I believe, devoted to a life of unrestrained impropriety. She frequently
came to visit her husband, who had held a situation an the opera-house
during the management of Mr. Hobart,[22] now Earl of Buckinghamshire. I
remember she was one of the handsomest women I had ever seen, and that
her dress was the most extravagantly splendid. Satins, richly
embroidered, or trimmed with point lace, were her daily habiliments; and
her personal attractions were considerably augmented by the peculiar
dignity and grace with which she walked: in a few words, this woman was
a striking sample of beauty and of profligacy.

Whenever she came to visit her _sposo_, she never failed to obtrude
herself on my seclusion. Mr. Rabinson rather encouraged than shunned her
visits, and I was obliged to receive the beautiful Angelina (for such
was her Christian name), however repugnant such an associate was to my
feelings. At every interview she took occasion to ridicule my romantic
domestic attachment; laughed at my folly in wasting my youth (for I was
not then eighteen years of age) in such a disgraceful obscurity; and
pictured, in all the glow of fanciful scenery, the splendid life into
which I might enter, if I would but know my own power, and break the
fetters of matrimonial restriction. She once told me that she had
mentioned to the Earl of Pembroke that there was a young married lady in
the most humiliating captivity with her husband; she said that she had
described my person, and that Lord Pembroke was ready to offer me
his services.

This proposal fully proclaimed the meaning of Signora Albanesi's visits,
and I resolved in future to avoid all conversation with her. She was at
that time between thirty and forty years of age, and her day of
splendour was hourly sinking to the obscurity of neglect; she was
nevertheless still reluctant to resign the dazzling meteors which