2. Lady.—­I am glad she has escaped him, if it be so; it is a sign her friends took a great deal of care of her.

1. Lady.—­He won’t hold it long; he will have his desert, I hope; I don’t doubt but we shall see him in the Gazette quickly for a bankrupt.

2. Lady.—­If he does not draw in some innocent young thing that has her fortune in her own hands to patch him up.

1. Lady.—­I hope not, Madam; I hear he is blown where he went since, and there, they say, they have made another discovery of him, in a worse circumstance than the other.

2. Lady.—­How, pray?

1. Lady.—­Nothing, Madam, but a particular kind of illness, &c.  I need say no more.

2. Lady.—­You astonish me!  Why, I always thought him a very civil, honest, sober man.

1. Lady.—­This is a sad world, Madam; men are seldom known now, till it is too late; but sometimes murder comes out seasonably, and so I understand it is here; for the lady had not gone so far with him, but that she could go off again.

2. Lady.—­Nay, it was time to go off again, if it were so.

1. Lady.—­Nay, Madam, I do not tell this part of my own knowledge; I only heard so, but I am afraid there is too much in it.

Thus ended this piece of hellish wildfire, upon the character and credit of a tradesman, the truth of all which was no more than this—­that the tradesman, disliking his first lady, left her, and soon after, though not presently, courted another of a superior fortune indeed, though not for that reason; and the first lady, provoked at being cast off, and, as she called it, slighted, raised all this clamour upon him, and persecuted him with it, wherever she was able.

Such a discourse as this at a tea-table, it could not be expected would be long a secret; it ran from one tittle-tattle society to another; and in every company, snow-ball like, it was far from lessening, and it went on, till at length it began to meet with some contradiction, and the tradesman found himself obliged to trace it as far and as well as he could.

But it was to no purpose to confront it; when one was asked, and another was asked, they only answered they heard so, and they heard it in company in such a place, and in such a place, and some could remember where they had it, and some could not; and the poor tradesman, though he was really a man of substance, sank under it prodigiously:  his new mistress, whom he courted, refused him, and would never hear any thing in his favour, or trouble herself to examine whether it were true or no—­it was enough, she said, to her, that he was laden with such a report; and, if it was unjust, she was sorry for it, but the misfortune must be his, and he must place it to the account of his having made some enemies, which she could not help.