o give reason for any one, but my
impertinent and foolish uncle, to impute such a folly to me; and he
had so behaved to me, that I cared not what _he_ thought.

"Then, what he read to me, here and there, as he pleased, gave me
reason to admire you for your generous opinion of one you had so much
seeming cause to be afraid of: he told me his apprehensions, from your
uncommon manner, that your mind was in some degree affected, and your
strange proposal of parting with a husband every one knows you so
dearly love: and we agreed to forbear seeing each other, and all
manner of correspondence, except by letter, for one month, till some
of my affairs were settled, which had been in great disorder, and were
in his kind management then; and I had not one relation, whom I cared
to trouble with them, because of their treatment of me on Mr. B.'s
account. And this, I told him, should not be neither, but through your
hands, and with your consent.

"And thus, Madam," said her ladyship, "have I told you the naked truth
of the whole affair. I have seen Mr. B. very seldom since: and when
I have, it has been either at a horse-race, in the open field, or at
some public diversion, by accident, where only distant civilities have
passed between us.

"I respect him greatly; you must allow me to say that. Except in the
article of permitting me to believe, for some time, that he was a
single gentleman, a fault he cannot be excused for, and which made me
heartily quarrel with him, when I first knew it, he has behaved to
me with so much generosity and honour, that I could have wished I
had been of his sex, since he had a lady so much more deserving than
myself; and then, had he had the same esteem for me, there never would
have been a more perfect friendship. I am now going," continued she,
"to embark for France, and shall pass a year or two in Italy; and then
I shall, I hope, return as solid, as grave, as circumspect, though not
so wise, as Mrs. B."

Thus the Countess concluded her narrative: I said, I was greatly
obliged to her for the honour of this visit, and the kind and
considerate occasion of it: but that Mr. B. had made me entirely happy
in every particular, and had done her ladyship the justice she so well
deserved, having taken upon himself the blame of passing as a single
man at his first acquaintance with her.

I added, that I could hope her ladyship might be prevented, by some
happy man, from leaving a kingdom, to which she was