During my long seclusion from society, for I could not associate with those whom destiny had placed in a similar predicament, not one of my female friends even inquired what was become of me. Those who had been protected and received with the most cordial hospitality by me in my more happy hours now neglected all the kind condolence of sympathetic feeling, and shunned both me and my dreary habitation. From that hour I have never felt the affection for my own sex which perhaps some women feel; I have never taught my heart to cherish their friendship, or to depend on their attentions beyond the short perspective of a prosperous day. Indeed, I have almost uniformly found my own sex my most inveterate enemies; I have experienced little kindness from them, though my bosom has often ached with the pang inflicted by their envy, slander, and malevolence. The Italian whom I took occasion to mention as the _cicerone_ of my husband's gallantries was named Albanesi. He was the husband to a beautiful Roman woman of that name, who had some years before attracted considerable attention in the hemisphere of gallantry, where she had shone as a brilliant constellation. She had formerly been the mistress of a Prince de Courland, and afterward of the Covet de Belgeioso, the imperial ambassador; but at the period in which I first saw her she was, I believe, devoted to a life of unrestrained impropriety. She frequently came to visit her husband, who had held a situation an the opera-house during the management of Mr. Hobart,[22] now Earl of Buckinghamshire. I remember she was one of the handsomest women I had ever seen, and that her dress was the most extravagantly splendid. Satins, richly embroidered, or trimmed with point lace, were her daily habiliments; and her personal attractions were considerably augmented by the peculiar dignity and grace with which she walked: in a few words, this woman was a striking sample of beauty and of profligacy. Whenever she came to visit her _sposo_, she never failed to obtrude herself on my seclusion. Mr. Rabinson rather encouraged than shunned her visits, and I was obliged to receive the beautiful Angelina (for such was her Christian name), however repugnant such an associate was to my feelings. At every interview she took occasion to ridicule my romantic domestic attachment; laughed at my folly in wasting my youth (for I was not then eighteen years of age) in such a disgraceful obscurity; and pictured, in all the glow of fanciful scenery, the splendid life into which I might enter, if I would but know my own power, and break the fetters of matrimonial restriction. She once told me that she had mentioned to the Earl of Pembroke that there was a young married lady in the most humiliating captivity with her husband; she said that she had described my person, and that Lord Pembroke was ready to offer me his services.