 accordingly, though he counted on staying away from me no more than
a week at farthest, he took his leave of me with an ominous heaviness of heart,
and left me a sum far above the state of his fortune, and very inconsistent with
the intended shortness of his journey; but it ended in the longest that can be,
and is never but once taken: for, arriv'd at Bath, he was not there two days
before he fell into a debauch of drinking with some gentlemen, that threw him
into a high fever and carry'd him off in four days time, never once out of a
delirium. Had he been in his senses to make a will, perhaps he might have made
favourable mention of me in it. Thus, however, I lost him; and as no condition
of life is more subject to revolutions than that of a woman of pleasure, I soon
recover'd my cheerfulness, and now beheld myself once more struck off the list
of kept-mistresses, and returned into the bosom of the community from which I
had been in some manner taken.
    Mrs. Cole still continuing her friendship, offered me her assistance and
advice towards another choice; but I was now in ease and affluence enough to
look about me at leisure; and as to any constitutional calls of pleasure, their
pressure, or sensibility, was greatly lessen'd by a consciousness of the ease
with which they were to be satisfy'd at Mrs. Cole's house, where Louisa and
Emily still continu'd in the old way; and my great favourite Harriet used often
to come and see me, and entertain me, with her head and heart full of the
happiness she enjoy'd with her dear baronet, whom she loved with tenderness, and
constancy, even though he was her keeper, and what is yet more, had made her
independent, by a handsome provision for her and hers. I was then in this
vacancy from any regular employ of my person, in my way of business, when one
day, Mrs. Cole, in the course of the constant confidence we lived in, acquainted
me that there was one Mr. Barville, who used her house, just come to town, whom
she was not a little perplex'd about providing a suitable companion for; which
was indeed a point of difficulty, as he was under the tyranny of a cruel taste:
that of an ardent desire, not only of being unmercifully whipp'd himself, but of
whipping others, in such sort, that tho' he paid extravagantly
