was sorry I could not be persuaded, and was going to say more, but he heard his sister coming, and so did I; and yet I forced out these few words as a reply, "That I could never be persuaded to love one brother and marry another." He shook his head and said, " Then I am ruined," meaning himself, and that moment his sister entered the room, and told him she could not find the flute. Well," says he, merrily, "this laziness will not do; so he gets up and goes himself to look for it, but comes back without it too; not but that he could have found it, but because his mind was a little disturbed, and he had no mind to play; and besides, the eri and he sent his sister on was answered another way, for he only wanted an opportunity to speak to me, which he gained, though not much to his satisfaction.

I had, however, a great deal of satisfaction in having spoken my mind to him with freedom, and with such an honest plainness, as I have related; and though it did not at all work the way I desired, that is to say, to oblige the person to me the more, yet it took from him all possibility of quitting me but by a downright breach of honour, and giving up all the faith of a gentleman to me, which he had so often engaged, by, never to abandon me, but to make me his wife as soon as he came to his estate.

It was not many weeks after this before I was about the house again, and began to grow well; but I continued melancholy, silent, dull, and retired, which amazed the whole family, except he that knew the reason of it; yet it was a great while before he took any notice of it, and I, as backward to speak as he, carried respectfully to him, but never offered to speak a word to him that was particular of any kind whatsoever; and this continued for sixteen or seventeen weeks, so that as I expected every day to be dismissed the family on account of what distaste they had taken another way, in which I had no guilt, so I ex-|| pected to hear no more of this gentleman, after all his solemn vows and protestations, but to be ruined and abandoned.

At last I broke the way myself in the family for my removing; for being talking seriously with the old lady one day about my own circumstances in the world, and how my distemper had left a heaviness upon my spirits, that I was not the same thing I was before, the old lady said, "I am afraid, Betty, what I have said to you about my son has had some influence upon you, and that you are melancholy on his account; pray will you let me know how the matter stands with you both, if it may not be improper? for as for Robin, he does nothing but rally and banter when I speak to him."

"Why truly, madam," said I, "the matter stands as I wish it did not, and I shall be very sincere with you in it, whatever befalls me for it; Mr Robert has several times proposed marriage to me, which is what I had no reason to expect, my poor circumstances considered; but I have always resisted him, and that, perhaps, in terms more positive than became me, considering the regard that I ought to have for every branch of your family. But," said I, "madam, I could never so far forget my obligations to you and all your house, to offer to consent to a thing which I know must needs be disobliging to you, and

this I have made my argument to him, and have positively told him that I would never entertain a thought of that kind, unless I had your consent and his father's also, to whom I was bound by so many invincible obligations.”

"And is this possible, Mrs Betty," says the old lady? "Then you have been much juster to us than we have been to you; for we have all looked upon you as a kind of a snare to my son, and I had a proposal to make to you for your removing for fear of it; but I had not yet mentioned it to you, because I thought ye were not thoroughly well, and I was afraid of grieving you too much, lest it should throw you down again; for we have all a respect for you still, though not so much as to have it be the ruin of my son; but if it be as you say, we have all wronged you very much."

"As to the truth of what I say, madam," said I," I refer you to your son himself; if he will do me any justice, he must tell you the story just as I have told it."

Away goes the old lady to her daughters and tells them the whole story just as I had told it her, and they were surprised at it you may be sure, as I believed they would be. One said, she could never have thought it; another said, Robin was a fool; a third said, she would not believe a word of it, and she would warrant that Robin would tell the story another way; but the old gentlewoman, who was resolved to go to the bottom of it, before I could have the least opportunity of acquainting her son with what had passed, resolved too that she would talk with her son immediately, and to that purpose sent for him, for he was gone but to a lawyer's house in the town upon some petty business of his own, and upon her sending he returned immediately.

Upon his coming up to them, for they were all still together," Sit down Robin," says the old lady, "I must have some talk with you."

"With all my heart, madam," says Robin, looking very merry; " I hope it is about a good wife, for I am at a great loss in that affair."

"How can that be," says his mother; “did not you say you resolved to have Mrs Betty?” "Ay, madam," says Robin," but there is one that has forbid the banns."

"Forbid the banns," says his mother, "who can that be?"

"Even Mrs Betty herself," says Robin. "How so?" says his mother. "Have you asked her the question then?"

"Yes, indeed, madam," says Robin; "I have attacked her in form five times since she was sick, and am beaten off; the jade is so stout she will not capitulate, nor yield upon any terms, except such as I cannot effectually grant."

