and that then I should be obliged to remove without any
pretences for it.
After some time the younger gentleman took an opportunity
to tell me that the kindness he had for me had got vent in the
family. He did not charge me with it, he said, for he know
well enough which way it came out. He told me his plain way
of talking had been the occasion of it, for that he did not make
his respect for me so much a secret as he might have done,
and the reason was, that he was at a point, that if I would
consent to have him, he would tell them all openly that he
loved me, and that he intended to marry me; that it was true
his father and mother might resent it, and be unkind, but that
he was now in a way to live, being bred to the law, and he did
not fear maintaining me agreeable to what I should expect;
and that, in short, as he believed I would not be ashamed of
him, so he was resolved not to be ashamed of me, and that he
scorned to be afraid to own me now, whom he resolved to
own after I was his wife, and therefore I had nothing to do but
to give him my hand, and he would answer for all the rest.
I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I repented
heartily my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any
reflection of conscience, but from a view of the happiness I
might have enjoyed, and had now made impossible; for though
I had no great scruples of conscience, as I have said, to struggle
with, yet I could not think of being a whore to one brother and
a wife to the other. But then it came into my thoughts that the
first brother had promised to made me his wife when he came
to his estate; but I presently remembered what I had often
thought of, that he had never spoken a word of having me for
a wife after he had conquered me for a mistress; and indeed,
till now, though I said I thought of it often, yet it gave me no
disturbance at all, for as he did not seem in the least to lessen
his affection to me, so neither did he lessen his bounty, though
he had the discretion himself to desire me not to lay out a
penny of what he gave me in clothes, or to make the least show
extraordinary, because it would necessarily give jealousy in
the family, since everybody know I could come at such things
no manner of ordinary way, but by some private friendship,
which they would presently have suspected.
But I was now in a great strait, and knew not what to
do. The main difficulty was this: the younger brother not
only laid close siege to me, but suffered it to be seen. He
would come into his sister’s room, and his mother’s room,
and sit down, and talk a thousand kind things of me, and to
me, even before their faces, and when they were all there.
This grew so public that the whole house talked of it, and his
mother reproved him for it, and their carriage to me appeared
quite altered. In short, his mother had let fall some speeches,
as if she intended to put me out of the family; that is, in
English, to turn me out of doors. Now I was sure this could
not be a secret to his brother, only that he might not think, as
indeed nobody else yet did, that the youngest brother had made
any proposal to me about it; but as I easily could see that it
would go farther, so I saw likewise there was an absolute
necessity to speak of it to him, or that he would speak of it to
me, and which to do first I knew not; that is, whether I should
break it to him or let it alone till he should break it to me.
Upon serious consideration, for indeed now I began to consider