This, he said, was the true innuendo-way of characterizing, used by detractors.  Every body and every thing had a black and a white side, of which well wishers and ill wishers may make their advantage.  He had observed that the front house was well let, and he believed more to the one sex than to the other; for he had seen, occasionally passing to or fro, several genteel modest looking women; and who, it was very probable, were not so ill-beloved, but they might have visiters and relations of both sexes:  but they were none of them any thing to us, or we to them:  we were not once in any of their companies:  but in the genteelest and most retired house of the two, which we had in a manner to ourselves, with the use of a parlour to the street, to serve us for a servants’ hall, or to receive common visiters, or our traders only, whom we admitted not up stairs.

He always loved to speak as he found.  No man in the world had suffered more from calumny than he himself had done.

Women, he owned, ought to be more scrupulous than men needed to be where they lodged.  Nevertheless he wished that fact, rather than surmise, were to be the foundation of their judgments, especially when they spoke of one another.

He meant no reflection upon her Ladyship’s informants, or rather surmisants, (as he might call them,) be they who they would:  nor did he think himself obliged to defend characters impeached, or not thought well of, by women of virtue and honour.  Neither were these people of importance enough to have so much said about them.

The pretended Lady Betty said, all who knew her, would clear her of censoriousness:  that it gave her some opinion, she must needs say, of the people, that he had continued there so long with me; that I had rather negative than positive reasons of dislike to them; and that so shrewd a man as she heard Captain Tomlinson was had not objected to them.

I think, niece Charlotte, proceeded she, as my nephew had not parted with these lodgings, you and I, (for, as my dear Miss Harlowe dislikes the people, I would not ask her for her company) will take a dish of tea with my nephew there, before we go out of town; and then we shall see what sort of people they are.  I have heard that Mrs. Sinclair is a mighty forbidding creature.

With all my heart, Madam.  In your Ladyship’s company I shall make no scruple of going any where.

It was Ladyship at every word; and as she seemed proud of her title, and of her dress too, I might have guessed that she was not used to either.

What say you, cousin Lovelace?  Lady Sarah, though a melancholy woman, is very inquisitive about all your affairs.  I must acquaint her with every particular circumstance when I go down.

With all his heart.  He would attend her whenever she pleased.  She would see very handsome apartments, and very civil people.

The deuce is in them, said the Miss Montague, if they appear other to us.