you will, I hope, allow me to say, I do not speak my own conceit of myself, but the opinion of all that knew the family. I had with all these the common vanity of my sex, viz. that being really taken for very hand. some, or, if you please, for a great beauty, I very well knew it, and had as good an opinion of myself as anybody else could have of me, and particularly I loved to hear anybody speak of it, which could not but happen to me sometimes, and was a great satisfaction to me. Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell of myself, and in all this part of my life I not only had the reputation of living in a very good family, and a family noted and respected everywhere for virtue and sobriety, and for every valuable thing; but I had the character, too, of a very sober, modest, and virtuous young woman, and such I had always been; neither had I yet any occasion to think of anything else, or to know what a temptation to wickedness meant. But that which I was too vain of was my ruin, or rather my vanity was the cause of it. The lady in the house where I was had two sons, young gentlemen of very promising parts and of extraordinary behaviour, and it was my misfortune to be very well with them both, but they managed themselves with me in a quite differ ent manner. The eldest, a gay gentleman that knew the town as well as the country, and though he had levity enough to do an ill-natured thing, yet had too much judgment of things to pay dear for his pleasures; he began with that unhappy snare to all women, viz. taking notice upon all occasions how pretty I was, as he called it, how agreeable, how well carriaged, and the like, and this he contrived so subtilly, as if he had known as well how to catch a woman in his net as a partridge when he went a setting; for he would contrive to be talking this to his sisters when, though I was not by, yet when he knew I was not so far off, but that I should be sure to hear him his sisters would return softly to him"Hush, brother, she will hear you; she is but in the next room. Then he would put it off, and talk softlier, as if he had not known it, and began to acknowledge he was wrong; and then, as if he had forgot himself, he would speak aloud again, and I, that was so well pleased to hear it, was sure to listen for it upon all occasions. 39 After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough the method how to lay it in my way, he played an opener game, and one day going by his sister's chamber when I was there, doing something about dressing her, he comes in with an air of gaiety. "O! Mrs Betty," said he to me, "how do you do, Mrs Betty? do not your cheeks burn, Mrs Betty?" I made a curtsy, and blushed, but said nothing. "What makes you talk so, brother?" says the lady., "Why," says he, "we have been talking of her below stairs this half hour." "Well," says his sister, you cannot say harm of her, that I am sure, so it is no matter what you have been talking about."" Nay," says he, "it is so far from talking harm of her, that we have been talking a great deal of good, and a great many fine things have been said of Mrs Betty, I assure || you, and particularly that she is the handsomest young woman in Colchester, and, in short, they begin to toast her health in the town." "I wonder at your brother," says the sister. "Betty wants but one thing, but she had as good want every thing, for the market is against our sex just now; and if a young woman have beauty, birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all these to an extreme, yet if she have not money, she is nobody; she had as good want them all, for nothing but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their own hands." Her younger brother, who was by, cried, "Hold, sister; you run too fast; I am an exception to your rule, I assure you. If I find a woman so accomplished as you talk of, I say, I assure you, I would not trouble myself about the money." "O," says the sister, "but you will take care not to fancy one of them without the money." "You do not know that neither," says the brother. "But why sister," says the elder brother, "why do you exclaim so at the men, for aiming so much at the fortune? You are none of them that want a fortune, whatever else you want." 66 "I understand you, brother," replies the lady very smartly. You suppose I have the money, and want the beauty; but as times go now, the first will do without the last, so I have the better of my neighbours." "Well," says the younger brother, "but your neighbours, as you call them, may be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband sometimes in spite of money, and when the maid chances to be handsomer than the mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a coach before her." I thought it was time for me to withdraw, and leave them, and I did so; but not so far but that I heard all their discourse, in which I heard abundance of fine things said of myself, which served to prompt my vanity. But this I soon found was not the way to increase my interest in the family; for the sister and the younger brother fell grievously out about it; and as he said some very disobliging things to her upon my account, so I could easily see that she resented them, by her future