r his wife, that she had secretly
married, and kept private (the old story) on account of his friends, I
dare swear this appeared extremely apocryphal to a woman who knew the
town so well as she did; but that was the least of her concern: it was
impossible to be less scruple-ridden than she was; and the advantage of
letting her rooms being her sole object, the truth itself would have far
from scandalized her, or broke her bargain.

A sketch of her picture, and personal history, will dispose you to
account for the part she is to act in my concern.

She was about forty six years old, tall, meagre, red-haired, with one
of those trivial ordinary faces you meet with every where, and go
about unheeded and un-mentioned. In her youth she had been kept by a
gentleman, who, dying, left her forty pounds a year during her life, in
consideration of a daughter he had by her: which daughter, at the age
of seventeen, she sold, for not a very considerable sum neither, to a
gentleman who was going on envoy abroad, and took his purchase with him,
where he used her with the utmost tenderness, and it is thought, was
secretly married to her: but had constantly made a point of her not
keeping up the least correspondence with a mother base enough to make a
market of her own flesh and blood. However, as she had not nature,
nor, indeed, any passion but that of money, this gave her no further
uneasiness, then, as she thereby lost a handle of squeezing pres-sents,
or other after-advantages, out of the bargain. Indifferent then, by
nature of constitution, to every other pleasure but that of increasing
the lump, by any means whatever, she commenced a kind of private
procuress, for which she was not amiss fitted, by her grave decent
appearance, and sometimes did a job in the match-making way; in short,
there was, nothing that appeared to her under the shape of gain, that
she would not have undertaken. She knew most of the ways of the town,
having not only herself been upon, but kept up constant intelligences in
promoting a harmony between the two sexes, in private pawn-broking, and
other profitable secrets. She rented the house she lived in, and made
the most of it, by letting it out in lodgings; though she was worth, at
least, near three or four thousand pounds, she would not allow herself
even the necessaries, of life, and pinned her subsistence entirely on
what she could squeeze out of her lodgers.

When she saw such a young pair come under her