that he would come the next day and take a night's lodging with me. I pressed him to stay that night, and told him I should be glad a friend so valuable should be under the same roof with me; and indeed I began at that time not only to be much obliged to him, but to love him too, and that in a manner that I had not been acquainted with myself.
Oh let no woman slight the temptation that being generously delivered from trouble is to any spirit furnished with gratitude and just principles. This gentleman had freely and voluntarily delivered me from misery, from poverty, and rags; he had made me what I was, and put me into a way to be even more than I ever was, namely, to live happy and pleased, and on his bounty I depended. What could I say to this gentleman when he pressed me to yield to him and argued the lawfulness of it? But of that in its place.
I pressed him again to stay that night, and told him it was the first completely happy night that I had ever had in the house in my life, and I should be very sorry to have it without his company, who was the cause and foundation of it all; that we would be innocently merry, but that it could never be without him; and, in short, I courted him so, that he said he could not deny me, but he would take his horse and go to London, do the business he had to do, which, it seems, was to pay a foreign bill that was due that night and would else be protested, and that he would come back in three hours at furthest and sup with me; but bade me get nothing there, for since I was resolved to be merry, which was what he desired above all things, he would send me something from London. "And we will make it a wedding supper, my dear," says he, and with that word took me in his arms and kissed me so vehemently that I made no question but he intended to do everything else that Amy had talked of.
I started a little at the word "wedding." "What do you mean, to call it by such a name?" says I; adding, "We will have a supper, but t'other is impossible as well on your side as mine." He laughed. "Well," says he, "you shall call it what you will, but it may be the same thing, for I shall satisfy you it is not so impossible as you make it."
"I don't understand you," said I; "have not I a husband and you a wife?"
"Well, well," says he, "we will talk of that after supper." So he rose up, gave me another kiss, and took his horse for London.
This kind of discourse had fired my blood, I confess, and I knew not what to think of it. It was plain now that he intended to lie with me, but how he would reconcile it to a legal thing like a marriage, that I could not imagine. We had both of us used Amy with so much intimacy and trusted her with everything, having such unexampled instances of her fidelity, that he made no scruple to kiss me and say all these things to me before her, nor had he cared one farthing, if I would have let him lie with me, to have had Amy there too all night. When he was gone, "Well, Amy," says I, "what will all this come to now? I am all in a sweat at him." "Come to, madam," says Amy, "I see what it will come to; I must put you to bed to-night together," "Why, you would not be so impudent, you jade you," says I, "would you?" "Yes, I would," says she, "with all my heart, and think you both as honest as ever you were in your lives."
"What ails the slut to talk so?" said I. "Honest! how can it be honest?" "Why, I'll tell you, madam." says Amy; "I sounded it as soon as I heard him speak, and it is very true too. He calls you widow, and such indeed you are, for as my master has left you so many years, he is dead to be sure--at least he is dead to you, he is no husband--you are and ought to be free to marry who you will; and his wife being gone from him and refuses to lie with him, then he is a single man again as much as ever; and though you cannot bring the laws of the land to join you together, yet one refusing to do the once of a wife, and the other of a husband, you may certainly take one another fairly."
"Nay, Amy," says I, "if I could take him fairly, you may be sure I'd take him above all the men in the world. It turned the very heart within me when I heard him say he loved me; how could it do otherwise when you know what a condition I was in before, despised and trampled on by all the world? I could have taken him in my arms and kissed him as freely as he did me, if it had not been for shame."
"Ay, and all the rest too," says Amy, "at the first word. I don't see how you can think of denying him anything. Has he not brought you out of the devil's clutches, brought you out of the blackest misery that ever poor lady was reduced to? Can a woman deny such a man anything?"
"Nay, I don't know what to do, Amy," says I. "I hope he won't desire anything of that kind of me, I hope he won't attempt it; if he does, I know not what to say to him."
"Not ask you!" says Amy; "depend upon it, he will ask you, and you will grant it, too; I'm sure my mistress is no fool. Come, pray, madam, let me go air you a clean shift; don't let him find you in foul linen the wedding night."
"But that I know you to be a very honest girl, Amy," says I, "you would make me abhor you; why, you argue for the devil, as if you were one of his privy counsellors."
"It's no matter for that, madam, I say nothing but what I think. You own you love this gentleman, and he has given you sufficient testimony of his affection to you; your conditions are alike unhappy, and he is of opinion that he may take another woman, his first wife having broke her honour, and living from him, and that, though the laws of the land will not allow him to marry formally, yet that he may take another woman into his arms, provided he keeps true to the other woman as a wife; nay, he says it is usual to do so, and allowed by the custom of the place, in several countries abroad. And I must own I'm of the same mind, else 'tis in the power of a whore, after she has jilted and abandoned her husband, to confine him from the pleasure as well as convenience of a woman all the days of his life, which would be very unreasonable and, as times go, not tolerable to all people; and the like on your side, madam."
Had I now had my senses about me, and had my reason not been overcome by the powerful attraction of so kind, so beneficent a friend, had I consulted conscience and virtue, I should have repelled this Amy, however faithful and honest to me in other things, as a viper and engine of the devil. I ought to have remembered that neither he nor I, either by the laws of God or man, could come together upon any other terms than that of notorious adultery. The ignorant jade's argument that he had brought me out of the hands of the devil, by which she meant the devil of poverty and distress, should have been a powerful motive to me not to plunge myself into the jaws of hell and into the power of the real devil, in recompense for that deliverance. I should have looked upon all the good this man had done for me to have been the particular work of the goodness of Heaven, and that goodness should have moved me to a return of duty and humble obedience. I should have received the mercy thankfully, and applied it soberly to the praise and honour of my Maker, whereas by this wicked course all the bounty and kindness of this gentleman became a snare to me, was a mere bait to the devil's hook. I received his kindness at the dear expense of body and soul, mortgaging faith, religion, conscience, and modesty for (as I may call it) a morsel of bread, or, if you will, ruined my soul from a principle of gratitude and gave myself up to the devil to show myself grateful to my benefactor. I must do the gentleman that justice as to say I verily believe that he did nothing but what he thought was lawful, and I must do that justice upon myself as to say I did what my own conscience convinced me at the very time I did it was horribly unlawful, scandalous, and abominable.
But poverty was my snare, dreadful poverty! The misery I had been in was great, such as would make the heart tremble at the apprehensions of its return, and I might appeal to any that has had any experience of the world, whether one so entirely destitute as I was, of all manner of all helps or friends either to support me or to assist me to support myself, could withstand the proposal; not that I plead this as a justification of my conduct, but that it may move the pity even of those that abhor the crime.
Besides this, I was young, handsome, and with all the mortifications I had met with, was vain, and that not a little; and as it was a new thing, so it as a pleasant thing to be courted, caressed, embraced, and high professions of affection made to me by a man so agreeable and so able to do me good.
Add to this, that if I had ventured
