S. I suppose:
approves my silent and patient endurance of what I could not prevent
by more rough and sincere behaviour."
[Footnote 1:
"And Merlin look'd and half believed her true,
So tender was her voice, so fair her face,
So sweetly gleam'd her eyes behind her tears,
Like sunlight on the plain, behind a shower."
_Idylls of The King.--Vivien._]
"20 _January_, 1780.--Sophy Streatfield is come to town: she is in
the 'Morning Post' too, I see (to be in the 'Morning Post' is no good
thing). She has won Wedderburne's heart from his wife, I believe, and
few married women will bear _that_ patiently if I do; they will some
of them wound her reputation, so that I question whether it can
recover. Lady Erskine made many odd inquiries about her to me
yesterday, and winked and looked wise at her sister. The dear S.S.
must be a little on her guard; nothing is so spiteful as a woman
robbed of a heart she thinks she has a claim upon. She will not lose
_that_ with temper, which she has taken perhaps no pains at all to
preserve: and I do not observe with any pleasure, I fear, that my
husband prefers Miss Streatfield to me, though I must acknowledge her
younger, handsomer, and a better scholar. Of her chastity, however, I
never had a doubt: she was bred by Dr. Collier in the strictest
principles of piety and virtue; she not only knows she will be always
chaste, but she knows why she will be so.[1] Mr. Thrale is now by
dint of disease quite out of the question, so I am a disinterested
spectator; but her coquetry is very dangerous indeed, and I wish she
were married that there might be an end on't.
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