Charlotte reddened. They all began to exclaim. But I proceeded.

The lady says, 'She has been dishonoured' (devil take me, if I spare
myself!) 'by means that would shock humanity to be made acquainted with
them.' She is a very innocent lady, and may not be a judge of the means
she hints at. Over-niceness may be under-niceness: Have you not such a
proverb, my Lord?--tantamount to, One extreme produces another!----Such
a lady as this may possibly think her case more extraordinary than it is.
This I will take upon me to say, that if she has met with the only man in
the world who would have treated her, as she says I have treated her, I
have met in her with the only woman in the world who would have made such
a rout about a case that is uncommon only from the circumstances that
attend it.

This brought them all upon me; hands, eyes, voices, all lifted at once.
But my Lord M. who has in his head (the last seat of retreating lewdness)
as much wickedness as I have in my heart, was forced (upon the air I
spoke this with, and Charlotte's and all the rest reddening) to make a
mouth that was big enough to swallow up the other half of his face;
crying out, to avoid laughing, Oh! Oh!--as if under the power of a gouty
twinge.

Hadst thou seen how the two tabbies and the young grimalkins looked at
one another, at my Lord, and at me, by turns, thou would have been ready
to split thy ugly face just in the middle. Thy mouth hath already done
half the work. And, after all, I found not seldom in this conversation,
that my humourous undaunted airs forced a smile into my service from the
prim mouths of the young ladies. They perhaps, had they met with such
another intrepid fellow as myself, who had first gained upon their