Page:Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749, vol. 2).pdf/216

 fondness, running violently in favour of this lost, and inhumanly abandon'd child, whom, if they had not neglected all enquiry about, they might long before have recover'd, they were now so overjoy'd at their retrieval of her, that, I presume, it made them much the less strict in examining to the bottom of things; for they seem'd very glad to take for granted, in the lump, every thing that the grave and decent Mrs. Cole was pleas'd to pass upon them; and soon afterwards sent her, from the country, a handsome acknowledgment.

But it was not so easy to replace to our community the loss of so sweet a member of it, for, not to mention her beauty, she was one of those mild, pliant characters, that if one does not entirely esteem, one can scarce help loving, which is not such a bad compensation neither: owing all her weaknesses to good-nature; and an indolent facility that kept her too much at the mercy of first impressions, she had just sense enough to know that she wanted leading-