The amusement
his conversation afforded me, made it easy to comply with
my husband's request, to endeavour to render our house
agreeable to him.
"His attentions became more pointed; but, as I was not of the
number of women, whose virtue, as it is termed, immediately takes
alarm, I endeavoured, rather by raillery than serious expostulation,
to give a different turn to his conversation. He assumed a new mode
of attack, and I was, for a while, the dupe of his pretended friendship.
"I had, merely in the style of _badinage_, boasted of my
conquest, and repeated his lover-like compliments to my husband.
But he begged me, for God's sake, not to affront his friend, or I
should destroy all his projects, and be his ruin. Had I had more
affection for my husband, I should have expressed my contempt of
this time-serving politeness: now I imagined that I only felt pity;
yet it would have puzzled a casuist to point out in what the exact
difference consisted.
"This friend began now, in confidence, to discover to me the
real state of my husband's affairs.
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