o Hamburg was
pleaded. Yet to leave me at such an hour! I dared not upbraid, nor
object. The tale was so specious! The fortunes of a friend depended on
his punctual journey. The falsehood of his story too soon made itself
known. He was gone, in company with his detested paramour!

"Yet, though my vigilance was easily deceived, it was not so with
others. A creditor, who had his bond for three thousand pounds, pursued
and arrested him at Harwich. He was thrown into prison, but his
companion--let me, at least, say that in her praise--would not desert
him. She took lodging near the place of his confinement, and saw him
daily. That, had she not done it, and had my personal condition allowed,
should have been my province.

"Indignation and grief hastened the painful crisis with me. I did not
weep that the second fruit of this unhappy union saw not the light. I
wept only that this hour of agony was not, to its unfortunate mother,
the last.

"I felt not anger; I had nothing but compassion for Fielding. Gladly
would I have recalled him to my arms and to virtue; I wrote, adjuring
him, by all our past joys, to return; vowing only gratitude for his new
affection, and claiming only the recompense of seeing him restored to
his family; to liberty; to reputation.

"But, alas! Fielding had a good but a proud heart. He looked upon his
error with remorse, with self-detestation, and with the fatal belief
that it could not be retrieved; shame made him withstand all my
reasonings and persuasions, and, in the hurry of his feelings, he made
solemn vows that he would, in the moment of restored liberty, abjure his
country and his family forever. He bore indignantly the yoke of his new
attachment, but he strove in vain to shake it off. Her behaviour, always
yielding, doting, supplicative, preserved him in her fetters. Though
upbraided, spurned, and banished from his presence, she would not leave
him, but, by new efforts and new artifices, soothed, appeased, and won
again and kept his tenderness.

"What my entreaties were unable to effect, his father could not hope to
accomplish. He offered to take him from prison; the creditor offered to
cancel the bond, if he would return to me; but this condition he
refused. All his kindred, and one who had been his bosom-friend from
childhood, joined in beseeching his compliance with these conditions;
but his pride, his dread of my merited reproaches, the merits and
dissuasions of his new companion, whos