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e out of a house which must, for many reasons, be irksome and disagreeable to me, into convenient lodgings, where he would take all imaginable care of me; and desiring me not to have any explanations with my landlady, or be impatient till he returned, he dress'd and went out, having left me a purse with two and twenty guineas in it, being all he had about him, as he expresst it, to keep my pocket till further supplies.
As soon as he was gone, I felt the usual consequence of the first launch into vice (for my love-attachment to Charles never appear'd to me in that light). I was instantly borne away down the stream, without making back to the shore. My dreadful necessities, my gratitude, and above all, to say the plain truth, the dissipation and diversion I began to find, in this new acquaintance, from the black corroding thoughts my heart had been a prey to ever since the absence of my dear Charles, concurr'd to stun all contrary reflections. If I now thought of my first, my only charmer, it was still with the tenderness and regret of the fondest love, embitter'd with the consciousness that I was no longer worthy of him. I could have begg'd my bread with him all over the world, but wretch that I was, I had neither the virtue nor courage requisite not to outlive my separation from him!
Yet, had not my heart been thus pre-ingaged, Mr. H . . . might probably have been the sole master of it; but the place was full, and the force of conjunctures alone had made him the possessor of my person; the charms of which had, by the bye, been his sole object and passion, and were, of course, no foundation for a love either very delicate or very durable.
He did not return till six in the evening to take me away to my new lodgings; and my moveables being soon pack'd, and convey'd into a hackney-coach, it cost me but little regret to take my leave of a landlady whom I thought I had so much reason not to be overpleas'd with; and as for her part, she made no other difference to my staying or going, but what that
