for inconstancy,
and new faces. But what was yet at least agreeable, as well as more
nattering, the love I had inspired him with, bred a deference to me,
that was of great service to his health: for having by degrees, and with
much pathetic representations brought him to some husbandry of it, and
to insure the duration of his pleasures by moderating their use, and
correcting those excesses in them he was so addicted to, and which had
shattered his constitution and destroyed his powers of life in the very
point for which he seemed desirous to live, he was grown more delicate,
more temperate, and in course more healthy; his gratitude for which was
taking a turn very favourable for my fortune, when once more the caprice
of it dashed the cup from my lips.

His sister, lady L..., for whom he had a great affection, desiring him
to accompany her down to Bath for her health, he could not refuse her
such a favour; and accordingly, though he counted on staying away from
me no more than a week at farthest, he took his leave of me with an
ominous heaviness of heart, and left me a sum far above the state of
his fortune, and very inconsistent with the intended shortness of his
journey; but it ended in the longest that can be, and is never but once
taken: for, arrived at Bath, he was not there two days before he fell
into a debauch of drinking with some gentlemen, that threw him into a
high fever, and carried him off in four days' time, never once out of
a delirium. Had he been in his senses to make a will, perhaps he might
have made favourable mention of me in it. Thus, however, I lost him; and
as no condition of life is more subject to revolutions than that of
a woman of pleasure, I soon recovered my cheerfulness, and now beheld
myself once more struck off the list of kept mistresses, and returned
into the bosom of the community, from which I had been in some manner
taken.

Mrs. Cole still continued her friendship, and offered me her assistance
and advice towards another choice; but I was now in ease and affluence
enough to look about me at leisure; and as to any constitutional calls
of pleasure, their pressure, or sensibility, was greatly lessened by a
consciousness of the east with which they were to be satisfied at Mrs.
Cole's house, where Louisa and Emily still continued in the old way; and
my great favourite Harriet used often to come and see me, and entertain
me, with her head and heart full of the happiness she enjoyed with