er a right to a
decent maintenance, that he made a proper settlement upon her and gave
the writings into Harriot's hands, who not only saw the money paid
regularly, but took so much pains to convince Mrs Tonston of the
malignity of her disposition that she brought her to a due sense of it,
and by applying for his assistance to mend her heart, who best knew its
defects, she became so altered in temper that five years after her
separation from her husband Harriot effected a reconciliation, and they
now live in great amity together, gratefully acknowledging their
obligations to her.

I have anticipated this fact in order to render my narrative less
tedious, or I should have stopped at Harriot's procuring a settlement
for Mrs Tonston, and have told you that by lying in her return at an inn
where the smallpox then was she caught that distemper, and soon after
she arrived in London it appeared. I need not say that she had it to a
very violent degree. Being then in town I had the good fortune to nurse
her and flatter myself that my care was not useless; for in cases so
dangerous, no one who does not feel all the tender solicitude of a
friend can be a proper nurse.

Mrs Alworth wrote her husband word of Harriot's illness, who came post
to London, filled with the extremest anxiety, and shared the fatigue of
nursing with me; she was all the time delirious. When she came to her
senses, she at first seemed mortified to think Mr Alworth had seen her
in that disfigured condition; but on reflection told me she rejoiced in
it, as she thought it must totally extinguish his passion; and her
greatest solicitude was for his happiness. But she afterwards found her
expectation was ill grounded.

When she recovered, she perceived that the smallpox had entirely
destroyed her beauty. She acknowledged she was not insensible to this
mortification; and to avoid the observation of the envious or even of
the idly curious she retired, as soon as she was able to travel, to a
country house which I hired for her.

In a very short time she became perfectly contented with the alteration
this cruel distemper had made in her. Her love for reading returned, and
she regained the quiet happiness of which flutter and dissipation had
deprived her without substituting any thing so valuable in its place.
She has often said she looks on this accident as a reward for the good
she had done Mrs Tonston, and that few benevolent actions receive so
immediate a recom