Page:Adventures of Rachel Cunningham.djvu/28

 gratification of his desires; and on these mutual assurances he bade her a good night,—The next morning came, all was now in fair train: Rachel Cunningham's cunning genius had for this time deceived her, however. She entered the vehicle prepared and in waiting for her, with her new-caught paramour, as she believed the clerk to be, and drove off quite in high spirits for, and in a few hours arrived at the place previously fixed upon for her amour with him; from which she had promised herself much enjoyment and hoped to have benefitted largely; little dreaming of how that amour was destined to terminate.

Arrived at their proposed place of destination, a sumptuous dinner was ordered and as expeditiously as it was possible served up in the best style; this, as she delighted in high living, was to Rachel of itself alone a heart-winning trait or outline of her (as she supposed him to be,) lover's unsparing liberality, from which she looked forward to a masterly filling up of the picture; but after dinner, while taking their wine freely, at which our heroine was no flincher, she was overwhelmed with astonishment at the excessively lavish bounty of her (pretended) captive, when towards the evening he, (Mr. L's clerk,) as he had had instructions to do, presented her with a sum, in hard cash, of such vast amount, as she thought it, for the first compliment, and that before any liberty with her person had yet been proceeded to, or  even offered: she was amazed at his forbearance, too, in this latter particular, However, as to the first, although the adage says. "those who pay before hand and those who never pay, are bad pay-masters," Rachel preferred the former to any other mode of paying whatsoever, therefore she hesitated not a moment to pocket the whole weight of gold presented to her, while the donor acquired three-hundred-fold more agreeableness in her sight than before.—Tea, coffee, and afterwards supper and wine and jollity succeeded,