Falkland, Book 2‪.‬

This is a novel book. It is dangerous for women, however wise it be for men, to commune with their own hearts, and to be still! Continuing to pursue the follies of the world had been to Emily more prudent than to fly them; to pause, to separate herself from the herd, was to discover, to feel, to murmur at the vacuum of her being; and to occupy it with the feelings which it craved, could in her be but the hoarding a provision for despair. Married, before she had begun the bitter knowledge of herself, to a man whom it was impossible to love, yet deriving from nature a tenderness of soul, which shed itself over everything around, her only escape from misery had been in the dormancy of feeling. The birth of her son had opened to her a new field of sensations, and she drew the best charm of her own existence from the life she had given to another. Had she not met Falkland, all the deeper sources of affection would have flowed into one only and legitimate channel; but those whom he wished to fascinate had never resisted his power, and the attachment he inspired was in proportion to the strength and ardour of his own nature.