Besides, in time, like those people who habitually take cordials to
raise their spirits, she will want an intrigue to give life to her
thoughts, having lost all relish for pleasures that are not highly
seasoned by hope or fear.
Sometimes married women act still more audaciously; I will mention
an instance.
A woman of quality, notorious for her gallantries, though as she
still lived with her husband, nobody chose to place her in the class
where she ought to have been placed, made a point of treating with the
most insulting contempt a poor timid creature, abashed by a sense of
her former weakness, whom a neighbouring gentleman had seduced and
afterwards married. This woman had actually confounded virtue with
reputation; and, I do believe, valued herself on the propriety of
her behaviour before marriage, though when once settled to the
satisfaction of her family, she and her lord were equally
faithless,- so that the half alive heir to an immense estate came from
heaven knows where!
To view this subject in another light.
I have known a number of women who, if they did not love their
husbands, loved nobody else, give themselves entirely up to vanity and
dissipation, neglecting every domestic duty; nay, even squandering
away all the money which should have been saved for their helpless
younger children, yet have plumed themselves on their unsullied
reputation, as if the whole compass of their duty as wives and mothers
was only to preserve it. Whilst other indolent women, neglecting every
personal duty, have thought that they deserved their husbands'
affection, because, forsooth, they acted in this respect with
propriety.
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