foresee. For my own part, I like my own
situation so well that it will be a displeasure to me to change it. To
postpone such a conversation as yours a whole twelvemonth is a terrible
appearance; on the other hand, I would not follow the example of the
first of our sex, and sacrifice for a present pleasure a more lasting
happiness. In short, I can determine nothing on this subject. When you
are at Florence, we may debate it over again."

So little is known of the domestic relations of the Montagus that it is
hazardous to advance a conjecture. One writer has suggested that there
was a quarrel over money, but there are no grounds to support this.
Another has it that Lady Mary's flirtations or intrigues did not meet
with her husband's approval. Yet another thinks that Montagu found his
wife with her sharp tongue, very ill to live with.

The Montagus had been married for seven-and-twenty years; their younger
child was now twenty-one. Since Montagu assisted Lady Mary as a girl
with her Latin studies, they do not seem to have had much in common.
Lady Mary cut a figure in the social world; Montagu was a nonentity in
political life and seemed content so to be. Perhaps they were tired of
each other, and welcomed a separation that at the outset was intended
only to be temporary. "It was from the customs of the Turks that I first
had the thought of a septennial bill for the benefit of married
persons," Lady Mary once said to Joseph Spence; and it is more than
likely that she would have taken advantage of such an Act of Parliament
had it been in existence.

That there was no definite breach is evident from the fact that husband
and wife corresponded, though it must be confessed that her letters to
her husband are almost uniformly dull, except when the topic is their
son. On the other hand, there was certainly no especial degree of
friendship between them, and in one of her letters Lady Mary said
pointedly: "You do not seem desirous to hear news, which makes me not
trouble you with any." For the rest there are descriptions of the places
which Lady Mary visited and an account of the people she met.

Lady Mary proceeded from Dover to Calais, and thence to Dijon, where she
arrived in the middle of August. Wherever she went she found herself
among friends. "There is not any town in France where there is not
English, Scotch or Irish families established; and I have met with
people who have seen me (though often such as I do not remem