t me. This gave the lie to any of those maligners who said I wished
to make a prisoner of my wife. The fact is, that, knowing her levity,
and seeing the insane dislike to me and mine which had now begun to
supersede what, perhaps, had been an equally insane fondness for me, I
was bound to be on my guard that she should not give me the slip. Had
she left me, I was ruined the next day. This (which my mother knew)
compelled us to keep a tight watch over her; but as for imprisoning her,
I repel the imputation with scorn. Every man imprisons his wife to a
certain degree; the world would be in a pretty condition if women were
allowed to quit home and return to it whenever they had a mind. In
watching over my wife, Lady Lyndon, I did no more than exercise the
legitimate authority which awards honour and obedience to every husband.

Such, however, is female artifice, that, in spite of all my watchfulness
in guarding her, it is probable my Lady would have given me the slip,
had I not had quite as acute a person as herself as my ally: for, as
the proverb says that 'the best way to catch one thief is to set another
after him,' so the best way to get the better of a woman is to engage
one of her own artful sex to guard her. One would have thought that,
followed as she was, all her letters read, and all her acquaintances
strictly watched by me, living in a remote part of Ireland away from her
family, Lady Lyndon could have had no chance of communicating with
her allies, or of making her wrongs, as she was pleased to call them,
public; and yet, for a while, she carried on a correspondence under my
very nose, and acutely organised a conspiracy for flying from me; as
shall be told.

She always had an inordinate passion for dress, and, as she was never
thwarted in any whimsey she had of this kind (for I spared no money to
gratify her, and among my debts are milliners' bills to the amount of
many thousands), boxes used to pass continually to and fro from Dublin,
with all sorts of dresses, caps, flounces, and furbelows, as her fancy
dictated. With these would come letters from her milliner, in answer to
numerous similar injunctions from my Lady; all of which passed through
my hands, without the least suspicion, for some time. And yet in these
very papers, by the easy means of sympathetic ink, were contained all
her Ladyship's correspondence; and Heaven knows (for it was some time,
as I have said, before I discovered the trick) what charge