***
This letter clench'd the nail. Not but that, Miss Rawlins said, she saw I had been a wild gentleman; and, truly she thought so the moment she beheld me.
They began to intercede for my spouse, (so nicely had I turned the tables;) and that I would not go abroad and disappoint a reconciliation so much wished for on one side, and such desirable prospects on the other in my own family.
Who knows, thought I to myself, but more may come of this plot, than I had even promised myself? What a happy man shall I be, if these women can be brought to join to carry my marriage into consummation!
Ladies, you are exceedingly good to us both. I should have some hopes, if my unhappily nice spouse could be brought to dispense with the unnatural oath she has laid me under. You see what my case is. Do you think I may not insist upon her absolving me from this abominable oath? Will you be so good as to give your advice, that one apartment may serve for a man and his wife at the hour of retirement?—[Modestly put, Belford!—And let me here observe, that few rakes would find a language so decent as to engage modest women to talk with him in, upon such subjects.]
They both simpered, and looked upon one another.
These subjects always make women simper, at least. No need but of the most delicate hints to them. A man who is gross in a woman's company, ought to be knocked down with a club: for, like so many musical instruments, touch but a single wire, and the dear souls are sensible all over.
To be sure, Miss Rawlins learnedly said, playing with her fan, a casuist would give it, that the matrimonial vow ought to supercede any other obligation.
Mrs. Moore, for her part, was of opinion, that, if the lady owned herself to be a wife, she ought to behave like one.
Whatever be my luck, thought I, with this all-eyed fair-one, any other woman in the world, from fifteen to five-and-twenty, would be mine upon my own terms before the morning.