“My humiliation happened at an unlucky moment, for continual racketing in the country had quite unhinged me; I required bracing, and had quite lost my colour.  My paternal relation, however, (Houlditch), undertook my repair, and I was very soon exhibited painted green, and ticketed, ’For sale secondhand.’

“It was now the month of May, when all persons of the smallest fashionable pretensions shun their country abodes and come to London, that they may escape the first fragrance of the flowers, the first song of the birds, the budding beauty of the forests and the fresh verdure of the fields.  I therefore felt (as young unmarried ladies feel at the commencement of the season) that there was every chance of my finding a lord and master, and becoming a prominent ornament of his establishment.

“After standing for a month at Houlditch’s, (who, by the by, was not over-civil to his own child, but made a great favour of giving me house-room), I one day found myself scrutinized by a gentleman of very fashionable appearance.  He was in immediate want of a carriage; I was, fortunately, exactly the sort of carriage he required, and in a quarter of an hour the transfer was arranged.

“The gentleman was on the point of running away with a young lady; he was attached to her, four horses were attached to me, and I was in waiting at the corner of Grosvenor Street at midnight.  I thought myself a fortunate vehicle; I anticipated another marriage, another matrimonial trip, another honeymoon.  Alas! my present trip was not calculated to add to my respectability.  My owner, who was a military man, was at his post at the appointed time:  he seemed hurried and agitated; frequently looked at his watch; paced rapidly before one of the houses, and continually looked towards the drawing-room windows.  At length a light appeared, the window was opened, and a female, muffled in a cloak and veil, stood on the balcony; she leaned anxiously forward; he spoke, and without replying she re-entered the room.  The street-door opened, and a brisk little waiting-maid came out with some bundles, which she deposited in the carriage:  the captain (for such was his rank) had entered the hall, and he now returned, bearing in his arms a fainting, weeping woman; he placed her by his side in the carriage:  my rumble was instantly occupied by the waiting-maid and my master’s man, and we drove off rapidly towards Brighton.

“The captain was a man of fashion; handsome, insinuating, profligate, and unfeeling.  The lady—­it is painful to speak of her:  what she had been, she could never more be; and what she then was, she herself had yet to learn.  She had been the darling pet daughter of a rich old man; and a dissipated nobleman had married her for her money when she was only sixteen.  She had been accustomed to have every wish gratified by her doting parent; she now found herself neglected and insulted by her husband.  Her father could not bear to see his darling’s once-smiling face grow pale and sad, and he died two years after her marriage.  She plunged into the whirlpool of dissipation, and tasted the rank poisons which are so often sought as the remedies for a sad heart.  From folly she ran to imprudence; from imprudence to guilt;—­and was the runaway wife happier than she who once suffered unmerited ill-usage at home?  Time will show.