ne which falls to her by chance; or (so flagrant is the
injustice) what she earns by her own exertions. No; he can rob her with
impunity, even to waste publicly on a courtezan; and the laws of her
country--if women have a country--afford her no protection or redress
from the oppressor, unless she have the plea of bodily fear; yet how
many ways are there of goading the soul almost to madness, equally
unmanly, though not so mean? When such laws were framed, should
not impartial lawgivers have first decreed, in the style of a great
assembly, who recognized the existence of an _etre_ _supreme_, to fix
the national belief, that the husband should always be wiser and more
virtuous than his wife, in order to entitle him, with a show of justice,
to keep this idiot, or perpetual minor, for ever in bondage. But I must
have done--on this subject, my indignation continually runs away with
me.

"The company of the gentleman I have already mentioned, who had a
general acquaintance with literature and subjects of taste, was grateful
to me; my countenance brightened up as he approached, and I unaffectedly
expressed the pleasure I felt. The amusement his conversation afforded
me, made it easy to comply with my husband's request, to endeavour to
render our house agreeable to him.

"His attentions became more pointed; but, as I was not of the number
of women, whose virtue, as it is termed, immediately takes alarm, I
endeavoured, rather by raillery than serious expostulation, to give a
different turn to his conversation. He assumed a new mode of attack, and
I was, for a while, the dupe of his pretended friendship.

"I had, merely in the style of _badinage_, boasted of my conquest, and
repeated his lover-like compliments to my husband. But he begged me,
for God's sake, not to affront his friend, or I should destroy all his
projects, and be his ruin. Had I had more affection for my husband, I
should have expressed my contempt of this time-serving politeness: now
I imagined that I only felt pity; yet it would have puzzled a casuist to
point out in what the exact difference consisted.

"This friend began now, in confidence, to discover to me the real state
of my husband's affairs. 'Necessity,' said Mr. S----; why should I
reveal his name? for he affected to palliate the conduct he could not
excuse, 'had led him to take such steps, by accommodation bills, buying
goods on credit, to sell them for ready money, and similar transactions,
that h