"In her coach!" said I; "upon my word, she had made her market then; I suppose she made hay while the sun shone. Was she married, pray?"
"I believe she had been married, madam," says she, "but it seems she had been at the East Indies; and if she was married, it was there, to be sure. I think she said she had good luck in the Indies."
"That is, I suppose," said I, "had buried her husband there."
"I understood it so, madam," says she, "and that she had got his estate."
"Was that her good luck?" said I; "it might be good to her, as to the money indeed, but it was but the part of a jade to call it good luck."
Thus far our discourse of Mrs. Amy went, and no farther, for she knew no more of her; but then the Quaker unhappily, though undesignedly, put in a question, which the honest good-humoured creature would have been far from doing if she had known that I had carried on the discourse of Amy on purpose to drop Roxana out of the conversation.
But I was not to be made easy too soon. The Quaker put in, "But I think thou saidst something was behind of thy mistress; what didst thou call her? Roxana, was it not? Pray, what became of her?"
"Ay, ay, Roxana," says the captain's wife; "pray, sister, let's hear the story of Roxana; it will divert my lady, I'm sure."
"That's a damned lie," said I to myself; "if you knew how little 't would divert me, you would have too much advantage over me." Well, I saw no remedy, but the story must come on, so I prepared to hear the worst of it.
"Roxana!" says she, "I know not what to say of her; she was so much above us, and so seldom seen, that we could know little of her but by report; but we did sometimes see her too; she was a charming woman indeed, and the footmen used to say that she was to be sent for to court."