The History of Miss Betsy ThoughtlessHaywood, Eliza Fowler
General
The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless
Haywood, Eliza Fowler
Abused wives -- Fiction; Bildungsromans; Didactic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
All this did not give Miss Betsy those terrors, which, it is very plain
his lordship and sister endeavoured to inspire her with; yet would she
say no more of appearing to the gentlemen, as she found he was so averse
to it.
At length the knocking ceased; and one of the footmen came down, and
said that those who had given his lordship this disturbance had
withdrawn from the door, and he believed they were gone quite out of the
cloisters: but this intelligence did not satisfy Lord ----; he either
was, or pretended to be, in fear that they were still skulking in some
corner, and would rush in if once they saw the door opened. There was
still the same difficulty as ever, how Miss Betsy should get home; that
is, how she should get safely out of the house; for, the rain being
over, the servants said they did not doubt but they should be able to
procure a chair or coach: after much debating on this matter, it was
thus contrived.
Lord ---- had a window that looked into the yard of one of the
prebendaries; a footman was to go out of the window to the back-door of
that reverend divine, relate the whole story, and beg leave to go
through his house: that request being granted, the footman went, and
returned in less than half an hour, with the welcome news that a chair
was ready, and waited in College Street. Miss Betsy had no way of
passing, but by the same the footman had done, which she easily did, by
being lifted by my lord into the window, and descending from it by the
help of some steps placed on the other side by the servants of the
prebendary.
It would be superfluous to trouble the reader with any speeches made by
Lord ----, and his sister, to Miss Betsy, or the replies she made to
them; I shall only say, that passing through his house, and the College
Garden, at the door of which the chair waited, she went into it,
preceded by Lord ----'s footman, muffled up in a cloak, and without a
flambeau, to prevent being known, in case she should be met by
Bloomacre, or either of his companions: and with this equipage she
arrived safe at home, though not without a mind strangely perplexed at
the meaning of this adventure.
CHAPTER XXI
_Gives an explanation of the former, with other particulars, more
agreeable to the reader in the repetition, than to the persons concerned
in them_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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