the presence of my lord (_I_
ordered!), to be present at his orgies with his boon companions, and
to hear his odious converse as he lapses into the disgusting madness of
intoxication! He has given up even the semblance of constancy--he, who
swore that I alone could attach or charm him! And now he brings
his vulgar mistresses before my very eyes, and would have had me
acknowledge, as heir to my own property, his child by another!

'No, I never will submit! Thou, and thou only, my George, my early
friend, shalt be heir to the estates of Lyndon. Why did not Fate join me
to thee, instead of to the odious man who holds me under his sway, and
make the poor Calista happy?'

*****

So the letters would run on for sheets upon sheets, in the closest
cramped handwriting; and I leave any unprejudiced reader to say whether
the writer of such documents must not have been as silly and vain a
creature as ever lived, and whether she did not want being taken care
of? I could copy out yards of rhapsody to Lord George Poynings, her old
flame, in which she addressed him by the most affectionate names, and
implored him to find a refuge for her against her oppressors; but they
would fatigue the reader to peruse, as they would me to copy. The fact
is, that this unlucky lady had the knack of writing a great deal more
than she meant. She was always reading novels and trash; putting
herself into imaginary characters and flying off into heroics and
sentimentalities with as little heart as any woman I ever knew; yet
showing the most violent disposition to be in love. She wrote always as
if she was in a flame of passion. I have an elegy on her lap-dog, the
most tender and pathetic piece she ever wrote; and most tender notes
of remonstrance to Betty, her favourite maid; to her housekeeper, on
quarrelling with her; to half-a-dozen acquaintances, each of whom she
addressed as the dearest friend in the world, and forgot the very moment
she took up another fancy. As for her love for her children, the above
passage will show how much she was capable of true maternal feeling:
the very sentence in which she records the death of one child serves
to betray her egotisms, and to wreak her spleen against myself; and she
only wishes to recall another from the grave, in order that he may be of
some personal advantage to her. If I DID deal severely with this woman,
keeping her from her flatterers who would have bred discord between us,
and locking her up out of