he had risen up to go.
He left me in the utmost confusion of thought; and he easily
perceived it the next day, and all the rest of the week, for it
was but Tuesday evening when we talked; but he had no
opportunity to come at me all that week, till the Sunday after,
when I, being indisposed, did not go to church, and he, making
some excuse for the like, stayed at home.
And now he had me an hour and a half again by myself, and
we fell into the same arguments all over again, or at least so
near the same, as it would be to no purpose to repeat them.
At last I asked him warmly, what opinion he must have of my
modesty, that he could suppose I should so much as entertain
a thought of lying with two brothers, and assured him it could
never be. I added, if he was to tell me that he would never
see me more, than which nothing but death could be more
terrible, yet I could never entertain a thought so dishonourable
to myself, and so base to him; and therefore, I entreated him,
if he had one grain of respect or affection left for me, that he
would speak no more of it to me, or that he would pull his
sword out and kill me. He appeared surprised at my obstinacy,
as he called it; told me I was unkind to myself, and unkind to
him in it; that it was a crisis unlooked for upon us both, and
impossible for either of us to foresee, but that he did not see
any other way to save us both from ruin, and therefore he
thought it the more unkind; but that if he must say no more
of it to me, he added with an unusual coldness, that he did
not know anything else we had to talk of; and so he rose up to
take his leave. I rose up too, as if with the same indifference;
but when he came to give me as it were a parting kiss, I burst
out into such a passion of crying, that though I would have spoke,
I could not, and only pressing his hand, seemed to give him the
adieu, but cried vehemently.
He was sensibly moved with this; so he sat down again, and
said a great many kind things to me, to abate the excess of my
passion, but still urged the necessity of what he had proposed;
all the while insisting, that if I did refuse, he would notwith-
standing provide for me; but letting me plainly see that he
would decline me in the main point–nay, even as a mistress;
making it a point of honour not to lie with the woman that,
for aught he knew, might come to be his brother’s wife.
The bare loss of him as a gallant was not so much my affliction
as the loss of his person, whom indeed I loved to distraction;
and the loss of all the expectations I had, and which I always
had built my hopes upon, of having him one day for my
husband. These things oppressed my mind so much, that, in
short, I fell very ill; the agonies of my mind, in a word, threw
me into a high fever, and long it was, that none in the family
expected my life.
I was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious and
light-headed; but nothing lay so near me as the fear that, when
I was light-headed, I should say something or other to his
prejudice. I was distressed in my mind also to see him, and
so he was to see me, for he really loved me most passionately;
but it could not be; there was not the least room to desire it
on one side or other, or so much as to make it decent.
It was near five weeks that I kept my bed and though the
violence of my fever abated in three weeks, yet it several
times returned; and the physicians said two or three times,
they could do no more for me, but that they must leave nature