Page:A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed.djvu/269

 Man had been once a Lord, though his Father had been the Lord knows who.

she talks to his Servants, that is to say, those that are his Servants too, she taunts them with such an Air of Haughtiness, as if they were Dogs, not Servants; while she treats her own Servants with a difference, as if they were as much superior to his, as she thinks she is to their Master.

honest Gentleman her Husband, is a Man of Sense and Breeding, and particularly of abundance of Good-humour: He thought at first he should have been very happy in a Wife, and he chose her for what he thought she had, (but she had it not) namely, good Temper, Sense and Sincerity. He could have bettered his Fortune in a Wife, by thirty or forty thousand Pounds, whenever he had pleased; so that he neither married her for her Family, or her Fortune. Tho' he was not a Lord, he was able to buy a Lord when he pleased; and as much despised a Title, unless it had been by Blood, or obtained by special Merit, as she adored it, only for the meer Equipage of it. His disappointment in her Temper was a great Affliction to him, and he did not fail to expostulate it with her, tho' with the utmost Civility. But Pride had gotten the ascendant so much over her Temper, that she was resolved to ruin her Family-Peace, as it were, in meer revenge, for her false Step, as she called it, in marrying beneath her Quality; tho' she really revenged it only upon her self.


 * her Pride was attended with such unhappy Circumstances, that it exposed her very much, and made her the common Jest of all the Families of Gentry, and even Nobility