Should'st thou like this, creature? said she to me.--If your ladyship
think it not too great an honour for me, madam, said I. Yes, replied
she, but my ladyship does think it would be too great an honour.
Now I think of it, said he, this must not be neither; for, without you'd
give her the hand in your own chariot, my wife would be thought your
woman, and that must not be. Why, that would, may be, said she, be the
only inducement for me to bear her near me, in my chariot.--But, how
then?--Why then, when we came home, we'd get Lord Davers to come to us,
and stay a month or two. And what if he was to come?--Why I would have you, as I know you have
a good fancy, give Pamela your judgment on some patterns I expect from
London, for clothes.--Provoking wretch! said she; now I wish I may keep
my hands to myself. I don't say it to provoke you, said he, nor ought it
to do so. But when I tell you I am married, is it not a consequence that
we must have new clothes?
Hast thou any more of these obliging things to say to me, friend? said
she. I will make you a present, returned he, worth your acceptance,
if you will grace us with your company at church, when we make our
appearance.--Take that, said she, if I die for it, wretch that thou art!
and was going to hit him a great slap; but he held her hand. Her kinsman
said, Dear aunt, I wonder at you! Why, all these are things of course.
I begged leave to withdraw; and, as I went out, my good master said,
There's a person! There's a shape! There's a sweetness! O, Lady Davers!
were you a man, you would doat on her, as I do. Yes, said the naughty
lady, so I should, for my harlot, but not for my wife. I turned, on
this, and said, Indeed your ladyship is cruel; and well may gentlemen
take liberties, when ladies of honour say such things! And I wept, and
added, Your ladyship's inference, if your good brother was not the most
generous of men, would make me very unhappy.
No fear, wench; no fear, said she; thou'lt hold him as long as any body
can, I see that!--Poor Sally Godfrey never had half the interest in him,
I'll assure you. Stay, my Pamela, said he, in a passion; stay, when I bid you. You
have now heard two vile charges upon me!--I love you with such a true
affection, that I ought to say something before this malicious accuser,
that you may not think your consummate virtue linked to so black a
villain. Her nephew seemed uneasy, and blamed her much; and I came back, but
trembled as I stood; and he set me down, and said, taking my hand, I
have been accused, my dear, as a dueller, and now as a profligate, in
another sense; and there was a time I should not have received these
imputations with so much concern as I now do, when I would wish, by
degrees, by a conformity of my manners to your virtue, to shew every one
the force your example has upon me. But this briefly is the case of the
first. I had a friend, who had been basely attempted to be assassinated by
bravoes, hired by a man of title in Italy, who, like many other persons
of title, had no honour; and, at Padua, I had the fortune to disarm
one of these bravoes in my friend's defence, and made him confess his
employer; and him, I own, I challenged. At Sienna we met, and he died
in a month after, of a fever; but, I hope, not occasioned by the slight
wounds he had received from me; though I was obliged to leave Italy
upon it, sooner than I intended, because of his numerous relations, who
looked upon me as the cause of his death; though I pacified them by a
letter I wrote them from Inspruck, acquainting them with the baseness of
the deceased: and they followed me not to Munich, as they intended.