thing than I, and see if you think she has been so positive as
Robin says she has been, or no.’ This was as well as he could
wish, and he, as it were, yielding to talk with me at his mother’s
request, she brought me to him into her own chamber, told me
her son had some business with me at her request, and desired
me to be very sincere with him, and then she left us together,
and he went and shut the door after her.
He came back to me and took me in his arms, and kissed me
very tenderly; but told me he had a long discourse to hold
with me, and it was not come to that crisis, that I should make
myself happy or miserable as long as I lived; that the thing
was now gone so far, that if I could not comply with his desire,
we would both be ruined. Then he told the whole story
between Robin, as he called him, and his mother and sisters
and himself, as it is above. ‘And now, dear child,’ says he,
‘consider what it will be to marry a gentleman of a good family,
in good circumstances, and with the consent of the whole house,
and to enjoy all that he world can give you; and what, on the
other hand, to be sunk into the dark circumstances of a woman
that has lost her reputation; and that though I shall be a private
friend to you while I live, yet as I shall be suspected always,
so you will be afraid to see me, and I shall be afraid to own you.’
He gave me no time to reply, but went on with me thus: ‘What
has happened between us, child, so long as we both agree to do
so, may be buried and forgotten. I shall always be your sincere
friend, without any inclination to nearer intimacy, when you
become my sister; and we shall have all the honest part of
conversation without any reproaches between us of having
done amiss. I beg of you to consider it, and to not stand in the
way of your own safety and prosperity; and to satisfy you that
I am sincere,’ added he, ‘I here offer you #500 in money, to
make you some amends for the freedoms I havetaken with
you, which we shall look upon as some of the folliesof our
lives, which ’tis hoped we may repent of.’
He spoke this in so much more moving terms than it is possible
for me to express, and with so much greater force of argument
than I can repeat, that I only recommend it to those who read
the story, to suppose, that as he held me above an hour and a
half in that discourse, so he answered all my objections, and
fortified his discourse with all the arguments that human wit
and art could devise.
I cannot say, however, that anything he said made impression
enough upon me so as to give me any thought of the matter,
till he told me at last very plainly, that if I refused, he was
sorry to add that he could never go on with me in that station
as we stood before; that though he loved me as well as ever,
and that I was as agreeable to him as ever, yet sense of virtue
had not so far forsaken him as to suffer him to lie with a
woman that his brother courted to make his wife; and if he
took his leave of me, with a denial in this affair, whatever he
might do for me in the point of support, grounded on his first
engagement of maintaining me, yet he would not have me be
surprised that he was obliged to tell me he could not allow
himself to see me any more; and that, indeed, I could not
expect it of him.
I received this last part with some token of surprise and
disorder, and had much ado to avoid sinking down, for indeed
I loved him to an extravagance not easy to imagine; but he
perceived my disorder. He entreated me to consider seriously