Amidst all my personal infidelities,
not one had made a pin's point impression on a heart impene-
trable to the true love-passion, but for him.
As soon, however, as I was mistress of this unexpected
fortune, I felt more than ever how dear he was to me, from
its insufficiency to make me happy, whilst he was not to
share it with me. My earliest care, consequently, was to
endeavour at getting some account of him; but all my re-
searches produc'd me no more light than that his father had
been dead for some time, not so well as even with the world;
and that Charles had reached his port of destination in the
South-Seas, where, finding the estate he was sent to recover
dwindled to a trifle, by the loss of two ships in which the
bulk of his uncle's fortune lay, he was come away with the
small remainder, and might, perhaps, according to the best
advice, in a few months return to England, from whence he
had, at the time of this my inquiry, been absent two years
and seven months. A little eternity in love!
You cannot conceive with what joy I embraced the hopes
thus given me of seeing the delight of my heart again. But,
as the term of months was assigned it, in order to divert
and amuse my impatience for his return, after settling my
affairs with much ease and security, I set out on a journey
for Lancashire, with an equipage suitable to my fortune, and
with a design purely to revisit my place of nativity, for
which I could not help retaining a great tenderness; and might
naturally not be sorry to shew myself there, to the advantage
I was now in pass to do, after the report Esther Davis had
spread of my being spirited away to the plantations; for on
no other supposition could she account for the suppression of
myself to her, since her leaving me so abruptly at the inn.
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