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rather abominably vain, and is not this the greatest injury done to our vanity? What think you, Sophia?"

"I don't know, indeed," answered Sophia, "I have never troubled myself with any of these deep contemplations; but I think the lady did very ill in communicating to you such a secret."

"And yet, my dear, this conduct is natural," replied Mrs. Fitzpatrick; "and when you have seen and read as much as myself, you will acknowledge it to be so."

"I am sorry to hear it is natural," returned Sophia; "for I want neither reading nor experience to convince me, that it is very dishonourable and very ill-natured: nay, it is surely as ill-bred to tell a husband or wife of the faults of each other, as to tell them of their own."

"Well," continued Mrs. Fitzpatrick, "my husband at last returned; and if I am thoroughly acquainted with my own. thoughts, I hated him now more than ever; but I despised him rather less: for certainly nothing so much weakens our contempt, as an injury done to our pride or our vanity.

"He now assumed a carriage to me so very different from what he had lately worn, and so nearly resembling his behaviour the first week of our marriage, that had I now had any spark of love remaining, he might, possibly, have rekindled my fondness for him. But though hatred may succeed to contempt, and may, perhaps, get the better of it, love, I believe, cannot. The truth is, the passion of love is too restless to remain contented, without the gratification which it receives from its object: and one can no more be inclined to love without loving, than we can have eyes without seeing. When a husband, therefore, ceases to be the object of this passion, it is most probable some other man-I say, my dear, if your husband grows indifferent to you-if you once come to despise him-I say, that is, if you have the passion of love in you-Lud! I have bewildered myself so-but one is apt, in these abstracted considerations, to lose the concatenation of ideas, as Mr. Locke says. In short, the truth isin short, I scarce know what it is; but as I was saying, my husband returned, and his behaviour, at first, greatly surprised

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me; but he soon acquainted me with the motive, and taught me to account for it. In a word, then, he had spent and lost all the ready money of my fortune; and as he could mortgage his own estate no deeper, he was now desirous to supply himself with cash for his extravagance, by selling a little estate of mine, which he could not do without my assistance; and to obtain this favour was the whole and sole motive of all the fondness which he now put on.

"With this I peremptorily refused to comply. I told him, and I told him truly, that had I been possessed of the Indies at our first marriage, he might have commanded it all for it had been a constant maxim with me, that where a woman disposes of her heart, she should always deposit her fortune; but as he had been so kind, long ago, to restore the former into my possession, I was resolved likewise to retain what little remained of the latter.

"I will not describe to you the passion into which these words, and the resolute air in which they were spoken, threw him nor will I trouble you with the whole scene which succeeded between us. Out came, you may be well assured, the story of the mistress; and out it did come, with all the embellishments which anger and disdain could bestow upon it.

"Mr. Fitzpatrick seemed a little thunderstruck with this, and more confused than I had seen him; though his ideas are always confused enough, heaven knows. He did not, however, endeavour to exculpate himself; but took a method which almost equally confounded me. What was this but recrimination! He affected to be jealous:--he may, for aught I know, be inclined enough to jealousy in his natural temper: nay, he must have had it from nature, or the devil must have put it into his head; for I defy all the world to cast a just aspersion on my character: nay, the most scandalous tongues have never dared censure my reputation. My fame, I thank heaven, hath been always as spotless as my life; and let falsehood itself accuse that, if it dare. No, my dear Graveairs, however provoked, however ill-treated, however injured in my love, I have firmly resolved never to

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give the least room for censure on this account.-And yet, my dear, there are some people so malicious, some tongues so venomous, that no innocence can escape them. The most undesigned word, the most accidental look, the least familiarity, the most innocent freedom, will be misconstrued, and magnified into I know not what, by some people. But I despise, my dear Graveairs, I despise all such slander. No such malice, I assure you, ever gave me an uneasy moment. No, no, I promise you I am above all that.-But where was I? O let me see, I told you my husband was jealous— And of whom, pray?-Why of whom but the lieutenant I mentioned to you before! He was obliged to resort above a year and more back, to find any object for this unaccountable passion, if indeed he really felt any such, and was not an arrant counterfeit, in order to abuse me.

