The widow herself, half intoxicated, and raised as she was with artful mixtures, and inflamed by love, unexpectedly tendered by one of the libertines, his constant companions, (to whom an opportunity was contrived to be given to be alone with her, and that closely followed by importunity, fell into her daughter’s error.  The consequences of which, in length of time, becoming apparent, grief, shame, remorse, seized her heart, (her own indiscretion not allowing her to arraign her daughter’s,) and she survived not her delivery, leaving Polly with child likewise; who, when delivered, being too fond of the gay deluder to renounce his company, even when she found herself deluded, fell into a course of extravagance and dissoluteness; ran through her fortune in a very little time, and, as an high preferment, at last, with Sally, was admitted a quarter partner with the detestable Sinclair.

All that is necessary to add to the history of these unhappy women, will be comprised in a very little compass.

After the death of the profligate Sinclair, they kept on the infamous trade with too much success; till an accident happened in the house—­a gentleman of family killed in it in a fray, contending with another for a new-vamped face.  Sally was accused of holding the gentleman’s arm, while his more-favoured adversary ran him through the heart, and then made off.  And she being tried for her life narrowly escaped.

This accident obliged them to break up house-keeping; and not having been frugal enough of their ill-gotten gains, (lavishing upon one what they got by another,) they were compelled, for subsistence sake, to enter themselves as under-managers at such another house as their own had been.  In which service, soon after, Sally died of a fever and surfeit got by a debauch; and the other, about a month after, by a violent cold, occasioned through carelessness in a salivation.

Happier scenes open for the remaining characters; for it might be descending too low to mention the untimely ends of Dorcas, and of William, Mr. Lovelace’s wicked servant; and the pining and consumptive one’s of Betty Barnes and Joseph Leman, unmarried both, and in less than a year after the happy death of their excellent young lady.

The good Mrs. Norton passed the small remainder of her life, as happily as she wished, in her beloved foster-daughter’s dairy-house, as it used to be called:  as she wished, we repeat; for she had too strong aspirations after another life, to be greatly attached to this.

She laid out the greatest part of her time in doing good by her advice, and by the prudent management of the fund committed to her direction.  Having lived an exemplary life from her youth upwards; and seen her son happily settled in the world; she departed with ease and calmness, without pang or agony, like a tired traveller, falling into a sweet slumber:  her last words expressing her hope of being restored to the child of her bosom; and to her own excellent father and mother, to whose care and pains she owed that good education to which she was indebted for all her other blessings.