Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura by Eliza Fowler Haywood
page 52 of 223 (23%)
page 52 of 223 (23%)
|
almost hate the person from whom he received it.--The apprehensions
what farther meaning might be couched in the menace with which his father left him, threw him sometimes into a terror little different from convulsive;--but above all, his impatience for seeing his dear Harriot, and the surprize, the grief, and perhaps the resentment, he imagined she must feel on his absenting himself, drove him into a kind of despair. In fine, unable to sustain the violence of his agitations, on the third night, regardless of what consequences might ensue from giving this additional cause of displeasure to his father, he found means to push back the lock of his chamber, and flew down stairs, and out at the street-door with so much speed, that it would have been impossible to have stopped him, had any one heard him, which none happened to do, it being midnight, and all the family in a sound sleep. That he went directly to the lodgings of Harriot, I believe my reader will make no doubt; but perhaps her character does not yet enough appear, to give any suspicion of the reception he found there. In effect, she was no other than one of those common creatures, who procure a miserable subsistance by the prostitution of their charms; and as nature had not been sparing to her on that score, and she was yet young, though less so than she appeared thro' art, she wanted not a number of gallants, who all contributed, more or less, to her living in the manner she did: several of these had happened to come when Natura was with her; but she having had the precaution to acquaint them with her design of drawing in this young spark for a husband, they took the cue she gave them, each passing before him either for a cousin, or one of the lawyers employed in her pretended suit. |
|