conduct to me, which indeed was very unjust to me, for I had never had the least thought of what she suspected as to her younger brother. Indeed the elder brother, in his distant remote way, had said a great many things, as in jest, which I had the folly to believe were in earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes of what I ought to have supposed he never intended, and perhaps never thought of. It happened one day that he came running up stairs towards the room where his sisters used to sit and work, as he often used to do, and calling to them before he came in, as was his way too, I being there alone, stepped to the door, and said, "Sir, the ladies are not here; they are walked down the garden." As I stepped forward to say this, towards the door, he was just got to the door, and clasping me in his arms, as if it had been by chance, "O! Mrs Betty," says he, "are you here? That is better still. I T want to speak with you more than I do to them;" and then having me in his arms, he kissed me three or four times. I struggled to get away, and yet did it but faintly neither, and he held me fast and still kissed me, till he was almost out of breath, and then sitting down, says, "Dear Betty, I am in love with you." His words, I must confess, fired my blood; all my spirits flew about my heart, and put me into disorder enough, which he might easily have seen in my face. He repeated it afterwards several times, that he was in love with me, and my heart spoke as plain as a voice, that I liked it. Nay, whenever he said I am in love with you, my blushes replied, would you were, sir. However, nothing else passed at this time; it was but a surprise, and when he was gone, I soon recovered myself again. He had stayed longer with me, but he happened to look out at the window, and see his sisters coming up the garden; so he took his leave, kissed me again, told me he was very serious, and I should hear more of him very quickly, and away he went, leaving me infinitely pleased, though surprised; and had there not been one misfortune in it, I had been in the right; but the mistake lay here, that Mrs Betty was in earnest, and the gentleman was not. me, and that he could not rest night or day till he had told me how he was in love with me; and if I was able to love him again, and would make him happy, I should be the saving of his life, and many such fine things. I said little to him again, but easily discovered I was a fool, and that I did not in the least perceive what he meant. Then he walked about the room, and taking me by the hand, I walked with him; and by and by, taking his advantage, he threw me down upon the bed, and kissed me there most violently; but to give him his due, offered no manner of rudeness to me, only kissed me a great while. After this he thought he had heard somebody come up stairs; so he got off from the bed, lifted me up, professing a great deal of love for me, but told me it was all an honest affection, and that he meant no ill to me; and with that he put five guineas into my hand, and went down stairs. I was more confounded with the money than I was before with the love, and began to be so elevated, that I scarce knew the ground! stood on. I am the more particular in this part, that if my story comes to be read by any innocent young body, they may learn from it to guard themselves against the mischiefs which attend an early knowledge of their own beauty. If a From this time my head run upon strange young woman once thinks herself handsome, she things, and I may truly say I was not myself, never doubts the truth of any man that tells her to have such a gentleman talk to me of being in he is in love with her; for if she believes herself love with me, and of my being such a charming || charming enough to captivate him, it is natural creature, as he told me I was. These were things to expect the effects of it. I knew not how to bear; my vanity was elevated to the last degree; it is true, I had my head full of pride, but knowing nothing of the wickedness of the times, I had not one thought of my own safety, or of my virtue about me; and had my young master offered it at first sight, he might have taken any liberty he thought fit with me; but he did not see his advantage, which was my happiness for that time. After this attack, it was not long but he found an opportunity to catch me again, and almost in the same posture; indeed, it had more of design in it on his part, though not on my part. It was thus the young ladies were all gone a-visiting with their mother; his brother was out of town; and as for his father, he had been in London for a week before. He had so well watched me, that he knew where I was, though I did not so much as know that he was in the house; and he briskly comes up stairs, and seeing me at work comes into the room to me directly, and began just as he did before, with taking me in his arms and kissing me for almost a quarter of an hour together. It was the youngest sister's chamber that I was in, and as there was nobody in the house but the maids below stairs, he was, it may be, the ruder in short, he began to be in earnest with me indeed; perhaps he found me a little too easy, for God knows, I made no resistance to him while he only