Lady Mellasin, who little expected that her husband was made so well acquainted, or even that he had the least thought of the worst part of her behaviour towards him, was ready enough to flatter herself, both from her experience of his uncommon tenderness for her, and from what his lawyer had insinuated, in order to prevail upon her to go away with the less noise, that when this gust of passion was blown over, he would be reconciled, and consent to her return. These imaginations made her carry it with a high hand before the servants; and as they were packing up her things, while Mrs. Prinks was gone to prepare a lodging for her--'Your master will be glad to fetch me home again,' cried she; 'poor man! he has been strangely wrong-headed of late. I suppose he will be ready to hang himself when he considers what he has done; for he may be sure I shall not very easily forgive the affront he has put upon me.' How truly amiable is an unblemished character, and how contemptible is the reverse! Servants naturally love and respect virtue in those they live with, and seldom or ever either flatter or conceal the vices they do not greatly profit by. The airs Lady Mellasin gave herself on this occasion, were so far from making them believe her innocent, or their master blameable, that, as soon as they had gone out of her sight, they only turned her pride, and the fall it was going to sustain, into ridicule and grimace. Miss Betsy, however, could not see them depart in this manner, without feeling a very deep concern: their misfortunes obliterated all the resentment she had at any time conceived against them; and she had never before been more angry, even with Miss Flora, for the treachery she had been guilty of to her, than she was now grieved at the sight of her humiliation. She was sitting alone, and full of very serious reflections on this sudden change in the family, when her brother Thoughtless came in: she was glad of the opportunity of sounding his inclinations as to her living with him, and now resolved to do it effectually: she began with telling him the whole story of Lady Mellasin's and Miss Flora's removal; and then complained how dully she should pass the time with only Mr. Goodman, and an old gentlewoman who was to come to be his housekeeper. 'I thought you were about marrying,' said he; 'and expected, from what Mr. Goodman wrote to me, that my first compliment to you, on my arrival, would have been to have wished you joy.--You are not broke off with the gentleman, are you?'