Ala Passtel in black stockings, in a chair

Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure)

Letter The First

As much, however, as Martha might be prepared and hardened to transactions of this sort, all womanhood must have been out of her heart, could she have seen this unmov'd. Besides that, on the face of things, she imagined that matters had gone greater lengths than they really had, and that the courtesy of the house had been actually consummated on me, and flung me into the condition I was in: in this notion she instantly took my part, and advis'd the gentleman to go down and leave me to recover myself, and "that all would be soon over with me . . . that when Mrs. Brown and Phoebe, who were gone out, were return'd, they would take order for every thing to his satisfaction . . . that nothing would be lost by a little patience with the poor tender thing . . . that for her part she was . . . frighten'd . . . she could not tell what to say to such doings . . . but that she would stay by me till my mistress came home." As the wench said all this in a resolute tone, and the monster himself began to perceive that things would not mend by his staying, he took his hat and went out of the room, murmuring, and pleating his brows like an old ape, so that I was delivered from the horrors of his detestable presence.

< previous :: next >