held me in his arms and kissed me; indeed, I was too well pleased with it to resist him much. However, as it were, tired with that kind of work, we sat down, and there he talked with ine a great while; he said he was charmed with This young gentleman had fired his inclination as much as he had my vanity, and as if he had found that he had an opportunity, and was sorry he did not take hold of it, he comes up again in half an hour, or thereabouts, and falls to work with me again as before, only with a little less introduction. And first when he entered the room, he turned about and shut the door. "Mrs Betty," said he, "I fancied before somebody was coming up stairs, but it was not so; however," adds he, "if they find me in the room with you, they shan't catch me kissing you." I told him I did not know who should be coming up stairs, for I believed there was nobody in the house but the cook and the other maid, and they never came up those stairs. "Well, my dear," says he, "it is good, to be sure, however;" and so he sits down, and we began to talk; and now, though I was still all on fire with his first visit, and said little, he did, as it were, put words in my mouth, telling me how passionately he loved me, and that though he could not mention such a thing till he came to his estate, yet he was resolved to make me happy then, and himself too; that is to say, to marry me, and abundance of such fine things, which I, poor fool, did not understand the drift of, but acted as if there was no such thing as any kind of love but that which tended to matrimony; and if he had spoke of that, I had no room, as well as no power to have said no; but we were not come that length yet. We had not sat long, but he got up, and stopped my very breath with kisses, threw me upon the bed again; but then, being both well warmed, he went farther with me than decency permits me to mention, nor had it been in my power to have denied him at that moment, had he offered much more than he did. ing that he made more circumlocution than if he had known my thoughts he had occasion for, and the work appearing difficult to him he really made it so. However, though he took these freedoms with me, it did not go to that which they call the last But as the devil is an unwearied tempter, so he favour, which, to do him justice, he did not at- never fails to find opportunity for that wickedness tempt; and he made that self-denial of his a he invites to. It was one evening that I was in plea for all his freedoms with me upon other the garden with his two younger sisters and himoccasions after this. When this was over, he self, and all very innocently merry, when he found stayed but a little while, but he put almost a means to convey a note into my hand, by which handful of gold in my hand, and left me, making || he directed me to understand that he would toa thousand protestations of his passion for me, morrow desire me publicly to go of an errand for and of his loving me above all the women in the him into the town, and that I should see him world. somewhere by the way. It will not be strange if I now began to think, but alas! it was but very little solid reflection: I had a most unbounded stock of vanity and pride, and but a very little stock of virtue; I did indeed cast sometimes with myself what my young master aimed at, but thought of nothing but the fine words and the gold; whether he intended to marry me, or not to marry me, seemed a matter of no great consequence to me, nor did my thoughts so much as suggest to me the necessity of making any capitulation for myself, till he came to make a kind of formal proposal to me, as you shall hear presently. Accordingly after dinner he very gravely says to me, his sisters being all by, "Mrs Betty, I must ask a favour of you."-"What is that?" says his second sister. Nay, sister," says he, very gravely, "if you cannot spare Mrs Betty today, any other time will do.""Yes," they said, they could spare her well enough, and the sister begged pardon for asking, which she did of mere course, without any meaning. "Well, but, brother," says the eldest sister, "you must tell Mrs Betty what it is; if it be any private business that we must not hear, you may call her out; there she is.""Why, sister," says the gentleman, very gravely, "what do you mean? I only desire her to go into the High street (and then he tells them a long story of two fine neckcloths he had bid money for, and he wanted to have me go and make an errand to buy a neck to the turnover that he showed, to see if they would take my money for the neckcloths, to bid a shilling more, and haggle with them; and then he made more errands, and so continued to have such petty business to do, that I should be sure to stay a good while. Thus I gave up myself to a readiness of being ruined without the least concern, and am a fair inemento to all young women whose vanity pre-pulls out a turnover), to such a shop," and he vails over their virtue. Nothing was ever so stupid on both sides: had I acted as became me, and resisted as virtue and honour required, this gentleman had either desisted his attacks, finding ne room to expect the accomplishment of his design, or had made fair and honourable proposals of marriage; in which