greebly to which
notion he had ventured to approach, and finding me without sign of life,
and still perplexed as he was what to think of the adventure, he took
me in his arms at all hazards, and carried me into the summer-house, of
which he observed the door open: there he laid me down on the couch, and
tried, as he protested in good faith, by several means to bring me to
myself again, till fired, as he said, beyond all bearing by the sight
and touch of several parts of me, which were unguardedly exposed to him,
he could no longer govern his passion; and the less, as he was not quite
sure that his first idea of this swoon being a feint, was not the very
truth of the case; seduced then by this flattering notion, and overcome
by the present, as he styled them, super-human temptations, combined
with the solitude and seeming security of the attempt, he was not enough
his own master not to make it. Leaving me then just only whilst he
fastened the door, he returned with redoubled eagerness to his prey:
when, finding me still entranced, he ventured to place me as he pleased,
whilst I felt, no more than the dead, what he was about, till the pain
he put me to roused me just in time enough to be witness of a triumph I
was not able to defeat, and now scarce regretted: for as he talked,
the tone of his voice sounded, methought, so sweetly in my ears, the
sensible nearness of so new and interesting an object to me, wrought so
powerfully upon me, that, in the rising perception of things in a new
and pleasing light, I lost all sense of the past injury. The young
gentleman soon discerned the symptoms of a reconciliation in my softened
looks, and hastening to receive the seal of it from my lips, pressed
them tenderly to pass his pardon in the return of a kiss so melting
fiery, that the impression of it being carried to my heart, and thence
to my new discovered sphere of Venus, I was melted into a softness
that could refuse him nothing. When now he managed his caresses and
endearments so artfully, as to insinuate the most soothing consolations
for the past pain and the most pleasing expectations of future pleasure,
but whilst mere modesty kept my eyes from seeing his and rather declined
them, I had a glimpse of that instrument of mischief which was now,
obviously even to me, who had scarce had snatches of a comparative
observation of it, resuming its capacity to renew it, and grew greatly
alarming with its increase of size, as he bore it n