l of arrack-punch, the
treat of which, together with the choice of the house conveniences,
was offered and not accepted. Charles all the time acted the chance
companion of the lawyer, who had brought him there, as he knew the
house, and appeared in no wise interested in the issue; but he had the
collateral pleasure of hearing all that I told him verified, as far as
the bawd's fears would give her leave to enter into my history, which,
if one may guess by the composition she so readily came into, were not
small.

Phoebe, my kind tutoress Phoebe, was at the time gone out, perhaps in
search of me, or their cooked-up story had not, it is probable, passed
smoothly.

This negociation had, however, taken up some time, which would have
appeared much longer to me, left as I was, in a strange house, if the
landlady, a motherly sort of a woman, to whom Charles had liberally
recommended me, had not come up and borne me company. We drank tea, and
her chat helped to pass away the time very agreeably, since he was our
theme; but as the evening deepened, and the hour set for his return was
elapsed, I could not dispel the gloom of impatience, and tender fears
which gathered upon me, and which our timid sex are apt to feel in
proportion to their love.

Long, however, I did not suffer: the sight of him over-paid me; and the
soft reproach I had prepared for him, expired before it reached my lips.

I was still a-bed, yet unable to use my legs otherwise than awkwardly,
and Charles flew to me, catches me in his arms, raised and extending
mine to meet his dear embrace, and gives me an account, interrupted by
many a sweet parenthesis of kisses, of the success of his measures.

I could not help laughing at the fright of the old woman had been put
into, which my ignorance, and indeed my want of innocence, had far from
prepared me from bespeaking. She had, it seems, apprehended that I fled
the shelter to some relation I had recollected in town, on my dislike
of their ways and proceedings towards me, and that this application came
from thence; for, as Charles had rightly judged, not one neighbour had,
at that still hour, seen the circumstance of my escape into the coach,
or, at least, noticed him; neither had any in the house, the least hint
of suspicion of my having spoken to him, much less of my having clapt
up such a sudden bargain with a perfect stranger, thus the greatest
improbability is not always what we should most mistrust.

We sup