case, whoever had blamed him nobody could have blamed me. In short, if he had known me, and how easy the trifle he aimed at was to be had, he would have troubled When he had given me my errands, he told bis head no farther, but have given me four or them a long story of a visit he was going to make five guineas, and have lain with me the next time to a family they all knew, and where was to be he had come at me; on the other hand, if I had such and such gentlemen, and how merry they known his thoughts, and how hard he thought I|| were to be, and very formally asked his sisters to would be to be gained, I might have made my own go with him, and they as formally excused themterms with him; and if I had not capitulated for selves, because of company that they had notice an immediate marriage, I might for a mainte- was to come and visit them that afternoon, which nance till marriage, and might have had what I by the way he had contrived on purpose. would, for he was already rich to excess, besides what he had in expectation; but I had wholly abandoned all such thoughts as these, and was taken up only with the pride of my beauty, and of being beloved by such a gentleman; as for the gold I spent whole hours in looking upon it, I told the guineas over and over a thousand times a day; never poor vain creature was so wrapt up with every part of the story as I was, not considering what was before me, and how near my ruin was at the door; indeed, I think I rather wished for that ruin than studied to avoid it. He had scarce done speaking to them, and giving me my errand, but his man came up to tell him that Sir W- - H's coach stopped at the door; so he runs down and comes up again immediately. "Alas!" says he aloud, “there is all my mirth spoiled at once; Sir Whas sent his coach for me, and desires to speak with me upon some earnest business." It seems this Sir W was a gentleman who lived about three miles out of town, to whom he had spoken on purpose the day before, to lend him his chariot for a particular occasion, and had appointed it to call for him, as it did about three o'clock. In the meantime, however, I was cunning enough not to give the least room to any in the family to suspect me, or to imagine that I had Immediately he calls for his best wig, hat, and the least correspondence with him; I scarce ever sword, and ordering his man to go to the other looked towards him in public, or answered if he place to make his excuse (that was to say, he spoke to me, if anybody was near us; but for all made an excuse to send his man away), prepares that we had every now and then a little encoun- to go into the coach. As he was going, he stopter, where we had room for a word or two, and ped a while, and speaks mighty earnestly to me now and then a kiss, but no fair opportunity for about his business, and finds an opportunity to the mischief intended; and especially consider-say very softly to me, "Come away, my dear, as soon as ever you can." I said nothing, but made a curtsy, as if I had done so to what he said in public. In about a quarter of an hour I went out too. I had no dress other than before, except that I had a hood, a mask, fan, and a pair of gloves in my pocket, so that there was not the least suspicion in the house. He waited for me in the coach in a back lane, which he knew I must pass, and had directed the coachman whither to go, which was to a place called Mile-End, where lived a confident of his, where we went in, and where was all the convenience in the world to be as wicked as we pleased. work with me, and he finding me alone in the garden one evening, begins a story of the same kind to me, made good honest professions of being in love with me, and, in short, proposes fairly and honourably to marry me, and that before he made any other offer to me at all. I was now confounded and driven to such an extremity as the like was never known; at least not to me. I resisted the proposal with obstinacy, and now I began to arm myself with arguments: I laid before him the inequality of the match, the treatment I should meet with in the family, the ingratitude it would be to his good father and When we were together, he began to talk very mother, who had taken me into their house upon gravely to me, and tell me he did not bring me such generous principles, and when I was in such there to betray me; that his passion for me a low condition; and, in short, I said everything would not suffer him to abuse me; that he re- to dissuade him from his design that I could imasolved to marry me as soon as he came to his gine, except telling him the truth, which would estate; that in the meantime, if I would grant | indeed have put an end to it all, but that I durst his request, he would maintain me very honour- not think of mentioning. ably, and made me a thousand protestations of his sincerity and of his affection to me, and that he would never abandon me, and, as I may say, made a thousand more preambles than he need to have done. But here happened a circumstance that I did not expect indeed, which put me to my shifts; for this young gentleman, as he was plain and honest, so he pretended to nothing with me but what was so too; and knowing his own innocence, he was not so careful to make his