of my
obedience and sincerity--I think--I married--to take off that
restraint that lay upon my pleasures, while I was a single woman.

"Lord T. How, madam, is any woman under less restraint after marriage
than before it?

"Lady T. O my lord! my lord! they are quite different creatures! Wives
have infinite liberties in life that would be terrible in an unmarried
woman to take.

"Lord T. Name one.

"Lady T. Fifty, if you please. To begin then, in the morning--a
married women may have men at her toilet, invite them to dinner,
appoint them a party in a stage box at the play; engross the
conversation there, call 'em by their Christian names; talk louder
than the players;--from thence jaunt into the city--take a frolicksome
supper at an India house--perhaps, in her _gaiete de coeur_, toast a
pretty fellow--then clatter again to this end of the town, break with
the morning into an assembly, crowd to the hazard table, throw a
familiar levant upon some sharp lurching man of quality, and if he
demands his money, turn it off with a loud laugh, and cry--you'll owe
it to him, to vex him! ha! ha!

"Lord T. [_Aside_]. Prodigious!"

It is related that so magnificently did Oldfield describe the
pleasures of a woman of fashion that the audience echoed, with a
different meaning, Lord Townley's comment, and showered her with
plaudits. "Prodigious," indeed, must have been her acting.

Nance was even more captivating, as the comedy progressed, and nowhere
did she shine more brilliantly, it may be supposed, than in the
following scene:

"Lady Townley. Well! look you, my lord; I can bear it no longer!
Nothing still but about my faults, my faults! An agreeable subject
truly!

"Lord T. Why, madam, if you won't hear of them, how can I ever hope to
see you mend them?

"Lady T. Why, I don't intend to mend them--I can't mend them--you know
I have try'd to do it an hundred times, and--it hurts me so--I can't
bear it!

"Lord T. And I, madam, can't bear this daily licentious abuse of your
time and character.

"Lady T. Abuse! astonishing! when the universe knows, I am never
better company than when I am doing what I have a mind to! But to
see this world! that men can never get over that silly spirit of
contradiction--why, but last Thursday, now--there you wisely amended
one of my faults, as you call them--you insisted upon my not going to
the masquerade--and pray, what was the consequence? Was not I as cross
as the Devil, all the nig