Time, however, that great comforter in ordinary, began to assuage the violence of my suffering, and to numb my feeling of them. My health returned to me, though I still retained an air of grief, dejection, and languor, which taking off from the ruddiness of my country complexion, rendered it rather more delicate and affecting. The landlady had all this while officiously provided, and seen that I wanted for nothing: and as soon as she saw me retrieved into a condition of answering her purpose, one day, after we had dined together, she congratulated me on my recovery, the merit of which she took entirely to herself, and all this by way of introduction to a most terrible, and scurvy epilogue: “You are now,” says she, “Miss Fanny, tolerably well, and you are very welcome to stay in these lodgings as; long as you please! you see I have asked you for nothing this long time, but truly I have a call to make up a sum of money, which must be answered.” And, with that, presents me with a bill of arrears for rent, diet, apothecaries’ charges, nurse, etc., sum total twenty-three pounds, seventeen and six-pence: towards discharging of which I had not in the world (which she well knew) more than seven guineas, left by chance, of my dear Charles’s common stock, with me. At the same time, she desired me to tell her what course I would take for payment. I burst out into a flood of tears, and told her my condition: that I would sell what few clothes I had, and that, for the rest, would pay her as soon as possible. But my distress, being favourable to her view, only stiffened her the more. She told me, very cooly, that “she was indeed sorry for my misfortunes, but that she must do herself justice, though it would go to the very heart of her to send such a tender young creature to prison....” At the word “prison!” every drop of my blood chilled, and my fright acted so strongly upon me, that, turning as pale and faint as a criminal at the first sight of his place of execution, I was on the point of swooning. My landlady, who wanted only to terrify me to a certain point, and not to throw me into a state of body inconsistent with her designs upon it, began to sooth me again, and told me, in a tone composed to more pity and gentleness, that “it would be my own fault, if she was forced to proceed to such extremities; but she believed there was a friend to be found in the world, who would make up matters to both our satisfactions, and that she would bring him to drink tea with us that very afternoon, when she hoped we would come to a right understanding in our affairs.” To all this, not a word of answer; I sat mute, confounded, terrified. Mrs. Jones, however, judging rightly that it was time to strike while the impressions were so strong upon me, left me to myself and to all the terrors of an imagination, wounded to death by the idea of going to prison, and, from a principle of self-preservation, snatching at every glimpse of redemption from it.