDS BE ROOKS."
Mr. Durnford went back to London and worked hard in the senate and in his study, eschewing all those scenes of pleasure and dissipation which had once been his natural atmosphere. Lord Lavendale remonstrated with him for having turned hermit and forsaken his friend.
"Thou wert once as my twin brother, Herrick," he said, "but thou art now as some over-wise cousin, too sober and industrious to be on good terms with folly."
"I am in love, Jack, and I have a serious purpose in this life which gives strength to resolution and sweetens labour."
"Joseph Addison himself, the Christian philosopher, never pronounced sounder wisdom."
"Alas, Lavendale, I wish with all my heart you could find one to love whose mere eidolon should be strong enough to guard and guide you."
"To keep my feet from Chocolate Houses and my tongue from libertine discourse, eh, Herrick? Nay, old friend, there is no such woman. The one I love is of the world, worldly. Were she free to wed me, I would do all that man dare do to win her: but she is not free, and I can but amuse myself in the paths of foolishness."
"You are ruining your health, wasting your fortune, and I doubt if even at this cost you have bought happiness."
"No, Herrick, it is not to be bought so cheap. 'Tis a thing I have never known since my first youth, when I began to find out the inside of the apples of Sodom. Dust and ashes, friend: life is all dust and ashes, when once the curiosity of youth is satisfied and the novelty of sinful pleasures is worn off, if you call it sinful to drink and play deep, and to love the company of handsome unscrupulous women, which I do not."