“No,” she replied, “if you’ll tell them to draw up, I’ll go home; the rooms are close; I am fatigued; besides, in the absence of my husband, I must keep good hours.”
“Excuse me,” said the major, “if I am not anxious for his return. I should not dare to hope for so much of your precious society, were he to command it.”
“He has the best right to it,” rejoined the lady, “but he never uses command with me;—I vow I am an ungrateful wretch, and love him much less than he deserves to be loved.”
“That sentiment, my dear Mrs. Anson, is not founded on nature or truth. Gratitude and love are sensations as different in their natures, as your disposition and that of your husband; but for what should you be grateful to him? For having had the vanity to address, and the good fortune to win the loveliest creature that ever wildered human brain, or fired human heart? And how does he repay an affection which monarchs would value more than conquest?—by indifference,—nay, studied neglect.”
“You wrong him,” said the wife, but with much less warmth than she would have defended her husband a fortnight before, “his passion for literature, it is true, estranges him from me more than many wives would like, but I have reason to know he loves me well. Alas! why should love be such a sickly flower, that needs constant culture to keep it from perishing! Time was, when the hour he passed from my side was fraught with anxiety,—now, days glide by, and I scarcely think of him!”
“Think only of him,” returned the major, “whose love for you is as imperishable as it is ardent. Renounce the man who is unworthy of you, and—”
“Render myself unworthy of any man,” continued the lady, “no, I implore you, urge me to this no more; spare me, dear Henry, I entreat you.” And I will spare the reader the remainder of a dialogue which evinced yielding virtue on one side, and seductive sophistry on the other. “The woman who hesitates is lost,” says the proverb.
Charles Anson, a young man of high intellectual endowments, and fine personal appearance, had studied law in his native city—Philadelphia—and at an early age married the daughter of a merchant in moderate circumstances. The union was thought to have resulted from love on both sides, and indeed for four years the youthful pair enjoyed as much happiness as is allotted to mortals; when, depending on his professional exertions, no ambition disturbed their dreams, no envy of rank or grandeur poisoned their present blessings.