having a kindness for Mrs Betty a secret in the house as his brother was; and though he did not let them know that he had talked to me about it, yet he said enough to let his sisters perceive he loved me, and his mother saw it too, which though they took no notice of it to me, yet they did to him, and immediately I found their carriage to me altered more than ever before. However, as he pressed me to speak, I told him I had no reason to question the sincerity of his love to me, after so many protestations. But, and there I stopped, as if I left him to guess at the rest. "But what, my dear?" says he; "I guess what you mean; what if you should be with child; is not that it? Why then," says he, "I will take care of you, and provide for you and the child too. and that you may see I am not in jest," says he, "here is an earnest I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the for you;" and with that he pulls out a silk purse, storm. It was easy, I say, to see that their carwith an hundred guineas in it, and gave it me;riage to me was altered, and that it grew worse "and I will give you such another," says he, 66 every year till I marry you." My colour came and went at the sight of the purse and with the fire of his proposal together; so that I could not say a word, and he easily perceived it; so, putting the purse into my bosom, I made no more resistance to him, but let him do 'ust what he pleased, and as often as he pleased; and thus I finished my own destruction at once, for from this day, being forsaken of my virtue and my modesty, I had nothing of value left to recommend me, either to God's blessing or man's assistance. But things did not end here; I went back to the town, did the business he publicly directed me to, and was at home before anybody thought me long. As for my gentleman, he stayed out, as he told me he would, till late at night, and there was not the least suspicion in the family, either on his account or on mine. We had after this frequent opportunities to repeat our crime, chiefly by his contrivance; especially at home, when his mother and the young ladies went abroad a-visiting, which he watched so narrowly as never to miss; knowing always beforehand when they went out, and then failed not to catch me all alone, and securely enough; so that we took our fill of our wicked pleasure for near half a year, and yet, which was the most to my satisfaction, I was not with child. But before this half year was expired, his younger brother, of whom I have made some mention in the beginning of the story, falls to and worse every day; till at last I got information among the servants that I should, in a very little while, be desired to remove. I was not alarmed at the news, having a full satisfaction that I should be otherwise provided for; and especially, considering that I had reason every day to expect I should be with child, and that then I should be obliged to remove without any pretence for it. After some time, the younger gentleman took an opportunity to tell me that the kindness he had for me had got vent in the family; he did not charge me with it, he said, for he knew well enough which way it came out; he told me his plain way of talking had been the occasion of it, for that he did not make his respect for me so much a secret as he might have done, and the reason was, that he was at a point; that if I would consent to have him, he would tell them all openly that he loved me, and that he intended to marry me; that it was true his father and mother might resent it, and be unkind, but that he was now in a way to live, being bred to the law, and he did not fear maintaining me, agreeable to what I should expect; and that, in short, as he believed I would not be ashamed of him, so he was resolved not to be ashamed of me, and that he scorned to be afraid to own me now, who he resolved to own after I was his wife, and therefore I had nothing to do but to give him my hand, and he would answer for all the rest. I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I repented heartily my easiness with the elder brother, not from any reflection of conscience, but from a view of the happiness I might have enjoyed, and had now made impossible; for though I had no great scruples of conscience (as I have said) to struggle with, yet I could not think of being a whore to one brother, and a wife to the other; but then it came into my thoughts, that the first brother had promised to make me his wife when he came to his estate; but I presently remembered what I had often thought of, that he had never spoken a word of having me for a wife after he had conquered me for a mistress; and indeed till now, though I said I thought of it often, yet it gave me no disturbance at all, for as he did not seem in the least to lessen his affection to me, so neither did he lessen his bounty, though he had the discretion himself to desire me not to lay out a penny of what he gave me in clothes, or to make the least show extraordinary, because it would necessarily give jealousy in the family, since everybody knew I could come at such things no manner of ordinary way, but by some private friendship, which they would presently have suspected. But I was now in a great strait, and really knew