Dazzled by the numerous accomplishments of Bellcour, the charming Alathia weds him in secret.  When he finds that his father has designed to bestow his hand upon the heiress of an India merchant, he dares not confess his fault, but lets himself be carried to Plymouth to meet his intended bride.  There he determines to escape from his father during a hunting party, but while passing a wood, he hears cries and rescues a fair maiden from violation.  The beautiful stranger allows him to conduct her back to Plymouth, and turns out to be Mirtamene, the woman he is to marry.  Though very much in love with this new beauty, Bellcour cannot relinquish the thought of Alathia without a struggle.  But in fatal hesitation the time slips by, and he is finally compelled to wed a second bride.  Meanwhile the deserted Alathia hears disquieting reports of her husband’s conduct.  In disguise as a boy she travels to Plymouth to see for herself, confronts her guilty partner, and after hearing his confession, stabs herself.  Overcome by remorse and love, Bellcour imitates her, while Mirtamene “warn’d by the example of Bellcour, that Interest, Absence, or a new Passion, can make the most seeming constant Lover false, took a Resolution ever to contemn and hate that betraying Sex to which she owed her Misfortune and the Sight of such a Disaster as she had beheld in Alathia.”

Not content to retire in disgust from the world, Glicera, the victim of fickle man in “The City Jilt” (1726) determines to retaliate upon the lover who has ruined and abandoned her when the death of her father left her without a fortune or a protector.  To secure her revenge she encourages the advances of a senile alderman, Grubguard by name, whom she takes infinite delight in deceiving by the help of an ingenious confidant.  Meanwhile an unfortunate lawsuit and the extravagances of his wife have ruined the false Melladore, who is obliged to mortgage his estate to Grubguard.  Glicera obtains the deeds from the amorous alderman, and then sends him packing.  Melladore is forced to beg of her sufficient funds to purchase a commission and later dies in battle.  With the fortune she has won from her various lovers Glicera retires from the world and henceforth shuns the society of men.

In these three tales Mrs. Haywood followed the guidance of her own experience when it ran counter to the traditions of romance.  The betrayed heroine ought to have died, or at least to have been immured in a convent to suffer a living death, but instead of acquiescing in their fate, Belinda and Cleomira, Mirtamene, and Glicera defy the world, and in the last case prove that the worm may turn.

Among the works of her first decade of authorship a few effusions in which Mrs. Haywood has succeeded to a degree in motivating, characterizing, or analyzing the passions of her characters, must be exempted from the general charge of commonplaceness.  The first of these is “Idalia:  or, the Unfortunate Mistress” (1724), the story of a young Venetian beauty—­like Lasselia, her charms can only be imagined not described—­whose varied amorous adventures carry her over most of Italy.