ABSTRACT
I have so often had occasion to mention my wife in describing the different scenes we passed through together, that it is by this time evident to my friends, why I rather chose to write than to relate our adventures in our family circle. – Isabella, never, I think, so handsome as at this period, was neither so much depressed by our reverse of fortune, or so weaned from her former love of admiration, as not to desire to find she still had a claim to it – never, indeed, did she appear more beautiful than at this assembly of Sir Randolph’s. – Her dress was simple in the extreme, and perhaps appeared more so in a country where the ladies’ maids, and often the inferior servants, are gorgeously habited in rose-coloured silk, not unfrequently adorned with silver lace. At the old Admiral’s lodgings a party was collected of seven or eight English ladies and gentlemen, two French men of fashion, who were of the embassy at Lisbon, and several Portuguese of both sexes. Isabella paid her compliments to Sir Randolph, as he sat in his moveable chair, with a grace which I immediately saw fascinated all the men of the party; but the recollection of what had passed the day before, covered her face with blushes, and gave exactly that degree of diffidence and embarrassment to her otherwise easy manner, as rendered it infinitely attractive. – The old Admiral checked himself, as he was about to utter some rough compliment; but I saw that my apology for having married was now effectually made, and I hoped we had found in Sir Randolph a second father.
