I am informed, by those who are most versed in your affairs, and on whose veracity I may depend, that a treaty of marriage is on foot, and almost as good as concluded, between you and Miss Betsy Thoughtless. A young lady, I must confess, well descended; handsome, and endued with every accomplishment to attract the admiration of mankind; and if her soul had the least conformity with her exterior charms, you doubtless might have been one of the most happy and most envied men on earth: but, Sir, this seeming innocence is all a cheat; another has been beforehand with you in the joys you covet; your intended bride has been a mother without the pleasure of owning herself as such. The product of a shameful passion is still living; and though she uses the greatest caution in this affair, I have by accident discovered, is now nursed at Denham, a small village within two miles of Uxbridge, by a gardener's wife, who is called, by the country people, Goody Bushman. I give you this particular account, in order that you may make what enquiry you shall think proper into a fact, which, I am sorry to say, you will find but too real. I pity from my soul the unfortunate seduced young lady; she must be doubly miserable, if, by having lost her virtue, she loses a husband such as you: but if, after this, you should think it fit to prosecute your pretensions, I wish she may endeavour, by her future conduct, to atone for the errors of the past; but, alas! her present manner of behaviour affords no such promising expectations; and if you should set your honour and fortune, and all that is dear to you, against so precarious a stake as the hope of reclaiming a woman of her temper, it must certainly fill all your friends with astonishment and grief. But you are yourself the best judge of what it will become you to do; I only beg, that you will be assured this intelligence comes from one, who is, with the utmost sincerity, Sir, your well-wisher, and most humble, though unknown servant.' She would not trust the success of the mischief she intended by this letter, till she had examined and re-examined every sentence; and, finding it altogether such as she thought would work the desired effect, got one who was always her ready agent in matters of this kind, to copy it over, in order to prevent any accident from discovering the real author; and then sent it, as directed, by the penny-post. How far the event answered her expectations shall very shortly be related; but incidents of another nature requiring to be first mentioned, the gratification of that curiosity, which this may have excited, must for a while be deferred. CHAPTER XIII _Is the recital of some accidents, as little possible to be foreseen by the reader as they were by the persons to whom they happened_