The publican took the opportunity to present my hero with a
bill of several pounds for bottles of spirits supplied to his wife, and
what with his wife's confinement and the way business had fallen off, he
had not the money to pay with, for the sum exceeded the remnant of his
savings.
He came to me--not for money, but to tell me his miserable story. I had
seen for some time that there was something wrong, and had suspected
pretty shrewdly what the matter was, but of course I said nothing. Ernest
and I had been growing apart for some time. I was vexed at his having
married, and he knew I was vexed, though I did my best to hide it.
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage--but they
are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends. The rift in
friendship which invariably makes its appearance on the marriage of
either of the parties to it was fast widening, as it no less invariably
does, into the great gulf which is fixed between the married and the
unmarried, and I was beginning to leave my _protege_ to a fate with which
I had neither right nor power to meddle. In fact I had begun to feel him
rather a burden; I did not so much mind this when I could be of use, but
I grudged it when I could be of none.
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