Lovely Alena, naked and quizzical

Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure)

Letter The First

Conversation, example, all, in short, contributed, in that house, to corrupt my native purity, which had taken no root in education; whilst not the inflammable principal of pleasure, so easily fired at my age, made strange work within me, and all the modesty I was brought up in the habit, not the instruction of, began to melt away like dew before the sun's heat; not to mention that I made a vice of necessity, from the constant fears I had of being turn'd out to starve.

I was soon pretty well recover'd, and at certain hours allow'd to range all over the house, but cautiously kept from seeing any company till the arrival of Lord B . . ., from Bath, to whom Mrs. Brown, in respect to his experienced generosity on such occasions, proposed to offer the perusal ot that trinket of mine, which bears so great an imaginary value; and his lordship being expected in town in less than a fortnight, Mrs. Brown judged I would be entirely renewed in beauty and freshness by that time, and afford her the chance of a better bargain than she had driven with Mr. Crofts.

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