“In Christendom! Oh, you exaggerate, Charles!”
“Exaggerate! Upon my soul, I do not: she is all I have said, and more.”
“More! Impossible. Come, I see how it is; she has been unlucky at the card-table; you are angry, and therefore you speak, as angry people always do, {Footnote: Swift.} worse than you think.”
“No, not at all, I promise you. I am as perfectly cool as you are. You do not know Mrs. Germaine as well as I do.”
“But I know that she is much to be pitied, if her husband has a worse opinion of her than any body else expresses.”
“That is precisely because I am her husband, and know her better than other people do. Will not you give me leave to be the best judge in what relates to my own wife? I never, indeed, expected to hear you, of all people upon earth, cousin William, undertake her defence. I think I remember that she was no great favourite of yours before I married, and you dissuaded me as much as possible from the match: yet now you are quite become her advocate, and take her part to my face against me.”
“It is not taking her part against you, my dear Charles,” replied his cousin, “to endeavour to make you better satisfied with your wife. I am not so obstinate in self-opinion as to wish, at the expense of your domestic happiness, to prove that I was right in dissuading you from the match; on the contrary, I would do all in my power to make the best of it; and so should you.”
“Ah, cousin William, it is easy for you to talk of making the best of a bad match; you who are married to one of the best tempered women alive! I wish you were to live with Mrs. Germaine for one month.”
William smiled, as much as to say, “I cannot join in that wish.”
“Besides,” continued Charles, “if I were to open my whole heart to you, you would pity me on another account. My wife is not my only plague: my mistress is almost as great a torment as my wife.”