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you have had with me, and the many hours' pains you have
taken to persuade me to believe myself an honest woman;
that I was your wife intentionally, though not in the eyes of
the world, and that it was as effectual a marriage that had
passed between us as is we had been publicly wedded by the
parson of the parish. You know and cannot but remember
that these have been your own words to me.'

I found this was a little too close upon him, but I made it up
in what follows. He stood stock-still for a while and said
nothing, and I went on thus: 'You cannot,' says I, 'without
the highest injustice, believe that I yielded upon all these
persuasions without a love not to be questioned, not to be
shaken again by anything that could happen afterward. If you
have such dishonourable thoughts of me, I must ask you what
foundation in any of my behaviour have I given for such a
suggestion?

'If, then, I have yielded to the importunities of my affection,
and if I have been persuaded to believe that I am really, and
in the essence of the thing, your wife, shall I now give the lie
to all those arguments and call myself your whore, or mistress,
which is the same thing? And will you transfer me to your
brother? Can you transfer my affection? Can you bid me
cease loving you, and bid me love him? It is in my power,
think you, to make such a change at demand? No, sir,' said I,
'depend upon it 'tis impossible, and whatever the change of
your side may be, I will ever be true; and I had much rather,
since it is come that unhappy length, be your whore than your
brother's wife.'

He appeared pleased and touched with the impression of this
last discourse, and told me that he stood where he did before;
that he had not been unfaithful to me in any one promise he
had ever made yet, but that there were so many terrible things
presented themselves to his view in the affair before me, and
that on my account in particular, that he had thought of the
other as a remedy so effectual as nothing could come up to it.
That he thought this would not be entire parting us, but we
might love as friends all our days, and perhaps with more
satisfaction than we should in the station we were now in,
as things might happen; that he durst say, I could not apprehend
anything from him as to betraying a secret, which could not
but be the destruction of us both, if it came out; that he had
but one question to ask of me that could lie in the way of it,
and if that question was answered in the negative, he could
not but think still it was the only step I could take.

I guessed at his question presently, namely, whether I was

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