rate account how you have spent the sums you received, and to give a bond for what you are indebted to me, either in the way you yourself proposed in the letter you wrote to me at Edinburgh, or any other more adviseable mode; and which bond you may gradually pay off. You little deserve any lenity from me, but I suppose you had rather trust to my lenity than settle accounts with my solicitor and steward. If you shew a proper contrition for diabolical con

your

duct, I may perhaps write to Dr. C who was my tutor at college, to say what

I can for you.

I remain, &c. &c.

TIMOTHY FLIGHT.

As to shewing a proper contrition, Mrs. Mortimer knew that she had always strictly performed her duty while she was in Sir Timothy Flight's service; and as to the sums he specified that she had received, she never had any more than

what has already been mentioned. She was aware that the Baronet was imposed on by Mr. Abraham Modish and Mr. Chissel, but all she could do was to send her day-book, in which she entered all the monies she either received or paid, and the receipts of the tradespeople; trusting to Sir Timothy's honour to return them, which he did, accompanied by this letter:

Madam,

Brighton.

I return you your parcel. I am sur prised you should have the impudence and folly to send me your book, with a salary put down of three hundred per year, and other things so absurd, it is useless to mention. You might as well have said you were entitled to five hundred a year for the years I paid your boy's schooling. My housekeeper might, with less folly and impudence, claim one thousand a year. It is a new and pleasant way cer

1

tainly of earning money, to claim a salary of a benefactor, while and for receiving from him munificent obligations of charity; and such conduct shews singular goodness of head and heart. To end, however, this most disgusting business,

if

you do not immediately prepare to execute a bond for the sum you owe me; there was three hundred due to me from the sums advanced to you by Mr. Chissel and myself, besides what was advanced to you by Mr. Abraham Modish, and for which you will only be charged for what he had receipts for; if you do not prepare a bond, insuring your life, your own proposal was in a letter to me about a year since at Edinburgh, I will no further be troubled, but shall desire Mr. Abraham Modish and Mr. Chissel to proceed against you, on their own account, as most of the money was advanced by them to you without my order. You requested, as an act of indulgence, in one of your letters to Edinburgh, that you

might settle with me, instead of with Mr. Abraham Modish or Mr. Chissel, and the return I have received from you for this and my other kindness, has been the most infamous, outrageous ingratitude, and wickedness. If therefore you do not immediately prepare to settle the business in the way I have stated, and which yourself proposed in your letter to me at Edinburgh, to execute a bond, and insure your life as a security, I shall desire Mr. Abraham Modish and Mr. Chissel to lose no further time in settling with you on their own account, and they will not shew you the unmerited lenity I have. You will therefore send me an immediate answer, by which I shall regu late my instructions to my solicitor. I remain, &c. &c.

TIMOTHY FLIGHT.

Mrs. Mortimer felt most severely the injustice of the accusations contained in this letter, but how to convince the Ba

ronet of his error she did not know, as he was naturally too good and too just to act in the way he did, unless he was compelled to do so. If she had such sums as the solicitor and steward said, why would they not produce vouchers to prove their demand to be just, and meet her solicitor to settle the business? All this she once more expressed in a letter to Sir Timothy, and also got a gentleman to deliver her accounts to the Baronet, and settle with him; but the gentleman could not succeed. Mrs. Mortimer, about a week afterwards, was called down to attend Mr. Abraham Modish's clerk; he said he was sent to inform her, that if she did not consent to sign a bond for four hundred and ninety pounds, as monies due from her to Sir Timothy Flight, that the consequences would be to her the most lamentable. She demanded for what such a sum was asked of her; he said for her boy's school-bills, and various other articles, and that if she did not comply