"Explain yourself," says the mother, "for I am surprised, I do not understand you; I hope you are not in earnest."

"Why, madam," says he, "the case is plain enough upon me; it explains itself: she won't have me, she says;-is not that plain enough? I think it is plain, and pretty rough too."

"Well, but," says the mother, "you talk of conditions that you cannot grant, what, does she want a settlement? Her jointure ought to be according to her portion; but what fortune does she bring you?"

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: 1 beg of you to consider it, and do 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 5007. in money to make you some amends for the freedoms I have taken with you, which we shall look upon as some of the follies of our lives, which it is 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 tokens 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 of it, assured me that it was the only way to pre. serve our mutual affection, that in this station we might love as friends with the utmost passion, and with a love of relation untainted; free from our just reproaches, and free from other people's suspicions; that he should ever acknowledge his happiness owing to me; that he would be a debtor to me as long as he had breath; thus he wrought up, in short, to a kind of hesitation in the matter; having the dangers on one side represented in lively figures, and indeed heightened by my imagination of being turned out to the wide world a mere cast-off whore, for it was no less, and perhaps exposed as such, with little to provide for myself; with no friend, no acquaintance in the whole world out of that town, and there I could not pretend to stay. All this terrified me to the last degree, and he took care upon all occasions to lay it home to me in the worst colours that it could be possible to be drawn in; on the other hand, he failed not to set forth the easy prosperous life which I was going to live.

He answered all that I could object from affection, and from former engagements, with telling me the necessity that was before us of taking other

measures now; and as to his promises of marriage, the nature of things, he said, had put an end to that, by the probability of my being his brother's wife, before the time to which his promises all referred.

Thus, in a word, I may say, he reasoned me out of my reason; he conquered all my arguments, and I began to see a danger that I was in, which I had not considered of before, and that was of being dropped by both of them, and left alone in the world to shift for myself.

This, and his persuasions, at length prevailed with me to consent, though with so much reluctance, that it was easy to see I should go to church like a bear to the stake. I had some little apprehension about me too, lest my new spouse, who by the way I had not the least affection for, should he be skilful enough to challenge me on another account upon our first coming to bed together; but whether he did it with design or not I know not; but his elder brother took care to make him very much fuddled before he went to bed; so that I had the satisfaction of a drunken bedfellow the first night: how he did it I know not, but I concluded that he certainly contrived it that his brother might be able to make no judgment of the difference between a maid and a married woman; nor did he ever entertain any notions of it, or disturb his thoughts about it.

I should go back a little here to where I left off; the elder brother having thus managed me, his next business was to manage his mother, and he never left till he had brought her to acquiesce, and be passive in the thing, even without acquainting the father other than by post letters, so that she consented to our marrying privately, and leaving her to manage the father afterwards.

Then he cajoled with his brother, persuaded him what service he had done him, and how he had brought his mother to consent, which, though true, was not indeed done to serve him, but to serve himself; but thus diligently did he cheat him, and had the thanks of a faithful friend for shifting off his whore into his brother's arms for a wife. So certainly does interest banish ah manner of affection, and so naturally do men give up honour and justice, humanity, and even Christianity, to secure themselves.

I must now come back to brother Robin, as we always called him ; who having got his mother's consent as above, came big with the news to me, and told me the whole story of it with a sincerity so visible, that I must confess it grieved me that I must be the instrument to abuse so honest a

gentleman; but there was no remedy; he would have me, and I was not obliged to tell him that I was his brother's whore, though I had no other way to put him off; so I came gradually into it to his satisfaction, and behold, we were married.

Modesty forbids me to reveal the secrets of the marriage bed, but nothing could happen more suitable to my circumstances than that, as above, my husband was so fuddled when he came to bed that he could not remember in the morning whether he had had any conversation with me or not, and I was obliged to tell him he had, though in reality he had not, that I might be sure he could make no inquiry about anything else.

It concerns the story in hand very little to enter

The case was altered with me, I had money in my pocket, and had nothing to say to them. I had been tricked once by that cheat called Love, but the game was over; I was resolved now to be married, or nothing, and to be well married, or not at all.

into the farther particulars of the family, or of || for their common design, that I understood too myself, for the five years that I lived with this well to be drawn into any more snares of that husband; only to observe that I had two chil-kind. dren by him, and at the end of five years he died. He had been really a good husband to me, and we lived very agreeably together; but as he had not received much from them, and had in the little time he lived acquired no great matters, so my circumstances were not great; nor was I much mended by the match. Indeed I had preserved the elder brother's bonds to me to pay me 500l., which he offered me for my consent to marry his brother; and this, with what I had saved of the money he formerly gave me, and about as much more my husband, left me a widow with about 12001. in my pocket.

