I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm. It was easy, I
say, to see that their carriage to me was altered, and that it grew
worse 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 pretences 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 know 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, whom 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 eldest 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 made 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 know I could
come at such things no manner of ordinary way, but by some private
friendship, which they would presently have suspected.