“The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.”
The idea behind the quotation
Some women worry when their husbands are away not because they miss their company, but because they fear their husbands are enjoying themselves without them.