He was sensibly moved with this; so he sat down again, and said a great
many kind things to me, to abate the excess of my passion, but still
urged the necessity of what he had proposed; all the while insisting,
that if I did refuse, he would notwithstanding provide for me; but
letting me plainly see that 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.