go myself, I sent several
sham messengers, till after a fortnight's waiting longer, I found that
there was hopes of his life, though he was still very ill; then I
abated my sending any more to the house, and in some time after I
learned in the neighbourhood that he was about house, and then that he
was abroad again.

I made no doubt then but that I should soon hear of him, and began to
comfort myself with my circumstances being, as I thought, recovered. I
waited a week, and two weeks, and with much surprise and amazement I
waited near two months and heard nothing, but that, being recovered, he
was gone into the country for the air, and for the better recovery
after his distemper. After this it was yet two months more, and then I
understood he was come to his city house again, but still I heard
nothing from him.

I had written several letters for him, and directed them as usual, and
found two or three of them had been called for, but not the rest. I
wrote again in a more pressing manner than ever, and in one of them let
him know, that I must be forced to wait on him myself, representing my
circumstances, the rent of lodgings to pay, and the provision for the
child wanting, and my own deplorable condition, destitute of
subsistence for his most solemn engagement to take care of and provide
for me. I took a copy of this letter, and finding it lay at the house
near a month and was not called for, I found means to have the copy of
it put into his own hands at a coffee-house, where I had by inquiry
found he used to go.

This letter forced an answer from him, by which, though I found I was
to be abandoned, yet I found he had sent a letter to me some time
before, desiring me to go down to the Bath again. Its contents I shall
come to presently.

It is true that sick-beds are the time when such correspondences as
this are looked on with different countenances, and seen with other
eyes than we saw them with, or than they appeared with before. My
lover had been at the gates of death, and at the very brink of
eternity; and, it seems, had been struck with a due remorse, and with
sad reflections upon his past life of gallantry and levity; and among
the rest, criminal correspondence with me, which was neither more nor
less than a long-continued life of adultery, and represented itself as
it really was, not as it had been formerly thought by him to be, and he
looked upon it now with a just and religious abhorrence.

I cannot