tell him where I had been and with who. I
said I had been to an aunt's, he went to her, and found I had fibbed.
At length he let me out, because he wanted me to attend to his
business, and the first man I saw in the bar was my dear boy,--I nearly
fainted."--These were as nearly as possible her own words describing
her seduction, they are so unlike the confessions I have had from other
women, that the very words sank deep into my mind.

After that he used to go and drink at the bar, her father talked with
him, not knowing he was the man who had broached his daughter. She was
watched till life was unbearable, her sister worried her (she had
no mother), neighbours who had thought well of her began to sneer, a
country swain who liked her was saucy to her, one or two swells in the
neighbourhood who had been accustomed to see her about, and admired her
beauty, were now free in their behaviour. One took liberties with her,
and in the public-house began asking her smutty questions. Weary with
all this, liking the man whose sperm had wetted her virgin cunt, perhaps
longing to have more (although she always declared to me that she had
no recollection of that desire affecting her), one night she ran away to
London with him.

They lived in London nine months. Then came grief. He was the son of a
West-India planter who had sent him to London to pass as barrister. His
father's agents found out the connection with Mary, and wrote to the
father that he was spending his money, but not advancing his career. His
father objected, then threatened, and then his allowance was stopped.
They lived on what they had, until penniless. He wrote that he was
going to marry Mary, and his father replied that if he did he need
never return and might starve. He was a gentleman, and could not get his
living, he tried but failed. Then the father wrote, requesting him to
return, and saying he would provide for Mary. Misery stared them in the
face, and he consented to go home.

His father remitted money. The first thing he did was to take all Mary's
jewelry and clothes out of pawn, and then to arrange for her to live. He
promised to come back, and marry her, and some sort of such promise was
made by his father's agents. He begged her to go home, but she would
not. Then he put her to lodge with a small middle-class woman whom he
bribed to give Mary a character as a servant, for he declared he would
remain, and ruin himself for ever, if she neither would go