“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 his character in the commercial world was gone.  He was considered,’ he added, lowering his voice, ’on ‘Change as a swindler.’

“I felt at that moment the first maternal pang.  Aware of the evils my sex have to struggle with, I still wished, for my own consolation, to be the mother of a daughter; and I could not bear to think, that the sins of her father’s entailed disgrace, should be added to the ills to which woman is heir.

“So completely was I deceived by these shows of friendship (nay, I believe, according to his interpretation, Mr. S——­ really was my friend) that I began to consult him respecting the best mode of retrieving my husband’s character:  it is the good name of a woman only that sets to rise no more.  I knew not that he had been drawn into a whirlpool, out of which he had not the energy to attempt to escape.  He seemed indeed destitute of the power of employing his faculties in any regular pursuit.  His principles of action were so loose, and his mind so uncultivated, that every thing like order appeared to him in the shape of restraint; and, like men in the savage state, he required the strong stimulus of hope or fear, produced by wild speculations, in which the interests of others went for nothing, to keep his spirits awake.  He one time professed patriotism, but he knew not what it was to feel honest indignation; and pretended to be an advocate for liberty,