He figures
to himself all the sacrifices a woman of sensibility must make,
and every situation in which his imagination places her, touches
his heart, and fires his passions. Longing to take to his bosom
the shorn lamb, and bid the drooping buds of hope revive, benevolence
changes into passion: and should he then discover that he is beloved,
honour binds him fast, though foreseeing that he may afterwards be
obliged to pay severe damages to the man, who never appeared to
value his wife's society, till he found that there was a chance of
his being indemnified for the loss of it.
"Such are the partial laws enacted by men; for, only to lay
a stress on the dependent state of a woman in the grand question
of the comforts arising from the possession of property, she is
[even in this article] much more injured by the loss of the husband's
affection, than he by that of his wife; yet where is she, condemned
to the solitude of a deserted home, to look for a compensation from
the woman, who seduces him from her? She cannot drive an unfaithful
husband from his house, nor separate, or tear, his children from
him, however culpable he may be; and he, still the master of his
own fate, enjoys the smiles of a world, that would brand her with
infamy, did she, seeking consolation, venture to retaliate.
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