y condition. He spoke to
me; and this address from a stranger throwing a blush into my cheeks,
that still set him wider of the truth, I answered him, with an
awkwardness and confusion the more apt to impose, as there really was
a mixture of the genuine in them. But when proceeding, on the foot of
having broken the ice, to join discourse, he went into other leading
questions, I put so much innocence, simplicity, and even childishness,
into my answers, that on no better foundation, liking my person as he
did, I will not answer for it, he would have been sworn for my modesty.
There is, in short, in the men, when once they are caught, by the eye
especially, a fund of cullibility that their lordly wisdom little dreams
of, and in virtue of which the most sagacious of them are seen so often
our dupes. Amongst other queries he put to me, one was, whether I was
married? I replied, that I was too young to think of that this many a
year. To that of my age, I answered, and sunk a year upon him, passing
myself for not above seventeen. As to my way of life, I told him I had
served an apprenticeship to a milliner in Preston, and was come to town
after a relation, that I had found, on my arrival, was dead, and now
lived journey-woman to a milliner in town. That last article, indeed,
was not much of the side of what I pretended to pass for; but it did
pass, under favour of the growing passion I had inspired him with. After
he had next got out of me, very dexterously as he thought, what I had no
sort of design to make reserve of, my own, my mistress's name, and place
of abode, he loaded me with fruit, all the rarest and dearest he could
pick out and sent me home, pondering on what might be the consequence of
this adventure.

As soon then as I came to Mrs. Cole's, I related to her all that passed,
on which she very judiciously concluded, that if he did not come after
me there was no harm done, and that, if he did, as her presage suggested
to her he would, his character and his views should be well sifted, so
as to know whether the game was worth the springes; that in the mean
time nothing was easier than my part in it, since no more rested on me
than to follow her cue and promptership throughout, till the last act.

The next morning, after an evening spent on his side, as we afterwards
learnt, in perquisitions into Mrs. Cole's character in the neighbourhood
(than which nothing could be more favourable to her designs upon him),
my gentlem