debts I knew nothing of, because I should not find
out my mother to make myself known to her before she left England."

After this she told my lord everything she knew of me, even in the
character of Roxana, and described my dress so well, that he knew it to
be mine.

[Illustration: ROXANA IS CONFRONTED WITH HER DAUGHTER

"_Pray, madam," says he, "do you know this young woman?_"]

When she had quite gone through her long relation, "Well, madam,"
says he, "now let me see if I cannot tell how far she has told the truth
in relation to you. When I first became acquainted with you, it was on
the sale of those jewels, in which I stood so much your friend, at a
time that you were in the greatest distress, your substance being in the
hands of the Jew; you then passed for a jeweller's widow; this agrees
with her saying you ran away with a jeweller. In the next place, you
would not consent to marry me about twelve years ago; I suppose then
your real husband was living, for nothing else could tally with your
condescension to me in everything except marriage. Since that time, your
refusing to come to Holland in the vessel I had provided for you, under
a distant prospect of your being with child, though in reality it was
your having a child too much, as the captain told me of, when I, being
ignorant of the case, did not understand him. Now," continued he, "she
says that you are the identical Lady Roxana which made so much noise in
the world, and has even described the robe and head-dress you wore on
that occasion, and in that I know she is right; for, to my own
knowledge, you have that very dress by you now; I having seen you
dressed in it at our lodging at the Quaker's. From all these
circumstances," says he, "I may be assured that you have imposed grossly
upon me, and instead of being a woman of honour as I took you for, I
find that you have been an abandoned wretch, and had nothing to
recommend you but a sum of money and a fair countenance, joined to a
false unrelenting heart."

These words of my lord's struck such a damp upon my spirits, as made me
unable to speak in my turn. But at last, I spoke as follows: "My lord, I
have most patiently stood to hear all it was possible for you to allege
against me, which has no other proof than imagination. That I was the
wife of a brewer, I have no reason now to deny, neither had I any
occasion before to acknowledge it. I brought him a handsome fortune,
which, joined to his, made us a