scandalous life, much less to justify the like
practice from my example.

Thus it was with me; and thus, no doubt, considering parents always find
it that their own children are a restraint to them in their worst
courses, when the sense of a superior power has not the same influence.
But of that hereafter.

There happened, however, one good circumstance in the case of this poor
girl, which brought about a discovery sooner than otherwise it would
have been, and it was thus. After she and Amy had been intimate for some
time, and had exchanged several visits, the girl, now grown a woman,
talking to Amy of the gay things that used to fall out when she was
servant in my family, spoke of it with a kind of concern that she could
not see (me) her lady; and at last she adds, "'Twas very strange,
madam," says she to Amy, "but though I lived near two years in the
house, I never saw my mistress in my life, except it was that public
night when she danced in the fine Turkish habit, and then she was so
disguised that I knew nothing of her afterwards."

Amy was glad to hear this, but as she was a cunning girl from the
beginning, she was not to be bit, and so she laid no stress upon that at
first, but gave me an account of it; and I must confess it gave me a
secret joy to think that I was not known to her, and that, by virtue of
that only accident, I might, when other circumstances made room for it,
discover myself to her, and let her know she had a mother in a condition
fit to be owned.

It was a dreadful restraint to me before, and this gave me some very sad
reflections, and made way for the great question I have mentioned above;
and by how much the circumstance was bitter to me, by so much the more
agreeable it was to understand that the girl had never seen me, and
consequently did not know me again if she was to be told who I was.

However, the next time she came to visit Amy, I was resolved to put it
to a trial, and to come into the room and let her see me, and to see by
that whether she knew me or not; but Amy put me by, lest indeed, as
there was reason enough to question, I should not be able to contain or
forbear discovering myself to her; so it went off for that time.

But both these circumstances, and that is the reason of mentioning them,
brought me to consider of the life I lived, and to resolve to put myself
into some figure of life in which I might not be scandalous to my own
family, and be afraid to make myself kno