A new scene of affliction is opened to me: surely my fate is drawing towards a crisis. Mr Arnold has just left me. What conversation have we had!
After entering my room, he walked about for some minutes without speaking; at last stopping short, and fixing his eyes upon me, How long have you, said he, been acquainted with Mr Faulkland? I told him my acquaintance began with him some months before I was married. He was once your lover I am informed. He was, and a treaty of marriage was concluded on between us. You would have been happier perhaps, madam, if it had taken place. I do not think so Mr Arnold, you have no reason to suppose I do. I had a very great objection to Mr Faulkland, and obeyed my mother willingly, when she forbid me to see him. I ask not what that objection was, said he; but I suppose, madam, you will without reluctance obey _me_, if I make the same request to you. Most chearfully; you cannot make a request with which I should more readily comply. But let me beseech you, Mr Arnold, to tell me, what part of my behaviour has given you cause to think such a prohibition necessary? I do not say, answered Mr Arnold, that I have any suspicion of your virtue; but your acquiescence in this particular is necessary to _my_ peace and your _own_ honour. A lady's being _married_ does not cut off the hopes of a gay man. You give me your promise that you will not see him any more. I _do_, said I; I will give up lady V----, whose acquaintance I so much esteem: I will go no more to her house while Mr Faulkland continues there; and I know of no other family, where I visit, that he is acquainted with.
My pride would not suffer me to enquire where he had got his information: I already knew it too well; and fearing he would rather descend to an untruth than tell me his author, I declined any farther questions. He seemed satisfied with my promise, but quickly left me, as if the whole end of his visit to me was accomplished in having obtained it.
What painful minutes am I obliged to sustain! Mrs Gerrarde has been to see me, gay and assured as ever. She affected to condole with me on the accident that happened to my foot, with such an overstrained concern, such a tender solicitude, that her insincerity disgusted me, if possible, more than the other part of her behaviour. She told me, she herself had been at the play, but very luckily had got out without receiving any injury. I said, I was surprized I had not seen her there. O, replied she, I was in a little snug corner, where nobody could see me; for having refused to go with some ladies that asked me, I did not chuse to be visible in the house, and so squeezed myself up into what they called their gallery, for I took nobody with me but my maid. Audacious woman!--Is it not strange, my dear, that Mr Arnold could be so weak as to humour her in the absurd frolick of going with her to such a place? for so it must have been; or perhaps she appointed him only to call for her at the play; and he might have arrived but just in time to assist her in getting out. No matter which it was.