with such pregnant
circumstances, that I could not escape giving them credit, as they were,
indeed, too true!

She had hardly finished her report before I fainted away, and after
several successive fits, all the while wild and senseless, I miscarried
of the dear pledge of my Charles's love; but the wretched never die when
it is fittest they should die, and women are hard-lived! to a proverb.

The cruel and interested care taken to recover me, saved an odious life:
which, instead of the happiness and joys it had overflower in, all of
a sudden presented no view before me of any thing but the depth of
misery, horror, and the sharpest affliction.

Thus I lay six weeks, in the struggles of youth and constitution,
against the friendly efforts of death, which I constantly invoked to
my relief and deliverance, but which proved too weak for my wish. I
recovered at length, but into a state of stupefaction and despair, that
threatened me with the loss of my senses, and a mad house.

Time, however, that great comforter in ordinary, began to assuage the
violence of my suffering, and to-numb my feeling of them. My health
returned to me, though I still retained an air of grief, dejection, and
languor, which taking off from the ruddiness of my country complexion,
rendered it rather more delicate and affecting.

The landlady had all this while officiously provided, and seen that I
wanted for nothing: and as soon as she saw me retrieved into a condition
of answering her purpose, one day, after we had dined together, she
congratulated me on my recovery, the merit of which she took entirely
to herself, and all this by way of introduction to a most terrible, and
scurvy epilogue: "You are now," says she, "Miss Fanny, tolerably well,
and you are very welcome to stay in these lodgings as; long as you
please! you see I have asked you for nothing this long time, but truly
I have a call to make up a sum of money, which must be answered."
And, with that, presents me with a bill of arrears for rent, diet,
apothecaries' charges, nurse, etc., sum total twenty-three pounds,
seventeen and six-pence: towards discharging of which I had not in the
world (which she well knew) more than seven guineas, left by chance, of
my dear Charles's common stock, with me. At the same time, she desired
me to tell her what course I would take for payment. I burst out into
a flood of tears, and told her my condition: that I would sell what
few clothes I had, and tha