The first intrigue she had after her coming up to London was with a young fellow who was clerk to a Justice of the Peace in the neighbourhood.  Before be saw Alice he had been a careful, industrious young man, and through his master’s kindness had picked up some money; but from the time that his master had a suit of clothes made up with Alice’s mistress, and which occasioned her first coming about the house, poor Mr. Philip became the victim of her charms, and moped up and down like a hen that had lost her chickens.  It was not long before the Justice’s daughters found out his passion, and having communicated their discovery to the maids, exposed him to be the laughing stock of the whole house.  Never was a poor young fellow so pestered!  One asked him whether he liked the wife with three trades?  Another was enquiring whether he had cast up the amount of remnants of silk, shreds of lace, and the savings that might be made out of linings, facings, and robings?  The Justice took notice that Philip had left off reading the news, and the old lady wondered whether he had forgotten playing upon the organ in her husband’s study.  But all this served rather to increase than to abate his passion, so that he neglected no opportunity of meeting and paying his addresses to his mistress.

Alice was no less careful on her side, and in a short space it was agreed that she should run away from her mistress, of whom she was grown heartily weary, and that Philip should counterfeit most excessive grief at his loss, in order to prevent the least suspicion of his being privy thereto.  Having adjusted this, it was not long before they put their design into execution, and Philip first having provided a lodging for her in Brewer Street, she, on a Sunday in the evening, when all the rest of the family were out, removed from her mistress’s house in a court near the Strand, taking all that belonged to her in a hackney-coach, leaving the key at an alehouse.  Philip had so good a character that the grief he affected on this occasion passed for reality upon all the house, and the flight of Alice had no other effect than to excite a new spring of railery on the loss of his mistress.  He laid out the greatest part of what he had saved during five years’ service in furnishing out two rooms for her very neatly, passing himself, where she lodged, for the son of a gentleman of fortune in the country, who had married against his friends’ consent, and was therefore obliged to keep his wife in a place of privacy until things at home could be made easy.

For some time the lovers lived mighty happily together, and nothing was wanting to complete Philip’s wishes than that they were married, for Alice never making such a proposal, now and then disturbed his thoughts, and put him a little out of humour.  Things remained in this state with a little alteration for about five months, until an Irish captain coming to lodge pretty near where Philip had placed Alice, he found a way to see her twice or thrice, and being