en Vrayment reveals herself as Montamour disguised as a
man, and persuades the judge that Beauclair is innocent. Du Lache and
his accomplices are broken on the wheel, the Baroness takes poison, and
Beauclair is united to his faithful Montamour.

In the conduct of the story the writer shows no deficiency in expressing
the passions, but rather a want of measure, for thrill follows thrill so
fast that the reader can hardly realize what is happening. And as if the
lusts and crimes of the Baroness did not furnish enough sensational
incidents, the tender romance of Beauclair and Montamour is superadded.
The hero is a common romantic type, easily inconstant, but rewarded
above his merits by a faithful mistress. A woman disguised as a man was
a favorite device with Mrs. Haywood as well as with other writers of
love stories, but one need read only the brazen Mrs. Charke's memoirs or
Defoe's realistic "Moll Flanders" to discover that it was a device not
unheard of in real life. The actual occurrence of such disguises,
however, made no difference to the female writers of fiction. Anything
soul-stirring, whether from romances or from plays, was equally grist to
their mills.

In seeking for the most dramatic _denouements_ sensational romancers
were not long in perceiving the suspense that could be produced by
involving the chief characters in a trial for their lives. Mrs. Behn had
by that means considerably protracted the interest in "The Fair Jilt:
or, the Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda" (1688), and Mrs. Haywood,
following her example, succeeded in giving a last stimulus to the jaded
nerves of the readers of "The Force of Nature" and "The Injur'd
Husband." And finally the title-page of an anonymous work attributed to
her indicates that the struggling authoress was not insensible to the
popular demand for romances of roguery. A prospective buyer might have
imagined that he was securing a criminal biography in "Memoirs of the
Baron de Brosse, Who was Broke on the Wheel in the Reign of Lewis XIV.
Containing, An Account of his Amours. With Several Particulars relating
to the Wars in those Times," but the promise of the title was
unfulfilled, for Mrs. Haywood was no journalist to make capital out of a
malefactor's exit from the world. The whole book is a chronicle of the
Baron's unsuccessful pursuit of a hard-hearted beauty named Larissa,
mingled with little histories of the Baron's rivals, of a languishing
Madam de Monbray, and