her temper in this point.
I expressed my surprize that this unlucky foible should never have been hinted to me till now, nor the slightest suspicion of a turn of mind so adverse to her tranquillity ever occur to my mind during the whole period of my acquaintance with Madame de Clarence.
You was the last person, said she, to whom such an information was likely to be suggested. The strict intimacy that subsisted between you was sufficiently known to deter all malicious or officious disposed persons from entertaining you with a topic so little agreeable as the errors of your friend; and the circle you ranged in was ever so limited, that large as is the proportion of the world which comes under these descriptions, I believe

there were very few of either class that could be ranked among the number of your acquaintance.
But pray, added she, had you never occasion to remark, during your last visit, that Madame behaved to me with a distance wholly unaccountable, and which must, I think, have provoked both your observation and surprize? The real truth of the matter was, that as my acquaintance with the family originated through Monsieur, who lived in terms of the strictest friendship with poor Mr. Weldon, and to whom I was in some measure given in charge by my husband in his last moments, the lady never regarded me with much kindness; but conscious she herself possesses not address sufficient to preserve her husband's affections, she suspects every pretty woman she sees to be more in favour than herself, and charitably accuses her of the theft.
That Madame de Clarence disapproved

of Mrs. Weldon's behaviour I well knew, nor was I ignorant that she was no great favourite with that lady; but as I could not myself avoid joining in the censure which her coquetry incurred, it made no impression on my mind at the time, nor could excite either surprize or suspicion: our lively little friend, mean while, happy in the possession of unbounded spirits, dreamt not of this severe judgment on her gaiety till after Fanny and I left the chateau, when the augmented reserve and solemn deportment of Madame de Clarence soon gave place to an open manifestation of her repugnance and dislike.
Her sententious harangues, said Mrs. Weldon, (who always expresses herself with force, and on this occasion may be forgiven the exaggeration of resentment) and thread bare lectures on the dignity of a proper retinue in the sex, were suddenly converted into plain invectives

against the licentiousness of the present age, and the unprincipled levity of all its daughters, whether maids, wives, or widows; those of the