After the women had left her, she complained of her head and her heart; and seemed terrified with apprehensions of being carried once more to Sinclair’s.

Refusing any thing for breakfast, Mrs. Rowland came up to her, and told her, (as these wretches owned they had ordered her, for fear she should starve herself,) that she must and should have tea, and bread and butter:  and that, as she had friends who could support her, if she wrote to them, it was a wrong thing, both for herself and them, to starve herself thus.

If it be for your own sakes, said she, that is another thing:  let coffee, or tea, or chocolate, or what you will, be got:  and put down a chicken to my account every day, if you please, and eat it yourselves.  I will taste it, if I can.  I would do nothing to hinder you.  I have friends will pay you liberally, when they know I am gone.

They wondered, they told her, at her strange composure in such distresses.

They were nothing, she said, to what she had suffered already from the vilest of all men.  The disgrace of seizing her in the street; multitudes of people about her; shocking imputations wounding her ears; had indeed been very affecting to her.  But that was over.—­Every thing soon would!  —­And she should be still more composed, were it not for the apprehensions of seeing one man, and one woman; and being tricked or forced back to the vilest house in the world.

Then were it not better to give way to the two gentlewoman’s offer to bail her?—­They could tell her, it was a very kind proffer; and what was not to be met every day.

She believed so.

The ladies might, possibly, dispense with her going back to the house to which she had such an antipathy.  Then the compassionate gentleman, who was inclined to make it up with her creditors on her own bond—­it was very strange to them she hearkened not to so generous a proposal.

Did the two ladies tell you who the gentleman was?—­Or, did they say any more on the subject?

Yes, they did! and hinted to me, said the woman, that you had nothing to do but to receive a visit from the gentleman, and the money, they believed, would be laid down on your own bond or note.

She was startled.

I charge you, said she, as you will answer it one day to my friends, I charge you don’t.  If you do, you know not what may be the consequence.

They apprehended no bad consequence, they said, in doing their duty:  and if she knew not her own good, her friends would thank them for taking any innocent steps to serve her, though against her will.

Don’t push me upon extremities, man!—­Don’t make me desperate, woman!—­I have no small difficulty, notwithstanding the seeming composure you just now took notice of, to bear, as I ought to bear, the evils I suffer.  But if you bring a man or men to me, be the pretence what it will——­

She stopt there, and looked so earnestly, and so wildly, they said, that they did not know but she would do some harm to herself, if they disobeyed her; and that would be a sad thing in their house, and might be their ruin.  They therefore promised, that no man should be brought to her but by her own consent.