Is not that it, Mrs. Betty?' I smiled and said nothing. 'Nay,' says
he, 'I think the effect has proved it to be love, for it seems the
doctor has been able to do you but little service; you mend very
slowly, they say. I doubt there's somewhat in it, Mrs. Betty; I doubt
you are sick of the incurables, and that is love.' I smiled and said,
'No, indeed, sir, that's none of my distemper.' We had a deal of such discourse, and sometimes others that signified as
little. By and by he asked me to sing them a song, at which I smiled,
and said my singing days were over. At last he asked me if he should
play upon his flute to me; his sister said she believe it would hurt
me, and that my head could not bear it. I bowed, and said, No, it
would not hurt me. 'And, pray, madam.' said I, 'do not hinder it; I
love the music of the flute very much.' Then his sister said, 'Well,
do, then, brother.' With that he pulled out the key of his closet.
'Dear sister,' says he, 'I am very lazy; do step to my closet and fetch
my flute; it lies in such a drawer,' naming a place where he was sure
it was not, that she might be a little while a-looking for it.
As soon as she was gone, he related the whole story to me of the
discourse his brother had about me, and of his pushing it at him, and
his concern about it, which was the reason of his contriving this visit
to me. I assured him I had never opened my mouth either to his brother
or to anybody else. I told him the dreadful exigence I was in; that my
love to him, and his offering to have me forget that affection and
remove it to another, had thrown me down; and that I had a thousand
times wished I might die rather than recover, and to have the same
circumstances to struggle with as I had before, and that his
backwardness to life had been the great reason of the slowness of my
recovering. I added that I foresaw that as soon as I was well, I must
quit the family, and that as for marrying his brother, I abhorred the
thoughts of it after what had been my case with him, and that he might
depend upon it I would never see his brother again upon that subject;
that if he would break all his vows and oaths and engagements with me,
be that between his conscience and his honour and himself; but he
should never be able to say that I, whom he had persuaded to call
myself his wife, and who had given him the liberty to use me as a wife,
was not as faithful to him as a wife ought to be, whatever he might be
to me.