This gave me some surprise at first, for I thought, indeed, any woman in her circumstances would have been very willing to have put an end to all her miseries, and to the reproach which was upon her, by a reconciliation, especially considering she subsisted at that time but very meanly. But there was a particular reason which prevented her return, and which she could not plead to in her letter, yet was a good reason against accepting an offer which she would otherwise have been glad of; and this was, that, as I have mentioned above, she had fallen into bad company, and had prostituted her virtue to some of her flatterers, and, in short, was with child; so that she durst not venture to accept my offer. However, as I observed above, she did not absolutely refuse it, intending (as I understood afterward) to keep the treaty of it on foot till she could drop her burthen, as she had called it before, and having been delivered privately, have accepted my proposal afterward; and, indeed, this was the most prudent step she could take, or, as we may say, the only step she had left to take. But I was too many for her here too. My intelligence about her was too good for her to conceal such an affair from me, unless she had gone away before she was visibly big, and unless she had gone farther off too than she did; for I had an account to a tittle of the time when, and place where, and the creature of which she was delivered; and then my offers of taking her again were at an end, though she wrote me several very penitent letters, acknowledging her crime and begging me to forgive her. But my spirit was above all that now, nor could I ever bear the thoughts of her after that, but pursued a divorce, and accordingly obtained it, as I have mentioned already. Things being at this pass, I resolved, as I have observed before, to go over to France, after I had received my effects from Virginia; and accordingly I came to Dunkirk in the year ——, and here I fell into company with some Irish officers of the regiment of Dillon, who by little and little entered me into the army, and by the help of Lieutenant-General ——, an Irishman, and some money, I obtained a company in his regiment, and so went into the army directly. I was exceeding pleased with my new circumstances, and now I used to say to myself I was come to what I was born to, and that I had never till now lived the life of a gentleman.