Read "Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress" by Daniel Defoe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Who now could have believed the devil had any snare at the bottom of all this, or that I was in any danger on such an occasion so remote and out of the way as this was? But the event was the oddest that could be thought of. As it happened, Amy was not at home when we accepted this invitation, and so she was left out of the company; but instead of Amy we took our honest, good-humoured, never-to-be-omitted friend the Quaker, one of the best creatures that ever lived, sure, and who, besides a thousand good qualities unmixed with one bad one, was particularly excellent for being the best company in the world. Though I think I had carried Amy too if she had not been engaged in this unhappy girl's affair; for on a sudden the girl was lost and no news was to be heard of her, and Amy had hunted her to every place she could think of that it was likely to find her in, but all the news she could hear of her was that she was gone to an old comrade's house of hers which she called sister, and who was married to a master of a ship who lived at Redriff, and even this the jade never told me. It seems when this girl was directed by Amy to get her some breeding, go to the boarding-school and the like, she was recommended to a boarding-school at Camberwell, and there she contracted an acquaintance with a young lady (so they are all called) her bedfellow, that they called sisters, and promised never to break off their acquaintance.
But judge you what an unaccountable surprise I must be in when I came on board the ship and was brought into the captain's cabin, or what they call it, the great cabin of the ship, to see his lady or wife, and another young person with her, who when I came to see her near-hand was my old cook-maid in the Pall Mall, and, as appeared by the sequel of the story, was neither more nor less than my own daughter. That I knew her was out of doubt, for though she had not had opportunity to see me very often, yet I had often seen her, as I must needs, being in my own family so long.