not what to do; the main difficulty was this, the younger brother not only laid close siege to me, but suffered it to be seen; he would come into his sister's room and his mother's room, and sit down and talk a thousand kind things of me, and to me, even before their faces, and when they were all there. This grew so public, that the whole house talked of it, and his mother reproved him for it, and their carriage to me appeared quite altered; in short, his mother had let fall some speeches, as if she intended to put me out of the family, that is, in English, to turn me out of doors. Now I was sure this could not be a secret to his brother, only, that he might not think, as indeed nobody else yet did, that the youngest brother had made any proposal to me about it; but as I easily could see that it would go farther, so I saw likewise there was an absolute necessity to speak of it to him, or that he would speak of it to me, and which to do first I knew not; that is, whether I should break it to him, or let it alone till he should break it to me. me, and something of such a nature that I could not conceal from him, and yet, that I could not tell how to tell him of it neither; that it was a thing that not only surprised me, but greatly perplexed me, and that I knew not what course to take, unless he would direct me. He told me with great tenderness, that let it be what it would I should not let it trouble me, for he would protect me from all the world. I then began at a distance, and told him I was afraid the ladies had got some secret information of our correspondence, for that it was easy to see that their conduct was very much changed towards me, and that now it was come to that pass, that they frequently found fault with me, and sometimes fell quite out with me, though I never gave them the least occasion; that whereas I used always to lie with the eldest sister, I was put to lie by myself, or with one of the maids; and that I had overheard them several times talking very unkindly about me; but that which confirmed it all was, that one of the servants had told me that she had heard I was to be turned out, and that it was not safe for the family that I should be any longer in the house. He smiled when he heard all this, and I asked him how he could make so light of it, when he must needs know, that if there was any discovery I was undone for ever, and that even it would hurt him, though not ruin him, as it would me; I upbraided him, that he was like all the rest of the sex, that when they had the character and honour of a woman at their mercy, oftentimes made it their jest, and at least looked upon it as a trifle, and counted the ruin of those they had had their will of as a thing of no value. He saw me warm and serious, and he changed his style immediately; he told me he was sorry should have such a thought of him; that he had never given me the least occasion for it, but had been as tender of my reputation as he could be of his own; that he was sure our correspondence had been managed with so much address, that not one creature in the family had so much as a suspicion of it; that if he smiled when I told him my thoughts, it was at the assurance he lately received, that our understanding one another was not so much as known or guessed at, and that when he had told me how much reason he had to be easy, I should smile as he did, for he was very certain it would give me a full satisfaction. Upon serious consideration, for indeed now I began to consider things very seriously, and never till now; I say upon serious consideration, I resolved to tell him of it first, and it was not long before I had an opportunity, for the very next day his brother went to London upon some business, and the family being out a-visiting, just" as it had happened before, and as indeed was often the case, he came according to his custom to spend an hour or two with Mrs Betty. When he came and had sat down a while, he easily perceived there was an alteration in my countenance, that I was not so free and pleasant with him as I used to be, and particularly that I had been a-crying; he was not long before he took notice of it, and asked me in very kind terms what was the matter, and if anything I would have put it off if I could, but it was not to be concealed, so after suffering many importunities to draw that out of me which I longed as much as possible to disclose, I told him that it was true something did trouble troubled me. "This is a mystery I cannot understand," says I, or how it should be to my satisfaction that I am to be turned out of doors; for if our correspondence is not discovered, I know not what else I have done to change the countenances of the whole family to me, or to have them treat me as they do now, who formerly used me with so much tenderness, as if I had been one of their own children." "Why, look you, child," says he, "that they are uneasy about you, that is true; but that they have the least suspicion of the case as it is, and as it respects you and I, is so far from being true, that they suspect my brother Robin, and, in short, they are fully persuaded he makes love to you. Nay, the fool has put it into their heads too himself, for he is continually bantering them about it |