Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress by Daniel Defoe

I must now go back to another scene and join it to this end of my story, which will complete all my concern with England, at least all that I shall bring into this account. I have hinted at large what I had done for my two sons, one at Messina and the other in the Indies.

But I have not gone through the story of my two daughters. I was so in danger of being known by one of them, that I durst not see her, so as to let her know who I was; and for the other, I could not well know how to see her and own her, and let her see me, because she must then know that I would not let her sister know me, which would look strange. So that, upon the whole, I resolved to see neither of them at all, but Amy managed all that for me; and when she had made gentlewomen of them both, by giving them a good though late education, she had like to have blown up the whole case, and herself and me too, by an unhappy discovery of herself to the last of them, that is, to her who was our cook-maid, and who, as I said before, Amy had been obliged to turn away for fear of the very discovery which now happened. I have observed already in what manner Amy managed her by a third person, and how the girl, when she was set up for a lady, as above, came and visited Amy at my lodgings; after which, Amy going as was her custom to see the girl's brother (my son), at the honest man's house in Spitalfields, both the girls were there, merely by accident, at the same time, and the other girl unawares discovered the secret, namely, that this was the lady that had done all this for them.