The Memoirs of Count Grammont

Excerpt: ...was his person agreeable; however, with a great deal of wit he had a violent passion for women. He did himself justice respecting his own merit; and, being persuaded that he could only succeed with those who were desirous of having his money, he was at open war with all the rest. He had a little country-house four or five miles from London always well stocked with girls: in other respects he was a very honest man, and the best chess-player in England. Price, alarmed at being thus closely examined by the most dangerous enemy they could encounter, turned her head the other way, bid her companion do the same, and told the coachman to drive on. Brounker followed them unperceived on foot; and the coach having stopped twenty or thirty yards farther up the street, they alighted. He was just behind them, and formed the same judgment of them which a man much more charitable to the sex must unavoidably have done, concluding that Miss Jennings was a young courtesan upon the look-out, and that Miss Price was the mother-abbess. He was, however, surprised to see them have much better shoes and stockings than women of that rank generally wear, and that the little orange girl, in getting out of a very high coach, showed one of the handsomest legs he had ever seen: but as all this was no obstruction to his designs, he resolved to purchase her at any rate, in order to place her in his seraglio. He came up to them, as they were giving their baskets in guard to the coachman, with orders to wait for them exactly in that place. Brounker immediately pushed in between them: as soon as they saw him, they gave themselves up for lost; but he, without taking the least notice of their surprise, took Price aside with one hand, and his purse with the other, and began immediately to enter upon business, but was astonished to perceive that she turned away her face, without either answering or looking at him: As this conduct appeared to him unnatural, he stared her full in the...