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, giving 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.
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