This man was an English merchant settled at Barcelona, to whom I had been commended by Ludloe's letters, and through whom my pecuniary supplies were furnished.......

Much intercourse and some degree of intimacy had taken place between us, and I had gained a pretty accurate knowledge of his character.

I had been informed, through different channels, that his wife was much his superior in rank, that she possessed great wealth in her own right, and that some disagreement of temper or views occasioned their separation.

She had married him for love, and still doated on him: the occasions for separation having arisen, it seems, not on her side but on his.

As his habits of reflection were nowise friendly to religion, and as hers, according to Ludloe, were of the opposite kind, it is possible that some jarring had arisen between them from this source.