***

Let me add, that the lady’s plot to escape appears to me no extraordinary one.  There was much more luck than probability that it should do:  since, to make it succeed, it was necessary that Dorcas and Will., and Sinclair and her nymphs, should be all deceived, or off their guard.  It belongs to me, when I see them, to give them my hearty thanks that they were; and that their selfish care to provide for their own future security, should induce them to leave their outward door upon their bolt-latch, and be curs’d to them.

Mabell deserves a pitch suit and a bonfire, rather than the lustring; and as her clothes are returned, le the lady’s be put to her others, to be sent to her when it can be told whither—­but not till I give the word neither; for we must get the dear fugitive back again if possible.

I suppose that my stupid villain, who knew not such a goddess-shaped lady with a mien so noble, from the awkward and bent-shouldered Mabell, has been at Hampstead to see after her.  And yet I hardly think she would go thither.  He ought to go through every street where bills for lodgings are up, to inquire after a new-comer.  The houses of such as deal in women’s matters, and tea, coffee, and such-like, are those to be inquired at for her.  If some tidings be not quickly heard of her, I would not have either Dorcas, Will., or Mabell, appear in my sight, whatever their superiors think fit to do.

This, though written in character, is a very long letter, considering it is not a narrative one, or a journal of proceedings, like most of my former; for such will unavoidably and naturally, as I may say, run into length.  But I have so used myself to write a great deal of late, that I know not how to help it.  Yet I must add to its length, in order to explain myself on a hint I gave at the beginning of it; which was, that I have another disappointment, besides this of Miss Harlowe’s escape, to bemoan.

And what dost thou think it is?  Why, the old Peer, pox of his tough constitution, (for that malady would have helped him on,) has made shift by fire and brimstone, and the devil knows what, to force the gout to quit the counterscarp of his stomach, just as it had collected all its strength, in order to storm the citadel of his heart.  In short, they have, by the mere force of stink-pots, hand-granades, and pop-guns, driven the slow-working pioneer quite out of the trunk into the extremities; and there it lies nibbling and gnawing upon his great toe; when I had a fair end of the distemper and the distempered.

But I, who could write to thee of laudanum, and the wet cloth, formerly, yet let 8000L. a year slip through my fingers, when I had entered upon it more than in imagination, [for I had begun to ask the stewards questions, and to hear them talk of fines and renewals, and such sort of stuff,] deserve to be mortified.