d, I
should answer you as I do now, without adding or diminishing. I am
incapable of art, and 'tis because I will not be capable of it. Could I
deceive one minute, I should never regain my own good opinion; and who
could bear to live with one they despised? If you can resolve to live
with a companion that will have all the deference due to your
superiority of good sense, and that your proposals can be agreeable to
those on whom I depend, I have nothing to say against them."

CHAPTER III

COURTSHIP, ELOPEMENT, AND MARRIAGE (1710-1712)

A lengthy courtship--Montagu a laggard lover--Lady Mary and Montagu
exchange views on married life--Montagu proposes for her to Lord
Dorchester--Dorchester refuses, since Montagu will not make
settlements--Montagu's views on settlements expressed (by Steele) in the
_Tatler_--Although not engaged, the young people continue to
correspond--Lord Dorchester produces another suitor for his
daughter--She consents to an engagement--The preparations for the
wedding--She confides the whole story to Montagu--She breaks off the
engagement--She and Montagu decide to elope--She runs up to
London--Marriage--Lady Mary's diary destroyed by her sister, Lady
Frances Pierrepont.

After seven years or so of acquaintance, matters at last looked like
coming to a head. It would appear that Montagu, tentatively at least,
had put the question, because Lady Mary gives her views as to the life
they should lead after marriage. She is not averse from travelling; she
has no objection to leaving London; in fact, she would be willing to
spend a few months in the country, if it so pleased him. It is all so
extraordinarily unloverlike. There is too much philosophy about it. Love
does not see so clearly.

"Where people are tied for life, 'tis their mutual interest not to grow
weary of one another," she wrote on April 25, 1710. "If I had all the
personal charms that I want, a face is too slight a foundation for
happiness. You would be soon tired with seeing every day the same thing.
Where you saw nothing else, you would have leisure to remark all the
defects; which would increase in proportion as the novelty lessened,
which is always a great charm. I should have the displeasure of seeing a
coldness, which, though I could not reasonably blame you for, being
involuntary, yet it would render me uneasy; and the more, because I know
a love may be revived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity,
has extingui