shed; but there is no returning from a _degout_ given by
satiety."

Perhaps Lady Mary believed that, while it is well to hope for the best,
it is sound policy to prepare for the worst.

Montagu may have found some comfort in the lady's assurance that if she
had a choice between two thousand a year or twenty thousand a year she
would choose the smaller income.

An apartment in London would satisfy Lady Mary. She would not choose to
live in a crowd, but would like to have a small circle of agreeable
people--she was very precise as to her desires: actually she wants to
see eight or nine pleasant folk. She does not believe that she can find
entire happiness in solitude, not even (or perhaps especially not) in a
solitude of two; and she is at least as sure that he would not either.
Anyhow she has not the slightest intention of taking the chance.

It becomes increasingly clear that she had had about enough of this
epistolary philandering, and she indicated this in no uncertain manner.
"I will never think of anything without the consent of my family," she
wrote. "Make no answer to this, if you can like me on my own terms. 'Tis
not to me you must make the proposals; if not, to what purpose is our
correspondence?"

And now comes a touch of the spur: "However, preserve me your
friendship, which I think of with a great deal of pleasure. If ever you
see me married, I flatter myself you'll see a conduct you would not be
sorry your wife should imitate."

Even this did not bring Montagu to the point of asking Lord Dorchester
for the hand of his daughter. The correspondence, however, still
continued, and soon they were hard at it again.

"Kindness, you say, would be your destruction," she wrote in August,
1710. "In my opinion, this is something contradictory to some other
expressions. People talk of being in love just as widows do of
affliction. Mr. Steele has observed, in one of his plays, the most
passionate among them have always calmness enough to drive a hard
bargain with the upholders. I never knew a lover that would not
willingly secure his interest as well as his mistress; or, if one must
be abandoned, had not the prudence (among all his distractions) to
consider, a woman was but a woman, and money was a thing of more real
merit than the whole sex put together. Your letter is to tell me, you
should think yourself undone if you married me; but if I would be so
tender as to confess I should break my heart if you did n