tuous fingers in
an affair of that sort.

Thus she led him through all the gradations of difficulty, and
obstacles, necessary to enhance the value of the prize he aimed at; and
in conclusion, he was so struck with the little beauty I was mistress
of, and so eagerly bent on gaining his ends of me, that he left her no
room to boast of her management in bringing him up to her mark, he drove
so plump of himself into every thing tending to make him swallow the
bait. Not but, in other respects, Mr. Norbert was not clear sighted
enough, or that he did not perfectly know the town, and even by
experience, the very branch of imposition now in practice upon him: but
we had his passion our friend so much, he was so blinded and hurried on
by it, that he would have thought any undeception a very ill office done
to his pleasure. Thus concurring, even precipitately, to the point she
wanted him at, Mrs. Cole brought him at last to hug himself on the cheap
bargain he considered the purchase of my imaginary jewel was to him,
at no more than three hundred guineas to myself, and a hundred to the
brokers: being a slender recompense for all her pains, and all the
scruples of conscience she had now sacrificed to him for this first time
of her life; which sums were to be paid down on the nail, upon delivery
of my person, exclusive of some no inconsiderable presents that had been
made in the course of the negociation: during which I had occasionally,
but sparingly been introduced into his company, at proper times and
hours; in which it is incredible how little it seemed necessary to
strain my natural disposition to modesty higher, in order to pass it
upon him for that a very maid: all my looks and gestures ever breathing
nothing but that innocence which the men so ardently require in us, for
no other end than to feast themselves with the pleasure of destroying
it, and which they are so grievously, with all their skill, subject to
mistakes in.

When the articles of the treaty had been fully agreed on, the stipulated
payments duly secured, and nothing now remained but the execution of the
main point, which centered in the surrender of my person up to his free
disposal and use, Mrs. Cole managed her objections, especially to his
lodgings, and insinuations so nicely, that it became his own mere notion
and urgent request, that this copy of a wedding should be finished at
her house: "At first, indeed, she did not care, not she, to have such
doings i