With this noble and agreeable youth liv'd I in perfect
joy and constancy. He was full bent on keeping me to himself,
for the honey-month at least; but his stay in London was not
even so long, his father, who had a post in Ireland, taking
him abruptly with him on his repairing thither. Yet even then
I was near keeping hold of his affection and person, as he had
propos'd, and I had consented to follow him in order to go to
Ireland after him, as soon as he could be settled there; but
meeting with an agreeable and advantageous match in that king-
dom, he chose the wiser part, and forebore sending for me, but
at the same time took care that I should receive a very magni-
ficent present, which did not however compensate for all my
deep regret on my loss of him.
This event also created a chasm in our little society,
which Mrs. Cole, on the foot of her usual caution, was in no
haste to fill up; but then it redoubled her attention to pro-
cure me, in the advantages of a traffic for a counterfeit
maidenhead, some consolation for the sort of widowhood I had
been left in; and this was a scheme she had never lost pro-
spect of, and only waited for a proper person to bring it to
bear with.
But I was, it seems, fated to be my own caterer in this,
as I had been in my first trial of the market.
I had now pass'd near a month in the enjoyment of all
the pleasures of familiarity and society with my companions,
whose particular favourites (the baronet excepted, who soon
after took Harriet home) had all, on the terms of community
establish'd in the house, solicited the gratification of
their taste for variety in my embraces; but I had with the
utmost art and address, on various pretexts, eluded their
pursuit, without giving them cause to complain; and this
reserve I used neither out of dislike of them, or disgust of
the thing, but my true reason was my attachment to my own,
and my tenderness of invading the choice of my companions,
who outwardly exempt, as they seem'd, from jealousy, could
not but in secret like me the better for the regard I had
for, without making a merit of it to them.
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