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absence, I suppose, would be no interruption to your happiness?

Your occasional absence, perhaps, might increase it. The most wretched pair of all my acquaintance is the only one always together.

Who are they, pray?

Lady Bloom and her jealous husband. The odious man! She can't stir, but he moves too, like her shadow. She can't whisper to a friend, nor examine a picture or gem with an old cognoscenti, but he must thrust his nose between them.—But how is it now? You are as grave as a judge, and twisting off the heads of those very flowers, too, that have occasioned all this commotion. How is it with you now?

You take part against the husband very eagerly, I perceive.

Not very eagerly; but I hate a man who is so selfish that he must engross his wife's attention entirely. What do you think of the matter?

It is indifferent to you what I think of it; I am no longer your care—your only care.