 my Indisposition. This, she said, greatly puzzled her and her Mother, and the
worthy Divine endeavoured to persuade her to give Credit to my Letter, and to
impute the other to a Species of Wit with which the World greatly abounds. This
consists entirely in doing various Kinds of Mischief to our Fellow-creatures; by
belying one, deceiving another, exposing a third, and drawing in a fourth to
expose himself; in short, by making some the Objects of Laughter, others of
Contempt; and indeed not seldom, by subjecting them to very great
Inconveniences, perhaps to Ruin, for the Sake of a Jest.
    Mrs. Harris and the Doctor derived the Letter from this Species of Wit. Miss
Betty, however, was of a different Opinion, and advised poor Amelia to apply to
an Officer whom the Governor had sent over in the same Ship, by whom the Report
of my Illness was so strongly confirmed, that Amelia immediately resolved on her
Voyage.
    I had a great Curiosity to know the Author of this Letter; but not the least
Trace of it could be discovered. The only Person with whom I lived in any great
Intimacy was Captain James; and he, Madam, from what I have already told you,
you will think to be the last Person I could suspect; besides, he declared upon
his Honour, that he knew nothing of the Matter; and no Man's Honour is, I
believe, more sacred. There was indeed an Ensign of another Regiment who knew my
Wife, and who had sometimes visited me in my Illness; but he was a very unlikely
Man to interest himself much in any Affairs which did not concern him; and he
too declared he knew nothing of it.«
    »And did you never discover this Secret?« cried Miss Mathews.
    »Never to this Day,« answered Booth.
    »I fancy,« said she, »I could give a shrewd Guess - What so likely as that
Mrs. Booth, when you left her, should have given her Foster-brother Orders to
send her Word of whatever befel you? - Yet stay - that could not be neither: for
then she would not have doubted whether she should leave dear England on the
Receipt of the Letter. - No, it must have been by some other Means; - yet that I
owned appeared extremely natural to me: for if I had been left by such a
Husband, I think I should have pursued the same Method.«
    »No, Madam,« cried Booth, »it must have been conveyed by some other Channel
