Regardful, however, of not carrying these difficulties
to such a length as might afford time for starting discov-
eries, or incidents, unfavourable to her plan, she at last
pretended to be won over by mere dint of entreaties, pro-
mises, and, above all, by the dazzling sum she took care to
wind him up to the specification of, when it was now even a
piece of art to feign, at once, a yielding to the allurements
of a great interest, as a pretext for her yielding at all,
and the manner of it such as might persuade him she had never
dipp'd her virtuous fingers in an affair of that sort.
Thus she led him through all the gradations of diffi-
culty, and obstacles, necessary to enhance the balue of the
prize he aim'd at; and in conclusion, he was so struck with
the little beauty I was mistress of, and so eagerly bent on
gaining his ends of me, that he left her even no room to
boast of her management in bringing him up to her mark, he
drove so plum of himself into every thing tending to make him
swallow the bait. Not but, in other respects, Mr. Norbert
was not clear sighted enough, or that he did not perfectly
know the town, and even by experience, the very branch of
imposition now in practice upon him: but we had his passion
our friend so much, he was so blinded and hurried on by it,
that he would have thought any undeception a very ill office
done to his pleasure.
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