ural and sincere, endowed with a ready wit and good reasoning
powers. She had never been in love, and she had only married to please
Lady Montagu. She only wrote to her mother, and to please her I read the
letters. They were full of filial piety, and were admirably written.

One day the fancy took me to ask to read the letters her mother wrote in
reply. "She never replies," said she, "For an excellent reason, namely,
that she cannot write. I thought she was dead when I came back from
England, and it was a happy surprise to find her in perfect health when I
got to Lausanne."

"Who came with you from England?"

"Nobody."

"I can't credit that. Young, beautiful, well dressed, obliged to
associate casually with all kinds of people, young men and profligates
(for there are such everywhere), how did you manage to defend yourself?"

"Defend myself? I never needed to do so. The best plan for a young woman
is never to stare at any man, to pretend not to hear certain questions
and certainly not to answer them, to sleep by herself in a room where
there is a lock and key, or with the landlady when possible. When a girl
has travelling adventures, one may safely say that she has courted them,
for it is easy to be discreet in all countries if one wishes."

She spoke justly. She assured me that she had never had an adventure and
had never tripped, as she was fortunate enough not to be of an amorous
disposition. Her naive stories, her freedom from prudery, and her sallies
full of wit and good sense, amused me from morning till night, and we
sometimes thoued each other; this was going rather far, and should have
shewn us that we were on the brink of the precipice. She talked with much
admiration of the charms of Madame, and shewed the liveliest interest in
my stories of amorous adventure. When I got on risky ground, I would make
as if I would fain spare her all unseemly details, but she begged me so
gracefully to hide nothing, that I found myself obliged to satisfy her;
but when my descriptions became so faithful as almost to set us on fire,
she would burst into a laugh, put her hand over my mouth, and fly like a
hunted gazelle to her room, and then lock herself in. One day I asked her
why she did so, and she answered, "To hinder you from coming to ask me
for what I could not refuse you at such moments."

The day before that on which M. and Madame and M. de Chavigni came to
dine with me, she asked me if I had had any amorous advent