In the first few pages of the story the author makes a noteworthy attempt to create an atmosphere of impending disaster.  When De L’Amye first meets the heroine, three drops of blood fall from his nose and stain the white handkerchief in her hand, and the company rallies him on this sign of an approaching union, much to his wife’s discomfiture.  The accident and her yet unrecognized love fill Lasselia’s mind with uneasy forebodings.  “She wou’d start like one in a Frenzy, and cry out, Oh! it was not for nothing that those ominous Drops of Blood fell from him on my Handkerchief!—­It was not for nothing I was seiz’d with such an unusual Horror—­Nor is it in vain, that my Soul shrinks, and seems to dread a second Interview!—­They are all, I fear, too sure Predictions of some fatal Consequence.”  These gloomy thoughts at length give way to an ecstasy of despairing love, and when her affection is reciprocated, to a series of passionate letters and poems, which indeed make necessary the author’s apology for the “too great Warmth” of the style.

Since the ultimate disaster of adventurous heroines was regarded as a sop to moral readers, Mrs. Haywood frequently failed to gratify her audience with a happy ending, but occasionally a departure from strict virtue might be condoned, provided it took place in a country far removed from England.  The scene of “The Padlock:  or, No Guard without Virtue"[14] was appropriately laid in Spain.

Don Lepidio of Seville, by his jealous conduct, completely alienates the affections of his young and beautiful wife, Violante.  She finally writes a reply to the earnest entreaties of an unknown lover, and though filled with apprehension at seeing her letter carried off by an ugly black slave, agrees to meet him.  Don Honorius, for it was he who had assumed the disguise of the slave, proves to be the wonder of his sex.  He persuades her to elope to the house of one of his relations, and after Lepidio has secured a divorce, marries her with great felicity.

That novels of intrigue, even without the tinsel of court dress and the romance of French or Spanish setting, were acceptable to Eliza Haywood’s public is shown by the two parts of “The Masqueraders:  or, Fatal Curiosity” (1724-5), which in the most luscious language of passion narrate the philanderings of a “charming Rover” called Dorimenus, “whose real Name, for some Reasons, I shall conceal.”  London masquerades, as the title indicates, play a large part in the plot.  A more sprightly tale, though still of the unedifying sort, is “Fantomina:  or, Love in a Maze.  Being the Secret History of an Amour between two Persons of Condition.”  The story is so fantastic that it can hardly be suspected of having any connection with an actual occurrence, but the novelist was not unaware of the advertising value of hinted scandal.