with me, to let him see that I kept a maid, but I sent her away
as soon as I was gone in. He would have had me let the maid
have stayed, but I would not, but ordered her aloud to come
for me again about nine o’clock. But he forbade that, and told
me he would see me safe home, which, by the way, I was not
very well please with, supposing he might do that to know
where I lived and inquire into my character and circumstances.
However, I ventured that, for all that the people there or
thereabout knew of me, was to my advantage; and all the
character he had of me, after he had inquired, was that I was
a woman of fortune, and that I was a very modest, sober body;
which, whether true or not in the main, yet you may see how
necessary it is for all women who expect anything in the world,
to preserve the character of their virtue, even when perhaps
they may have sacrificed the thing itself.
I found, and was not a little please with it, that he had provided
a supper for me. I found also he lived very handsomely, and
had a house very handsomely furnished; all of which I was
rejoiced at indeed, for I looked upon it as all my own.
We had now a second conference upon the subject-matter of
the last conference. He laid his business very home indeed; he
protested his affection to me, and indeed I had no room to
doubt it; he declared that it began from the first moment I
talked with him, and long before I had mentioned leaving my
effects with him. ”Tis no matter when it began,’ thought I;
‘if it will but hold, ’twill be well enough.’ He then told me
how much the offer I had made of trusting him with my effects,
and leaving them to him, had enraged him. ‘So I intended it
should,’ thought I, ‘but then I thought you had been a single
man too.’ After we had supped, I observed he pressed me
very hard to drink two or three glasses of wine, which, however,
I declined, but drank one glass or two. He then told me he
had a proposal to make to me, which I should promise him I
would not take ill if I should not grant it. I told him I hoped
he would make no dishonourable proposal to me, especially
in his own house, and that if it was such, I desired he would
not propose it, that I might not be obliged to offer any
resentment to him that did not become the respect I professed
for him, and the trust I had placed in him in coming to his house;
and begged of him he would give me leave to go away, and
accordingly began to put on my gloves and prepare to be gone,
though at the same time I no more intended it than he intended
to let me.
Well, he importuned me not to talk of going; he assured me
he had no dishonourable thing in his thoughts about me, and
was very far from offering anything to me that was dishonourable,
and if I thought so, he would choose to say no more of it.
That part I did not relish at all. I told him I was ready to hear
anything that he had to say, depending that he would say nothing
unworthy of himself, or unfit for me to hear. Upon this, he
told me his proposal was this: that I would marry him, though
he had not yet obtained the divorce from the whore his wife;
and to satisfy me that he meant honourably, he would promise
not to desire me to live with him, or go to bed with him till the
divorce was obtained. My heart said yet to this offer at first
word, but it was necessary to play the hypocrite a little more
with him; so I seemed to decline the motion with some warmth,
and besides a little condemning the thing as unfair, told him
that such a proposal could be of no signification, but to entangle