It was judged best, and safest for them, to keep still in the same disguise till they should be entirely out of the French dominions, which happily at length they were, without the least ill accident befalling them, none suspecting them for other than they appeared, though the search after them was very strict, and a great reward offered for apprehending them.—­As soon as they arrived at Dover, both threw off their borrowed shapes; Natura was again the fine gentleman, and his companion a very agreeable woman, who was so well satisfied with what she had done, and the behaviour of Natura towards her, that she had lost nothing of her good looks by the fatigue of her journey.

Here they waited some time for the arrival of his servant, who knew nothing what was become of his master, since he had made his escape from the exempt, till he was entirely out of the kingdom, but had, all this while, been kept in good heart by the baron, who still had told him he was safe and well, and that he should soon hear news of him to his satisfaction; this faithful domestic, whom they had no pretensions to detain, now came with all his baggage, and Natura returned to London, in an equipage, not at all inferior to that in which he had left it.

The first thing he did was to place the exempt’s wife in a handsome lodging, and then went to wait upon his father, who had been much alarmed at not having received any letter from him for a much longer time than he had been accustomed to be silent.  The old gentleman was rejoiced to see him, after an absence of near six years, but sorry for the occasion, as his affairs were greatly perplexed, on account of the law-suits before mentioned, which being most of them in chancery, were like to be spun out to a tedious length; but Natura soon informed him that he was in a condition, which at present did not stand in need of any assistance from him, and that he was determined to enter into some business for his future support.

But in the midst of these determinations, the remembrance of his unhappy contract with Harriot came into his mind; he thought he had reason to fear some interruption in his designs from the malice and wickedness of that woman:  but being loth to renew the memory of his former follies, he forbore making any mention of it to his father, till that tender parent, not doubting but it would be a great satisfaction to him, to know himself entirely freed from all claims of the nature she had pretended to have on him, acquainted him, that after he was sent away, the first step he had taken, was to get the contract out of her hands.

The transported Natura no sooner heard he had done so, than he cried out, ’By what means, dear sir, was she prevailed upon to relinquish a title, by which she certainly hoped to make one day a very great advantage?’