"Where people are tied for life, 'tis their mutual interest not to grow
weary of one another," she wrote on April 25, 1710. "If I had all the
personal charms that I want, a face is too slight a foundation for
happiness. You would be soon tired with seeing every day the same thing.
Where you saw nothing else, you would have leisure to remark all the
defects; which would increase in proportion as the novelty lessened,
which is always a great charm. I should have the displeasure of seeing a
coldness, which, though I could not reasonably blame you for, being
involuntary, yet it would render me uneasy; and the more, because I know
a love may be revived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity,
has extinguished; but there is no returning from a _dégout_ given by
satiety."


Perhaps Lady Mary believed that, while it is well to hope for the best,
it is sound policy to prepare for the worst.

Montagu may have found some comfort in the lady's assurance that if she
had a choice between two thousand a year or twenty thousand a year she
would choose the smaller income.

An apartment in London would satisfy Lady Mary. She would not choose to
live in a crowd, but would like to have a small circle of agreeable
people--she was very precise as to her desires: actually she wants to
see eight or nine pleasant folk. She does not believe that she can find
entire happiness in solitude, not even (or perhaps especially not) in a
solitude of two; and she is at least as sure that he would not either.
Anyhow she has not the slightest intention of taking the chance.

It becomes increasingly clear that she had had about enough of this