to a relation’s house of hers in the country, where she directed
me, and where she brought her husband to visit me; and calling
me cousin, she worked matters so about, that her husband
and she together invited me most passionately to come to town
and be with them, for they now live in a quite different place
from where they were before. In the next place, she tells her
husband that I had at least #1500 fortune, and that after some
of my relations I was like to have a great deal more.
It was enough to tell her husband this; there needed nothing
on my side. I was but to sit still and wait the event, for it
presently went all over the neighbourhood that the young
widow at Captain —-‘s was a fortune, that she had at least
#1500, and perhaps a great deal more, and that the captain
said so; and if the captain was asked at any timeabout me,
he made no scruple to affirm it, though he knew not one word
of the matter, other than that his wife had told him so; and in
this he thought no harm, for he really believed it to be so,
because he had it from his wife: so slender a foundation will
those fellows build upon, if they do but think there is a fortune
in the game. With the reputation of this fortune, I presently
found myself blessed with admirers enough, and that I had my
choice of men, as scarce as they said they were, which, by the
way, confirms what I was saying before. This being my case,
I, who had a subtle game to play, had nothing now to do but
to single out from them all the properest man that might be
for my purpose; that is to say, the man who was most likely
to depend upon the hearsay of a fortune, and not inquire too
far into the particulars; and unless I did this I did nothing, for
my case would not bear much inquiry.
I picked out my man without much difficulty, by the judgment
I made of his way of courting me. I had let him run on with
his protestations and oaths that he loved me above all the world;
that if I would make him happy, that was enough; all which I
knew was upon supposition, nay, it was upon a full satisfaction,
that I was very rich, though I never told him a word of it myself.
This was my man; but I was to try him to the bottom, and
indeed in that consisted my safety; for if he baulked, I knew I
was undone, as surely as he was undone if he took me; and
if I did not make some scruple about his fortune, it was the
way to lead him to raise some about mine; and first, therefore,
I pretended on all occasions to doubt his sincerity, and told
him, perhaps he only courted me for my fortune. He stopped
my mouth in that part with the thunder of his protestations,
as above, but still I pretended to doubt.
One morning he pulls off his diamond ring, and writes upon
the glass of the sash in my chamber this line–
‘You I love, and you alone.’
I read it, and asked him to lend me his ring, with which I wrote
under it, thus–
‘And so in love says every one.’
He takes his ring again, and writes another line thus–
‘Virtue alone is an estate.’
I borrowed it again, and I wrote under it–
‘But money’s virtue, gold is fate.’
He coloured as red as fire to see me turn so quick upon him,
and in a kind of a rage told me he would conquer me, and
writes again thus–
‘I scorn your gold, and yet I love.’
I ventured all upon the last cast of poetry, as you’ll see, for I
wrote boldly under his last–
‘I’m poor: let’s see how kind you’ll prove.’
This was a sad truth to me; whether he believed me or no, I
could not tell; I supposed then that he did not. However, he