the sake of her sincerity, she wetted it, because she would be thought to
have done so; but I saw not that she did. She wished that I might never
know the loss of a husband so dear to me, as her beloved Colonel was to
her: and she again put the handkerchief to her eyes.

It must, no doubt, be a most affecting thing to be separated from a good
husband, and to be left in difficult circumstances besides, and that not
by his fault, and exposed to the insults of the base and ungrateful, as
she represented her case to be at his death. This moved me a good deal
in her favour.

You know, my dear, that I have an open and free heart; and naturally have
as open and free a countenance; at least my complimenters have told me
so. At once, where I like, I mingle minds without reserve, encouraging
reciprocal freedoms, and am forward to dissipate diffidences. But with
these two nieces of the widow I never can be intimate--I don't know why.

Only that circumstances, and what passed in conversation, encouraged not
the notion, or I should have been apt to think, that the young ladies and
Mr. Lovelace were of longer acquaintance than of yesterday. For he, by
stealth as it were, cast glances sometimes at them, when they returned;
and, on my ocular notice, their eyes fell, as I may say, under my eye, as
if they could not stand its examination.

The widow directed all her talk to me, as to Mrs. Lovelace; and I, with a
very ill grace bore it. And once she expressed more forwardly than I
thanked her for, her wonder that any vow, any consideration, however
weighty, could have force enough with so charming a couple, as she called
him and me, to make us keep separate beds.