They had one of the doctor’s bills for a direction, but there was no occasion for it; for the driver of the coach they had taken told them he knew very well the place they wanted, for he had already carried above an hundred persons to the German doctor’s:  they were within half a street of his house, when fortune thought proper to play them a trick.

Brounker had dined by chance with a merchant in that part of the city, and just as he was going away they ordered their coach to stop, as ill-luck would have it, just opposite to him.  Two orange girls in a hackney coach, one of whom appeared to have a very pretty face, immediately drew his attention; besides, he had a natural curiosity for such objects.

[Gentleman of the chamber to the Duke of York, and brother to Lord Viscount Brounker, president of the royal society.  Lord Clarendon imputes to him the cause of the great sea-fight, in 1665, not being so well improved as it might have been, and adds, “nor did the duke come to hear of it till some years after, when Mr. Brounker’s ill course of life, and his abominable nature, had rendered him so odious, that it was taken notice of in parliament, and, upon examination, found to be true, as is here related; upon which he was expelled the house of commons, whereof he was a; member, as an infamous person, though his friend Coventry adhered to him, and used many indirect acts to have protected him, and afterwards procured him to have more countenance from the king than most men thought he deserved; being a person, throughout his whole life, never notorious for anything but the highest degree of impudence, and stooping to the most infamous offices, and playing very well at chess, which preferred him more than the most virtuous qualities could have done.”—­Continuation of Clarendon’s Life, p. 270.]

Of all the men at court, he had the least regard for the fair sex, and the least attention to their reputation:  he was not young, nor was his person agreeable; however, with a great deal of wit he had a violent passion for women.  He did himself justice respecting his own merit; and, being persuaded that he could only succeed with those who were desirous of having his money, he was at open war with all the rest.  He had a little country-house four or five miles from London always well stocked with girls:  in other respects he was a very honest man, and the best chess-player in England.

Price, alarmed at being thus closely examined by the most dangerous enemy they could encounter, turned her head the other way, bid her companion do the same, and told the coachman to drive on.  Brounker followed them unperceived on foot; and the coach having stopped twenty or thirty yards farther up the street, they alighted.  He was just behind them, and formed the same judgment of them which a man much more charitable to the sex must unavoidably have done, concluding that Miss Jennings was a young courtesan upon the look-out, and that Miss Price was the mother-abbess.  He was, however, surprised to see them have much better shoes and stockings than women of that rank generally wear, and that the little orange girl, in getting out of a very high coach, showed one of the handsomest legs he had ever seen:  but as all this was no obstruction to his designs, he resolved to purchase her at any rate, in order to place her in his seraglio.