hold it long; he will have his desert, I hope; I
don't doubt but we shall see him in the Gazette quickly for a bankrupt.

2. _Lady_.--If he does not draw in some innocent young thing that has
her fortune in her own hands to patch him up.

1. _Lady_.--I hope not, Madam; I hear he is blown where he went since,
and there, they say, they have made another discovery of him, in a worse
circumstance than the other.

2. _Lady_.--How, pray?

1. _Lady_.--Nothing, Madam, but a particular kind of illness, &c. I need
say no more.

2. _Lady_.--You astonish me! Why, I always thought him a very civil,
honest, sober man.

1. _Lady_.--This is a sad world, Madam; men are seldom known now, till
it is too late; but sometimes murder comes out seasonably, and so I
understand it is here; for the lady had not gone so far with him, but
that she could go off again.

2. _Lady_.--Nay, it was time to go off again, if it were so.

1. _Lady_.--Nay, Madam, I do not tell this part of my own knowledge; I
only heard so, but I am afraid there is too much in it.

Thus ended this piece of hellish wildfire, upon the character and credit
of a tradesman, the truth of all which was no more than this--that the
tradesman, disliking his first lady, left her, and soon after, though
not presently, courted another of a superior fortune indeed, though not
for that reason; and the first lady, provoked at being cast off, and, as
she called it, slighted, raised all this clamour upon him, and
persecuted him with it, wherever she was able.

Such a discourse as this at a tea-table, it could not be expected would
be long a secret; it ran from one tittle-tattle society to another; and
in every company, snow-ball like, it was far from lessening, and it went
on, till at length it began to meet with some contradiction, and the
tradesman found himself obliged to trace it as far and as well as he
could.

But it was to no purpose to confront it; when one was asked, and another
was asked, they only answered they heard so, and they heard it in
company in such a place, and in such a place, and some could remember
where they had it, and some could not; and the poor tradesman, though he
was really a man of substance, sank under it prodigiously: his new
mistress, whom he courted, refused him, and would never hear any thing
in his favour, or trouble herself to examine whether it were true or
no--it was enough, she said, to her, that he was laden with such a
report; and, if i