cannot, in point of honour, break off with me. Be not scrupulous on that
article, nor affect to make me break first, to excuse your doing it; I
would owe nothing but to inclination: if you do not love me, I may have
the less esteem of myself, but not of you: I am not of the number of
those women that have the opinion of their persons Mr. Bayes had of his
play, that 'tis the touchstone of sense, and they are to frame their
judgment of people's understanding according to what they think of them.

"You may have wit, good humour, and good nature, and not like me. I
allow a great deal for the inconstancy of mankind in general, and my own
want of merit in particular. But 'tis a breach, at least, of the two
last, to deceive me. I am sincere: I shall be sorry if I am not now what
pleases; but if I (as I could with joy) abandon all things to the care
of pleasing you, I am then undone if I do not succeed.--Be generous."


It was about this time that she confided her troubles to Mrs. Hewet.
"At present, my domestic affairs go on so ill, I want spirits to look
round," she wrote. "I have got a cold that disables my eyes and
disorders me every other way. Mr. Mason has ordered me blooding, to
which I have submitted, after long contestation. You see how stupid I
am; I entertain you with discourses of physic, but I have the oddest
jumble of disagreeable things in my head that ever plagued poor mortals;
a great cold, a bad peace, people I love in disgrace, sore eyes, the
horrid prospect of a civil war, and the thought of a filthy potion to
take. I believe nobody ever had such a _mélange_ before."

The unsatisfactory situation, apparently, might have continued
indefinitely, for, even if Montagu had been more pressing, Lady Mary, in
spite of her independent attitude, was most reluctant, indeed, almost