and far from feeling
any true contrition, he was all rage and madness, which having no means
to vent in words, discovered itself in sullenness:--when the servant to
whom he intrusted the key came in to bring him food, he refused to eat,
and could scarce restrain himself from throwing in the man's face what
he had brought.

It is certain, that while under this circumstance, he was agitated at
once by every different unruly passion:--pride, anger, spleen,
thinking himself a man, at finding the treatment of a _boy_, made him
almost hate the person from whom he received it.--The apprehensions
what farther meaning might be couched in the menace with which his
father left him, threw him sometimes into a terror little different
from convulsive;--but above all, his impatience for seeing his dear
Harriot, and the surprize, the grief, and perhaps the resentment, he
imagined she must feel on his absenting himself, drove him into a kind
of despair.

In fine, unable to sustain the violence of his agitations, on the
third night, regardless of what consequences might ensue from giving
this additional cause of displeasure to his father, he found means to
push back the lock of his chamber, and flew down stairs, and out at
the street-door with so much speed, that it would have been impossible
to have stopped him, had any one heard him, which none happened to do,
it being midnight, and all the family in a sound sleep.

That he went directly to the lodgings of Harriot, I believe my reader
will make no doubt; but perhaps her character does not yet enough
appear, to give any suspicion of the reception he found there.

In effect, she was no other than one of those common creatures, who
procure a miserable subsistance by the prostitution of their charms;
and as nature had not been sparing to her on that score, and she was
yet young, though less so than she appeared thro' art, she wanted not
a number of gallants, who all contributed, more or less, to her living
in the manner she did: several of these had happened to come when
Natura was with her; but she having had the precaution to acquaint
them with her design of drawing in this young spark for a husband,
they took the cue she gave them, each passing before him either for a
cousin, or one of the lawyers employed in her pretended suit.

It was with one of these equally happy, tho' less deluded rivals of
Natura, that finding he did not come, she had agreed to pass this
night; and her mai