They sat down by me and threw every feature of their faces into attention. I was resolved to go as near the truth as possible, lest any thing should drop from my spouse to impeach my veracity; and yet keep in view what passed at the Flask.
It is necessary, although thou knowest my whole story, and a good deal of my views, that thou shouldst be apprized of the substance of what I told them.
'I gave them, in as concise a manner as I was able, this history of our families, fortunes, alliances, antipathies, her brother's and mine particularly. I averred the truth of our private marriage.' The Captain's letter, which I will enclose, will give thee my reasons for that. And, besides, the women might have proposed a parson to me by way of compromise. 'I told them the condition my spouse had made me swear to; and to which she held me, in order, I said, to induce me the sooner to be reconciled to her relations.
'I owned, that this restraint made me sometimes ready to fly out.' And Mrs. Moore was so good as to declare, that she did not much wonder at it.
Thou art a very good sort of woman, Mrs. Moore, thought I.
As Miss Howe has actually detected our mother, and might possibly find some way still to acquaint her friend with her discoveries, I thought it proper to prepossess them in favour of Mrs. Sinclair and her two nieces.
I said, 'they were gentlewomen born; that they had not bad hearts; that indeed my spouse did not love them; they having once taken the liberty to blame her for her over-niceness with regard to me. People, I said, even good people, who knew themselves to be guilty of a fault they had no inclination to mend, were too often least patient when told of it; as they could less bear than others to be thought indifferently of.'
Too often the case, they owned.
'Mrs. Sinclair's house was a very handsome house, and fit to receive the first quality, [true enough, Jack!] Mrs. Sinclair was a woman very easy in her circumstances:—A widow gentlewoman, as you, Mrs. Moore, are.— Lets lodgings, as you, Mrs. Moore, do.—Once had better prospects as you, Mrs. Moore, may have had: the relict of Colonel Sinclair;—you, Mrs. Moore, might know Colonel Sinclair—he had lodgings at Hampstead.'
She had heard of the name.