‘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.

’Oh! he was related to the best families in Scotland!—­And his widow is not to be reflected upon because she lets lodgings you know, Mrs. Moore—­ you know, Miss Rawlins.’

Very true, and very true.—­And they must needs say, it did not look quite so pretty, in such a lady as my spouse, to be so censorious.

A foundation here, thought I, to procure these women’s help to get back the fugitive, or their connivance, at least, at my doing so; as well as for anticipating any future information from Miss Howe.

I gave them a character of that virago; and intimated, ’that for a head to contrive mischief, and a heart to execute it, she had hardly her equal in her sex.’

To this Miss Howe it was, Mrs. Moore said, she supposed, that my spouse was so desirous to dispatch a man and horse, by day-dawn, with a letter she wrote before she went to bed last night, proposing to stay no longer than till she had received an answer to it.

The very same, said I; I knew she would have immediate recourse to her.  I should have been but too happy, could I have prevented such a letter from passing, or so to have it managed, as to have it given into Mrs. Howe’s hands, instead of her daughter’s.  Women who had lived some time in the world knew better, than to encourage such skittish pranks in young wives.

Let me just stop to tell thee, while it is in my head, that I have since given Will. his cue to find out where the man lives who is gone with the fair fugitive’s letter; and, if possible, to see him on his return, before he sees her.