For I have seen married ladies, both in
England and France, who have kept a husband at a greater distance than
they have exacted from some of his sex, who have been more entitled to
his resentment, than to his wife's intimacies.
"But to wave a subject, in which, as I can with pleasure say, neither
of us have much concern, tell me, my dearest, how you were employed
before I came up? Here are pen and ink: here, too, is paper, but it is
as spotless as your mind. To whom were you directing your favours now?
May I not know your subject?"
Mr. H.'s letter was a part of it; and so I had put it by, at his
approach, and not choosing he should see that--"I am writing," replied
I, "to Miss Darnford: but I think you must not ask me to see what I
have written _this_ time. I put it aside that you should not, when
I heard your welcome step. The subject is our parting with our noble
guests; and a little of my apprehensiveness, on an occasion upon which
our sex may write to one another; but, for some of the reasons we have
been mentioning, gentlemen should not desire to see."
"Then I will not, my dearest love." (So here, my dear, is another
instance--I could give you an hundred such--of his receding from his
own will, in complaisance to mine.
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