At length, casting a languishing look at me, she pronounced with a feeble voice, "Dear Mr.Random, I do not deserve this concern at your hands: I am a vile creature, who had a base design upon your person--suffer me, to expiate that, and all my other crimes, by a miserable death, which will not fail to overtake me in a few hour." I encouraged her as much as I could, told her I forgave all her intentions with regard to me; and that, although my circumstances were extremely low, I would share my last farthing with her.

I begged in the meantime to know the immediate cause of that fit from which she had just recovered, and said, I would endeavour by my skill to prevent any more such attacks.

She seemed very much affected with this expression, took my hand, and pressed it to her lips, saying, "You are too generous! I wish I could live to express my gratitude--but alas! I perish for want." Then shutting her eyes, she relapsed into another swoon.

Such extremity of distress must have waked the most obdurate heart to sympathy and compassion; what effect then must it have had on mine, that was naturally prone to every tender passion?
I ran downstairs, and sent my landlady to a chemist's shop for some cinnamon water, while I, returning to this unfortunate creature's chamber, used all the means in my power to bring her to herself; this aim with much difficulty I accomplished, and made her drink a glass of the cordial to recruit her spirits: then I prepared a little mulled red vine and a toast, which having taken, she found herself thoroughly revived, and informed me, that she had not tasted food for eight and forty hours before.

As I was impatient to know the occasion and nature of her calamity, she gave me to understand, that she was a woman of the town by profession; that in the course of her adventures she found herself dangerously infected with a distemper, to which all of her class are particularly subject; that her malady gaining ground every day, she became loathsome to herself and offensive to others: when she resolved to retire to some obscure corner where she might be cured with as little noise and expense as possible; that she had accordingly chosen this place of retreat, and put herself into the hands of an advertising doctor, who having fleeced her of all the money she had, or could procure, left her three days ago in a worse condition than that in which he found her; that except the clothes on her back, she had pawned or sold everything that belonged to her to satisfy that rapacious quack, and quiet the clamour of her landlady, who still persisted in her threats to turn her out into the street.