, at the

same time, was too quick, too vain, and too often forgot to take into her idea of a good character, a continual subordination of the lower powers of our nature to the faculty of reason. This produced the following scene.
Maria (sister to Bellinda) returned one evening with a five-guinea fan she had bought that afternoon, and was tedious in praising some Indian figures that were painted in it. Mrs. Eustace, who had a taste for pictures, said, the colours were fine, but the images ridiculous and despicable; and her sister must certainly be a little Indian-mad, or her fondness for every thing from that side of the globe could not be so excessive and extravagant as it always appeared to be.
To this Maria replied with some heat, and Eustace very peremptorily insisted upon it, that she was right. With positiveness and passion, he magnified the beauties of the figures in the fan, and with violence reflected so severely on the good judgment Bellinda, upon all occasions, pretended to, (as he expressed it) that at last, her imagination was fired, and, with too much eagerness, she not only ridiculed the opinion of her sister, in respect of such things, but spoke with too much warmth against the despotic tempers of self-sufficient husbands.
To reverence and obey (she said) was not required by any obligation, when men were

unreasonable, and paid no regard to a wife's domestic and personal felicity; nor would she give up her understanding to his weak determination, since custom cannot confer an authority which nature has denied: It cannot license a husband to be unjust, nor give right to treat her as a slave. If this was to be the case in matrimony, and women were to suffer under conjugal vexations, as she did, by his senseless arguments every day, they had better bear the reproach and solitude of antiquated virginity, and be treated as the refuse of the world, in the character of old maids.
This too lively, though just speech, enraged Eustace to the last degree, and from a fury, he sunk in a few minutes into a total sullen silence, and sat for half an hour, while I stayed, cruelly determining, I suppose, her sad doom. Bellinda soon saw she had gone too far, and did all that could be done to recover him from the fit he was in. She smiled, cried, asked pardon; but 'twas all in vain. Every charm had lost its power, and he seemed no longer man.
