I was above the contemptible usage that women in my circumstance oftentimes meet with. I had considered all that beforehand; and, having sent Amy beforehand, and remitted her money to do it, she had taken me a very handsome house in Street, near Charing Cross; had hired me two maids and a footman, who she had put in a good livery; and, having hired a glass coach and four horses, she came with them and the man servant to Harwich to meet me, and had been there near a week before I came, so I had nothing to do but to go away to London to my own house, where I arrived in very good health, and where I passed for a a French lady, by the title of .
My first business was to get all my bills accepted, which, to cut the story short, were all both accepted and currently paid; and I then resolved to take me a country lodging somewhere near the town, to be incognito till I was brought to bed; which, appearing in such a figure and having such an equipage, I easily managed without anybody's offering the usual insults of parish inquiries. I did not appear in my new house for some time, and afterwards I thought fit, for particular reasons, to quit that house, and not to come to it at all, but take handsome large apartments in the Pall Mall, in a house out of which was a private door into the king's garden, by the permission of the chief gardener, who had lived in the house.
I had now all my effects secured; but my money being my great concern at that time, I found it a difficulty how to dispose of it so as to bring me in an annual interest. However, in some time, I got a substantial safe mortgage for £14,000 by the assistance of the famous Sir Robert Clayton, for which I had an estate of £1800 a year bound to me, and had £700 per annum interest for it.
This, with some other securities, made me a very handsome estate of above a thousand pounds a year; enough, one would think, to keep any woman in England from being a whore.
I lay in at , about four miles from London, and brought a fine boy into the world, and, according to my promise, sent an account of it to my friend at Paris, the father of it; and in the letter told him how sorry I was for his going away, and did as good as intimate, that, if he would come once more to see me, I should use him better than I had done. He gave me a very kind and obliging answer, but took not the least notice of what I had said of his coming over, so I found my interest lost there for ever. He gave me joy of the child, and hinted that he hoped I would make good what he had begged for the poor infant, as I had promised, and I sent him word again that I would fulfil his order to a tittle; and such a fool, and so weak I was in this last letter, notwithstanding what I have said of his not taking notice of my invitation, as to ask his pardon almost for the usage I gave him at Rotterdam, and stooped so low as to expostulate with him for not taking notice of my inviting him to come to me again, as I had done; and, which was still more, went so far as to make a second sort of an offer to him, telling him, almost in plain words, that, if he would come over now, I would have him; but he never gave me the least reply to it at all, which was as absolute a denial to me as he was ever able to give; so I sat down, I cannot say contented, but vexed heartily that I had made the offer at all, for he had, as I may say, his full revenge of me in scorning to answer, and to let me twice ask that of him which he with so much importunity begged of me before.
