Insolent devils!—­how much more cruel and insulting are bad women even than bad men!

Methinks, Miss, said Sally, you are a little soily, to what we have seen you.  Pity such a nice lady should not have changes of apparel!  Why won’t you send to your lodgings for linen, at least?

I am not nice now.

Miss looks well and clean in any thing, said Polly.  But, dear Madam, why won’t you send to your lodgings?  Were it but in kindness to the people?  They must have a concern about you.  And your Miss Howe will wonder what’s become of you; for, no doubt, you correspond.

She turned from them, and, to herself, said, Too much!  Too much!—­She tossed her handkerchief, wet before with her tears, from her, and held her apron to her eyes.

Don’t weep, Miss! said the vile Polly.

Yet do, cried the viler Sally, it will be a relief.  Nothing, as Mr. Lovelace once told me, dries sooner than tears.  For once I too wept mightily.

I could not bear the recital of this with patience.  Yet I cursed them not so much as I should have done, had I not had a mind to get from them all the particulars of their gentle treatment:  and this for two reasons; the one, that I might stab thee to the heart with the repetition; and the other, that I might know upon what terms I am likely to see the unhappy lady to-morrow.

Well, but, Miss Harlowe, cried Sally, do you think these forlorn airs pretty?  You are a good christian, child.  Mrs. Rowland tells me, she has got you a Bible-book.—­O there it lies!—­I make no doubt but you have doubled down the useful places, as honest Matt.  Prior says.

Then rising, and taking it up.—­Ay, so you have.—­The Book of Job!  One opens naturally here, I see—­My mamma made me a fine Bible-scholar.—­You see, Miss Horton, I know something of the book.

They proposed once more to bail her, and to go home with them.  A motion which she received with the same indignation as before.

Sally told her, That she had written in a very favourable manner, in her behalf, to you; and that she every hour expected an answer; and made no doubt, that you would come up with a messenger, and generously pay the whole debt, and ask her pardon for neglecting it.

This disturbed her so much, that they feared she would have fallen into fits.  She could not bear your name, she said.  She hoped she should never see you more:  and, were you to intrude yourself, dreadful consequences might follow.

Surely, they said, she would be glad to be released from her confinement.

Indeed she should, now they had begun to alarm her with his name, who was the author of all her woes:  and who, she now saw plainly, gave way to this new outrage, in order to bring her to his own infamous terms.

Why then, they asked, would she not write to her friends, to pay Mrs. Sinclair’s demand?

Because she hoped she should not trouble any body; and because she knew that the payment of the money if she should be able to pay it, was not what was aimed at.