married, madam," says she, "but it seems she had
been at the East Indies; and if she was married, it was there, to be
sure. I think she said she had good luck in the Indies."

"That is, I suppose," said I, "had buried her husband there."

"I understood it so, madam," says she, "and that she had got his
estate."

"Was that her good luck?" said I; "it might be good to her, as to the
money indeed, but it was but the part of a jade to call it good luck."

Thus far our discourse of Mrs. Amy went, and no farther, for she knew no
more of her; but then the Quaker unhappily, though undesignedly, put in
a question, which the honest good-humoured creature would have been far
from doing if she had known that I had carried on the discourse of Amy
on purpose to drop Roxana out of the conversation.

But I was not to be made easy too soon. The Quaker put in, "But I think
thou saidst something was behind of thy mistress; what didst thou call
her? Roxana, was it not? Pray, what became of her?"

"Ay, ay, Roxana," says the captain's wife; "pray, sister, let's hear the
story of Roxana; it will divert my lady, I'm sure."

"That's a damned lie," said I to myself; "if you knew how little 't
would divert me, you would have too much advantage over me." Well, I saw
no remedy, but the story must come on, so I prepared to hear the worst
of it.

"Roxana!" says she, "I know not what to say of her; she was so much
above us, and so seldom seen, that we could know little of her but by
report; but we did sometimes see her too; she was a charming woman
indeed, and the footmen used to say that she was to be sent for to
court."

"To court!" said I; "why, she was at court, wasn't she? the Pall Mall is
not far from Whitehall."

"Yes, madam," says she, "but I mean another way."

"I understand thee," says the Quaker; "thou meanest, I suppose, to be
mistress to the king."

"Yes, madam," said she.

I cannot help confessing what a reserve of pride still was left in me;
and though I dreaded the sequel of the story, yet when she talked how
handsome and how fine a lady this Roxana was, I could not help being
pleased and tickled with it, and put in questions two or three times of
how handsome she was; and was she really so fine a woman as they talked
of; and the like, on purpose to hear her repeat what the people's
opinion of me was, and how I had behaved.

"Indeed," says she, at last, "she was a most beautiful creature as ever
I saw in my life." "B