letter XXX) he was no stranger to what she wrote. Thus every way was the
poor virgin beset: And the whole will shew the base arts of designing men
to gain their wicked ends; and how much it behoves the fair sex to stand
upon their guard against artful contrivances, especially when riches and
power conspire against innocence and a low estate.

A few words more will be necessary to make the sequel better understood.
The intriguing gentleman thought fit, however, to keep back from her
father her three last letters; in which she mentions his concealing
himself to hear her partitioning out her clothes, his last effort to
induce her to stay a fortnight, his pretended proposal of the chaplain,
and her hopes of speedily seeing them, as also her verses; and to send
himself a letter to her father, which is as follows:

'GOODMAN ANDREWS,

'You will wonder to receive a letter from me. But I think I am obliged
to let you know, that I have discovered the strange correspondence
carried on between you and your daughter, so injurious to my honour and
reputation, and which, I think, you should not have encouraged, till you
knew there were sufficient grounds for those aspersions, which she so
plentifully casts upon me. Something possibly there might be in what she
has written from time to time; but, believe me, with all her pretended
simplicity and innocence, I never knew so much romantic invention as she
is mistress of. In short, the girl's head's turned by romances, and such
idle stuff, to which she has given herself up, ever since her kind lady's
death. And she assumes airs, as if she was a mirror of perfection, and
every body had a design upon her.

'Don't mistake me, however; I believe her very honest, and very virtuous;