doors; for if our correspondence is not discovered, I know
not what else I have done to change the countenances of the
whole family to me, or to have them treat me as they do now,
who formerly used me with so much tenderness, as if I had
been one of their own children.’
‘Why, look you, child,’ says he, ‘that they are uneasy about
you, that is true; but that they have the least suspicion of the
case as it is, and as it respects you and I, is so far from being
true, that they suspect my brother Robin; and, in short, they
are fully persuaded he makes love to you; nay, the fool has
put it into their heads too himself, for he is continually bantering
them about it, and making a jest of himself. I confess I think
he is wrong to do so, because he cannot but see it vexes them,
and makes them unkind to you; but ’tis a satisfaction to me,
because of the assurance it gives me, that they do not suspect
me in the least, and I hope this will be to your satisfaction too.’
‘So it is,’ says I, ‘one way; but this does not reach my case at
all, nor is this the chief thing that troubles me, though I have
been concerned about that too.’ ‘What is it, then?’ says he.
With which I fell to tears, and could say nothing to him at all.
He strove to pacify me all he could, but began at last to be
very pressing upon me to tell what it was. At last I answered
that I thought I ought to tell him too, and that he had some
right to know it; besides, that I wanted his direction in the case,
for I was in such perplexity that I knew not what course to take,
and then I related the whole affair to him. I told him how
imprudently his brother had managed himself, in making
himself so public; for that if he had kept it a secret, as such a
thing out to have been, I could but have denied him positively,
without giving any reason for it, and he would in time have
ceased his solicitations; but that he had the vanity, first, to
depend upon it that I would not deny him, and then had taken
the freedom to tell his resolution of having me to the whole house.
I told him how far I had resisted him, and told him how sincere
and honourable his offers were. ‘But,’ says I, ‘my case will
be doubly hard; for as they carry it ill to me now, because he
desires to have me, they’ll carry it worse when they shall find
I have denied him; and they will presently say, there’s something
else in it, and then out it comes that I am married already to
somebody else, or that I would never refuse a match so much
above me as this was.’
This discourse surprised him indeed very much. He told me
that it was a critical point indeed for me to manage, and he
did not see which way I should get out of it; but he would
consider it, and let me know next time we met, what resolution
he was come to about it; and in the meantime desired I would
not give my consent to his brother, nor yet give him a flat
denial, but that I would hold him in suspense a while.
I seemed to start at his saying I should not give him my
consent. I told him he knew very well I had no consent to
give; that he had engaged himself to marry me, and that my
consent was the same time engaged to him; that he had all
along told me I was his wife, and I looked upon myself as
effectually so as if the ceremony had passed; and that it was
from his own mouth that I did so, he having all along persuaded
me to call myself his wife.
‘Well, my dear,’ says he, ‘don’t be concerned at that now;
if I am not your husband, I’ll be as good as a husband to you;