heard enough to make
her wonder that he could carry his spouse, a person of so much delicacy,
to a house, that, if it had not a bad fame, had not a good one.

You must think, my dear, that I liked the pretended Lady Betty the better
for this. I suppose it was designed that I should.

He was surprised, he said, that her Ladyship should hear a bad character
of the people. It was what he had never before heard that they deserved.
It was easy, indeed, to see, that they had not very great delicacy,
though they were not indelicate. The nature of their livelihood, letting
lodgings, and taking people to board, (and yet he had understood that
they were nice in these particulars,) led them to aim at being free and
obliging: and it was difficult, he said, for persons of cheerful
dispositions, so to behave as to avoid censure: openness of heart and
countenance in the sex (more was the pity) too often subjected good
people, whose fortunes did not set them above the world, to uncharitable
censure.

He wished, however, that her Ladyship would tell what she had heard:
although now it signified but little, because he would never ask me to
set foot within their doors again: and he begged she would not mince the
matter.

Nay, no great matter, she said. But she had been informed, that there
were more women-lodgers in the house than men: yet that their visiters
were more men than women. And this had been hinted to her (perhaps by
ill-wishers, she could not answer for that) in such a way, as if somewhat
further were meant by it than was spoken.

This, he said, was the true innuendo-way of characterizing, used by
detractors. Every body and every thing had a black and a white side, of
which well wishers and ill wishers may make their advantage. He had
observed that the front house was well let, and he believed more to the
one sex than to the other; for he had seen, occasionally passing to or
fro, several genteel modest looking women; and who, it was very probable,
were not so ill-beloved, but they might have visiters and relations of
both sexes: but they were none of them any thing to us, or we to them: we
were not once in any of their companies: but in the genteelest and most
retired house of the two, which we had in a manner to ourselves, with the
use of a parlour to the street, to serve us for a servants' hall, or to
receive common visiters, or our traders only, whom we admitted not up
stairs.

He always loved to speak as he f