Page:Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749, vol. 1).pdf/64

 their leisure, made me envy a condition of which I only saw the fair side: insomuch, that the being one of them became even my ambition: a disposition which they all carefully cultivated; and I wanted now nothing but to restore my health, that I might be able to undergo the ceremony of the initiation.

Conversation, example, all, in short, contributed, in that house, to corrupt my native purity, which had taken no root in education, whilst now the inflammable principle 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