All this, I say, will be revealed in time; but it would be as absurd in a writer to rush all at once into the catastrophe of the adventures he would relate, as it would be impracticable in a traveller to reach the end of a long journey, without sometimes stopping at the inns in his way to it. To proceed, therefore, gradually with my history.
The father of Miss Betsy was a very worthy, honest, and good-natured man, but somewhat too indolent; and, by depending too much on the fidelity of those he entrusted with the management of his affairs, had been for several years involved in a law-suit; and, to his misfortune, the aversion he had to business rendered him also incapable of extricating himself from it; and the decision was spun out to a much greater length than it need to have been, could he have been prevailed upon to have attended in person the several courts of justice the cause had been carried through by his more industrious adversary. The exorbitant bills, however, which his lawyers were continually drawing upon him, joining with the pressing remonstrances of his friends, at last rouzed him from that inactivity of mind which had already cost him so dear, and determined him not only to take a journey to London, but likewise not to return home, till he had seen a final end put to this perplexing affair.
Before his departure, he went to the boarding-school, to take his leave of his beloved Betsy, and renew the charge he had frequently given the governess concerning her education; adding, in a mournful accent, that it would be a long time before he saw her again.
These words, as it proved, had somewhat of prophetick in them. On his arrival in London, he found his cause in so perplexed and entangled a situation, as gave him little hopes of ever bringing it to a favourable issue. The vexation and fatigue he underwent on this account, joined with the closeness of the town air, which had never agreed with his constitution even in his younger years, soon threw him into that sort of consumption which goes by the name of a galloping one, and, they say, is the most difficult of any to be removed. He died in about three months, without being able to do any great matters concerning the affair which had drawn him from his peaceful home, and according to all probability hastened his fate. Being perfectly sensible, and convinced of his approaching dissolution, he made his will, bequeathing the bulk of his estate to him whose right it was, (his eldest son) then upon his travels through the greatest part of Europe; all his personals, which were very considerable in the Bank, and other public funds, he ordered should be equally divided between Francis his second son, (at that time a student at Oxford) and Miss Betsy; constituting, at the same time, as trustees to the said testament, Sir Ralph Trusty, his near neighbour in the country, and Mr. Goodman, a wealthy merchant in the city of London; both of them gentlemen of unquestionable integrity, and with whom he had preserved a long and uninterrupted friendship.