The distress in which I had left the beautiful Cleora, and the knowledge I now had of her innocence, very much affected me, and I must either have chang'd my nature, or have lost that happy Gift of Invisibility, which enabled me to discover almost every thing, not to have flown the next morning to the house of Aristus, in order to inform myself what effects the conversation of the preceding night had produced.

I truly pitied the unhappy pair, for though Aristus was unjust and cruel in his suspicions, yet I plainly saw he suffer'd no less in his own mind than what he inflicted on his much injur'd wife; – especially when I reflected that he was not guilty through a want of affection for her, but a too violent excess of it; as is observed by one of our best English poets:

Indeed I soon found, how much more than I could even have imagined, this off ending husband deserved my commiseration; – he was abroad, and Cleora not yet risen from her bed, when I made my visit, which, as near as I can remember, was somewhat past eleven o'clock; – resolved, however, not to lose my labour entirely, I had recourse for intelligence to the tatlers of the kitchen, whom, according to my wish, I found busy in discourse on the very point I wanted.

Some took the part of their master, – some of their lady; and upon the whole, I found that a second quarrel having ensued after Aristus came home, Cleora had refused either to sup or sleep with him; but lay in a bed she had order'd to be prepar'd for her in another room, on which he went not to his own, but continued the whole night walking about the house, and behaved like a man totally deprived of reason; – I shall relate some few of the animadversions made by these speculative gentry on this occasion.