thout
ceasing, about it; and yet even all this while, whatever it was that
bewitched me, I had not one serious wish that I had taken him. I wished
heartily, indeed, that I could have kept him with me, but I had a mortal
aversion to marrying him, or indeed anybody else, but formed a thousand
wild notions in my head that I was yet gay enough, and young and
handsome enough, to please a man of quality, and that I would try my
fortune at London, come of it what would.

Thus blinded by my own vanity, I threw away the only opportunity I then
had to have effectually settled my fortunes, and secured them for this
world; and I am a memorial to all that shall read my story, a standing
monument of the madness and distraction which pride and infatuations
from hell run us into, how ill our passions guide us, and how
dangerously we act when we follow the dictates of an ambitious mind.

I was rich, beautiful, and agreeable, and not yet old. I had known
something of the influence I had had upon the fancies of men even of the
highest rank. I never forgot that the Prince de ---- had said, with an
ecstasy, that I was the finest woman in France. I knew I could make a
figure at London, and how well I could grace that figure. I was not at a
loss how to behave, and having already been adored by princes, I thought
of nothing less than of being mistress to the king himself. But I go
back to my immediate circumstances at that time.

I got over the absence of my honest merchant but slowly at first. It was
with infinite regret that I let him go at all; and when I read the
letter he left I was quite confounded. As soon as he was out of call
and irrecoverable I would have given half I had in the world for him
back again; my notion of things changed in an instant, and I called
myself a thousand fools for casting myself upon a life of scandal and
hazard, when, after the shipwreck of virtue, honour, and principle, and
sailing at the utmost risk in the stormy seas of crime and abominable
levity, I had a safe harbour presented, and no heart to cast anchor in
it.

His predictions terrified me; his promises of kindness if I came to
distress melted me into tears, but frighted me with the apprehensions of
ever coming into such distress, and filled my head with a thousand
anxieties and thoughts how it should be possible for me, who had now
such a fortune, to sink again into misery.

Then the dreadful scene of my life, when I was left with my five
childre