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he would decline me in the main point--nay, even as a mistress;
making it a point of honour not to lie with the woman that,
for aught he knew, might come to be his brother's wife.

The bare loss of him as a gallant was not so much my affliction
as the loss of his person, whom indeed I loved to distraction;
and the loss of all the expectations I had, and which I always
had built my hopes upon, of having him one day for my
husband. These things oppressed my mind so much, that, in
short, I fell very ill; the agonies of my mind, in a word, threw
me into a high fever, and long it was, that none in the family
expected my life.

I was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious and
light-headed; but nothing lay so near me as the fear that, when
I was light-headed, I should say something or other to his
prejudice. I was distressed in my mind also to see him, and
so he was to see me, for he really loved me most passionately;
but it could not be; there was not the least room to desire it
on one side or other, or so much as to make it decent.

It was near five weeks that I kept my bed and though the
violence of my fever abated in three weeks, yet it several
times returned; and the physicians said two or three times,
they could do no more for me, but that they must leave nature
and the distemper to fight it out, only strengthening the first
with cordials to maintain the struggle. After the end of five
weeks I grew better, but was so weak, so altered, so melancholy,
and recovered so slowly, that they physicians apprehended I
should go into a consumption; and which vexed me most,
they gave it as their opinion that my mind was oppressed,
that something troubled me, and, in short, that I was in love.
Upon this, the whole house was set upon me to examine me,
and to press me to tell whether I was in love or not, and with
whom; but as I well might, I denied my being in love at all.

They had on this occasion a squabble one day about me at
table, that had like to have put the whole family in an uproar,
and for some time did so. They happened to be all at table but
the father; as for me, I was ill, and in my chamber. At the
beginning of the talk, which was just as they had finished
their dinner, the old gentlewoman, who had sent me somewhat
to eat, called her maid to go up and ask me if I would have any
more; but the maid brought down word I had not eaten half
what she had sent me already.

'Alas, says the old lady, 'that poor girl! I am afraid she will
never be well.'

'Well!' says the elder brother, 'how should Mrs. Betty be well?
They say she is in love.

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