"But I have tired you already with too many particulars. I will now bring my story to a very speedy conclusion. In short, then, after many scenes very unworthy to be repeated, in which my cousin engaged so heartily on my side, that Mr. Fitzpatrick at last turned her out of doors; when he found I was neither to be soothed nor bullied into compliance, he took a very violent method indeed. Perhaps you will conclude he beat me; but this, though he hath approached very near to it, he never actually did. He confined me to my room, without suffering me to have either pen, ink, paper, or book: and a servant every day made my bed, and brought me my food.

"When I had remained a week under this imprisonment, he made me a visit, and, with the voice of a schoolmaster, or, what is often much the same, of a tyrant, asked me, If I would yet comply? I answered very stoutly, That I would die first. Then so you shall, and be d-ned,' cries he: 'for you shall never go alive out of this room.'

"Here I remained a fortnight longer; and, to say the truth, my constancy was almost subdued, and I began to think of submission; when one day, in the absence of my husband, who was gone abroad for some short time, by the greatest good fortune in the world, an accident happened.

I-at the time when I began to give way to the utmost despair-every thing would be excusable at such a time. -at that very time I received--But it would take up an hour to tell you all particulars. In one word, then (for I I will not tire you with circumstances), gold, the common key to all padlocks, opened my door, and set me at liberty.

"I now made haste to Dublin, where I immediately procured a passage to England; and was proceeding to Bath in order to throw myself into the protection of my aunt, or of your father, or of any relation who would afford it me. My husband overtook me last night, at the inn where I lay, and which you left a few minutes before me; but I had the good luck to escape him, and to follow you.

"And thus, my dear, ends my history: a tragical one, I am sure, it is to myself; but, perhaps, I ought rather to apologise to you for its dulness."

Sophia heaved a deep sigh, and answered, "Indeed, Harriet, I pity you from my soul!--But what could you expect? Why, why, would you marry an Irishman?"

"Upon my word," replied her cousin, "your censure is unjust. There are, among the Irish, men of as much worth and honour as any among the English: nay, to speak the truth, generosity of spirit is rather more common among them. I have known some examples there, too, of good husbands; and I believe these are not very plenty in England. Ask me, rather, what I could expect when I married a fool; and I will tell you a solemn truth; I did not know him to be so."-"Can no man," said Sophia, in a very low and altered voice, "do you think, make a bad husband, who is not a fool?” "That," answered the other, "is too general a negative; but none, I believe, is so likely as a fool to prove so. Among my acquaintance, the silliest fellows are the worst husbands; and I will venture to assert, as a fact, that a man of sense rarely behaves very ill to a wife, who deserves very well."

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CHAPTER VIII.

A DREADFUL ALARM IN THE INN, WITH THE ARRIVAL OF
AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND OF MRS. FITZPATRICK.

SOPHIA now, at the desire of her cousin, related-not what follows, but what hath gone before in this history: for which reason the reader will, I suppose, excuse me for not repeating it over again.

One remark, however, I cannot forbear making on her narrative, namely, that she made no more mention of Jones, from the beginning to the end, than if there had been no such person alive. This I will neither endeavour to account for, nor to excuse. Indeed, if this may be called a kind of dishonesty, it seems the more inexcusable, from the apparent openness and explicit sincerity of the other lady.-But so it was.

Just as Sophia arrived at the conclusion of her story, there arrived in the room, where the two ladies were sitting, a noise, not unlike, in loudness, to that of a pack of hounds just let out from their kennel; nor, in shrillness, to cats, when caterwauling; or to screech-owls; or, indeed, more like (for what animal can resemble a human voice?) to those sounds, which, in the pleasant mansions of that gate which seems to derive its name from a duplicity of tongues, issue from the mouths, and sometimes from the nostrils of those fair river nymphs, ycleped of old the Naïades; in the vulgar tongue translated oyster-wenches: for when, instead of the ancient libations of milk and honey and oil, the rich distillation from the juniperberry, or, perhaps, from malt, hath, by the early devotion of their votaries, been poured forth in great abundance, should any daring tongue with unhallowed license profane, i.e. depreciate the delicate fat Milton oyster, the plaice sound and firm, the flounder as much alive as when in the water, the shrimp as big as a prawn, the fine cod alive but a few hours ago, or any other of the various treasures which those water-deities, who fish the sea and rivers, have committed VOL. II.

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