My two children were indeed taken happily off my hands by the husband's father and mother, and that by the way was all they got by Mrs Betty.

I confess I was not suitably affected with the loss of my husband; nor indeed can I say that I ever loved him as I ought to have done, or as was proportionable to the good usage I had from him, for he was a tender, kind, good-humoured man as any woman could desire; but his brother being so always in my sight, at least while we were in the country, was a continual snare to me; and I never was in bed with my husband, but I wished myself in the arms of his brother, and though his brother never cffered me the least kindness that way, after our marriage, but carried it just as a brother ought to do; yet it was impossible for me to do so to him. In short, I committed adultery and incest with him every day in my desires, which, without doubt, was as effectually criminal in the nature of the guilt as if I had actually done it.

I loved the company indeed of men of mirth and wit, men of gallantry and figure, and was often entertained with such, as I was also with others; but I found, by just observation, that the brightest men came upon the dullest errand, that is to say, the dullest as to what I aimed at; on the other hand, those who came with the best proposals, were the dullest and most disagreeable part of the world; I was not averse to a tradesman, but then I would have tradesman, forsooth, that was something of a gentleman too: that when my husband had a mind to carry me to court, or to the play, he might become a sword, and look as like a gentleman as another man, and not be one that had the mark of his apronstrings upon his coat, or the mark of his hat upon his wig; that should look as if he was set on to his sword, when his sword was put on him, and that carried his trade in his countenance.

Well, at last I found this amphibious creature, this land-water thing, called a gentleman tradesman, and as a just plague upon my folly, I was catched in the very snare, which as I might say, I laid for myself, I say laid for myself, for I was not trepanned I, confess, but I betrayed myself.

This was a draper too, for tho gh my comrade would have brought me to a bargain with her brother; yet when it came to the point, it was it seems, for a mistress, not a wife, and I kept true to this notion, that a woman should never be kept for a mistress that had money to keep herself.

Before my husband died his elder brother was married, and we being then removed to London, were written to by the old lady to come, and be Thus my pride, not my principle, my money, at the wedding; my husband went, but I pre- not my virtue, kept me honest; though, as it tended indisposition, and that I could not possi-proved, I found I had much better have been bly travel, so I staid behind; for, in short, I could sold by my she comrade to her brother, than have not bear the sight of his being given to another sold myself as I did to a tradesman that was a rake woman, though I knew I was never to have him gentleman shopkeeper, and beggar all together. myself.

I was now left loose to the world, and being still young and handsome, as everybody said of me, and I assure you I thought myself so, and with a tolerable fortune in my pocket, I put no small value upon myself; I was courted by several very considerable tradesmen, and particularly very warmly by one, a linen-draper, at whose house after my husband's death I took a lodging, his sister being my acquaintance; here I had all the liberty and all the opportunity to be gay, and appear in company that I could desire; my landlord's sister being one of the maddest, gayest things alive, and not so much mistress of her virtue as 1 thought at first she had been. She brought me into a world of wild company, and even brought home several persons, such as she liked well enough to gratify, to see her pretty widow, so she was pleased to call me, and that name I got in a little time in public; now, as "fame and fools make an assembly," I was here wonderfully caressed, had abundance of admirers, and such as called themselves lovers; but I found not one fair proposal among them all; as

T

But I was hurried on (by my fancy to a gentleman) to ruin myself in the grossest manner that ever woman did; for my new husband coming to a lump of money at once, fell into such a profusion of expense, that all I had, and all he had before, if he had anything worth mentioning, would not have held it out above one year.

He was very fond of me for about a quarter of a year, and what I got by that was, that I had the pleasure of seeing a great deal of my money spent upon myself; and, as I may say, had some of the spending it too.

"Come, my dear," says he to me one day, "shall we go and take a turn into the country for about a week?"

“Aye, my dear," says I, "whither would you go?" "I care not whither," says he, "but I have a mind to look like quality for a week; we will go to Oxford," says he. "How," says L

"shall we go, I am no horsewoman, and it is too far for a coach."

"Too far," says he, "no place is too far for a coach and six. If I carry you out, you shall travel like a duchess.”