an speak so deep a sorrow as your present
aspect; yet your dress is made for jollity and revelling." "It is," said
she, "an unspeakable pleasure to meet with one I know, and to bewail
myself to any that is not an utter stranger to humanity. When your
friend my father died, he left me to a wide world, with no defence
against the insults of fortune, but rather, a thousand snares to entrap
me in the dangers to which youth and innocence are exposed, in an age
wherein honour and virtue are become mere words, and used only as they
serve to betray those who understand them in their native sense, and
obey them as the guides and motives of their being. The wickedest of all
men living, the abandoned Decius, who has no knowledge of any good art
or purpose of human life, but as it tends to the satisfaction of his
appetites, had opportunities of frequently seeing and entertaining me at
a house where mixed company boarded, and where he placed himself for the
base intention which he has since brought to pass. Decius saw enough in
me to raise his brutal desires, and my circumstances gave him hopes of
accomplishing them. But all the glittering expectations he could lay
before me, joined by my private terrors of poverty itself, could not for
some months prevail upon me; yet, however I hated his intention, I still
had a secret satisfaction in his courtship, and always exposed myself to
his solicitations. See here the bane of our sex! Let the flattery be
never so apparent, the flatterer never so ill thought of, his praises
are still agreeable and we contribute to our own deceit. I was therefore
ever fond of all opportunities and pretences of being in his company. In
a word, I was at last ruined by him, and brought to this place, where I
have been ever since immured; and from the fatal day after my fall from
innocence, my worshipper became my master and my tyrant. Thus you see me
habited in the most gorgeous manner, not in honour of me as a woman he
loves, but as this attire charms his own eye, and urges him to repeat
the gratification he takes in me, as the servant of his brutish lusts
and appetites. I know not where to fly for redress; but am here pining
away life in the solitude and severity of a nun, but the conscience and
guilt of a harlot. I live in this lewd practice with a religious awe of
my minister of darkness, upbraided with the support I receive from him,
for the inestimable possession of youth, of innocence, of honour, and of
co