and I would have removed my pallet-bed, but he would not
let me, till he was able to venture himself without anybody to
sit up with him, and then I removed to my own chamber.
He took many occasions to express his sense of my tenderness
and concern for him; and when he grew quite well, he made me
a present of fifty guineas for my care and, as he called it, for
hazarding my life to save his.
And now he made deep protestations of a sincere inviolable
affection for me, but all along attested it to be with the utmost
reserve for my virtue and his own. I told him I was fully
satisfied of it. He carried it that length that he protested to me,
that if he was naked in bed with me, he would as sacredly
preserve my virtue as he would defend if if I was assaulted by
a ravisher. I believed him, and told him I did so; but this did
not satisfy him, he would, he said, wait for some opportunity
to give me an undoubted testimony of it.
It was a great while after this that I had occasion, on my own
business, to go to Bristol, upon which he hired me a coach,
and would go with me, and did so; and now indeed our intimacy
increased. From Bristol he carried me to Gloucester, which
was merely a journey of pleasure, to take the air; and here it
was our hap to have no lodging in the inn but in one large
chamber with two beds in it. The master of the house going
up with us to show his rooms, and coming into that room,
said very frankly to him, ‘Sir, it is none of my business to inquire
whether the lady be your spouse or no, but if not, you may lie
as honestly in these two beds as if you were in two chambers,’
and with that he pulls a great curtain which drew quite across
the room and effectually divided the beds. ‘Well,’ says my
friend, very readily, ‘these beds will do, and as for the rest, we
are too near akin to lie together, though we may lodge near
one another’; and this put an honest face on the thing too.
When we came to go to bed, he decently went out of the room
till I was in bed, and then went to bed in the bed on his own
side of the room, but lay there talking to me a great while.
At last, repeating his usual saying, that he could lie naked in
the bed with me and not offer me the least injury, he starts out
of his bed. ‘And now, my dear,’ says he, ‘you shall see how
just I will be to you, and that I can keep my word,’ and away
he comes to my bed.
I resisted a little, but I must confess I should not have resisted
him much if he had not made those promises at all; so after a
little struggle, as I said, I lay still and let him come to bed.
When he was there he took me in his arms, and so I lay all
night with him, but he had no more to do with me, or offered
anything to me, other than embracing me, as I say, in his arms,
no, not the whole night, but rose up and dressed him in the
morning, and left me as innocent for him as I was the day I
was born.
This was a surprising thing to me, and perhaps may be so to
others, who know how the laws of nature work; for he was a
strong, vigorous, brisk person; nor did he act thus on a principle
of religion at all, but of mere affection; insisting on it, that
though I was to him to most agreeable woman in the world,
yet, because he loved me, he could not injure me.
I own it was a noble principle, but as it was what I never
understood before, so it was to me perfectly amazing. We
traveled the rest of the journey as we did before, and came