The next morning, in running over in my mind the detail of the transactions of the evening before, the vexation I had receiv'd on the score of Betty Canning very much subsided, and I look'd upon the whole thing as below a serious consideration; – I could not help, indeed, retaining some concern that the people of England should be so infatuated as to suffer their thoughts to be led astray and alienated from affairs of the greatest consequence by such an idle story; but as I doubted not but that the imposition she had been guilty of would be detected, though her abettors might perhaps find means to screen her person from the punishment, I became more easy, and resolved to banish as much as possible all remembrance of it.

But my ideas were widely different in regard to poor Clerimont; – as much a stranger as he was to me I was convinced, by what I had seen and heard, that as he had no stock of ready money to prevent the mortgage he had made of his reversion, so I was equally assured, by his despair, that he had no visible means of raising a sum sufficient to redeem it. – His calling on the name of Charlotte with so much vehemence made me also not doubt but that he had some tender attachment, which he fear'd would be broke through by what he had done.

Though I know no vice for which I have a more real contempt than the love of gaming, yet the age of this gentleman, which could not exceed above two or three and twenty, seem'd to me a very moving plea in his behalf, and the graces of his mein and aspect so much interested me in his favour, that I less blamed his inadvertency than compassionated the misfortune it had brought him into.