ening before I arrived at my lodgings,
and Mrs. Cole, after helping me to range and secure my things, spent
the whole evening with me in my apartment, where we supped together, in
giving me the best advice and instruction with regard to the new stage
of my profession I was now to enter upon; and passing thus from a
private devotee to pleasure into a public one, to become a more general
good, with all the advantages requisite to put my person out to use,
either for interest or pleasure, or both. "But then," she observed, "as
I was a kind of new face upon the town, that is, was an established rule
and myster of trade, for me to pass for a maid and dispose of myself
as such on the first good occasion, without prejudice, however, to such
diversions as I might have a mind to in the interim; for that nobody
could be a greater enemy than she was to the losing of time. That she
would, in the mean time, do her best to find out a proper person, and
would undertake to manage this nice point for me, if I would accept
of her aid and advice to such good purpose, that, in the loss of a
fictitious maidenhead, I should reap all the advantages of a native
one."

As too great a delicacy of sentiments did not extremely belong to my
character at that time, I confess, against myself, that I perhaps too
readily closed with a proposal which my candor and ingenuity gave me
some repugnance to: but not enough to contradict the intention of one to
whom I had now thoroughly abandoned the direction of all my steps. For
Mrs. Cole had, I do not know how unless by one of those unaccountable
invincible sympathies that, nevertheless, from the strongest links,
especially of female friendship, won and got entire possession of me. On
her side, she pretended that a strict resemblance, she fancied she saw
in me, to an only daughter whom she had lost at my age, was the first
motive of her taking to me so affectionately as she did. It might be so:
there exist a slender motives of attachment, that, gathering force from
habit and liking, have proved often more solid and durable than those
founded on much stronger reasons; but this I know, that though I had
no other acquaintance with her, than seeing her at my lodgings, when
I lived with Mr. H..., where she had made errands to sell me some
millinery ware, she had by degrees insinuated herself so far into my
confidence, that I threw myself blindly into her hands, and came,
at length, to regard, love, and obey her i