for at that moment there appeared to her heated imagination (for no living soul was there) a little, bent old woman, clothed in a single white garment of Moorish fashion, and Moll knew that she was Mrs. Godwin (though seeing her now for the first time), come from Barbary to claim her own, and separate Moll from the husband she had won by fraud.
She stood there (says Moll) within her gates, with raised hand and a most bitter, unforgiving look upon her wasted face, barring the way by which Moll might regain her husband; and as the poor wife halted, trembling in dreadful awe, the old woman advanced with the sure foot of right and justice. What reproach she had to make, what malediction to pronounce, Moll dared not stay to hear, but turning her back fled to the house, where, gaining her chamber, she locked the door, and flung herself upon her husband's bed; and in this last dear refuge, shutting her eyes, clasping her ears, as if by dulling her senses to escape the phantom, she lay in a convulsion of terror for the mere dread that such a thing might be.
Then, at the thought that she might never again be enfolded here in her husband's arms, an agony of grief succeeded her fit of maddening fear, and she wept till her mind grew calm from sheer exhaustion. And so, little by little, as her courage revived, she began to reason with herself as how 'twas the least likely thing in the world that if Mrs. Godwin were in England, she should come to the Court unattended and in her Moorish clothes; and then, seeing the folly of abandoning herself to a foolish fancy, she rose, washed the tears from her face, and set herself to find some occupation to distract her thoughts. And
