orn; must bear the eternal reproach of what it is not
guilty of; must be branded from its cradle with a mark of infamy, be
loaded with the crimes and follies of its parents, and suffer for sins
that it never committed. This I take to be very hard, and, indeed, cruel
to the poor infant not yet born, who you cannot think of with any
patience, if you have the common affection of a mother, and not do that
for it which should at once place it on a level with the rest of the
world, and not leave it to curse its parents for what also we ought to
be ashamed of. I cannot, therefore," says he, "but beg and entreat you,
as you are a Christian and a mother, not to let the innocent lamb you go
with be ruined before it is born, and leave it to curse and reproach us
hereafter for what may be so easily avoided.

"Then, dear madam," said he, with a world of tenderness (and I thought I
saw tears in his eyes), "allow me to repeat it, that I am a Christian,
and consequently I do not allow what I have rashly, and without due
consideration, done; I say, I do not approve of it as lawful, and
therefore, though I did, with the view I have mentioned, one
unjustifiable action, I cannot say that I could satisfy myself to live
in a continual practice of what in judgment we must both condemn; and
though I love you above all the women in the world, and have done enough
to convince you of it by resolving to marry you after what has passed
between us, and by offering to quit all pretensions to any part of your
estate, so that I should, as it were, take a wife after I had lain with
her, and without a farthing portion, which, as my circumstances are, I
need not do; I say, notwithstanding my affection to you, which is
inexpressible, yet I cannot give up soul as well as body, the interest
of this world and the hopes of another; and you cannot call this my
disrespect to you."

If ever any man in the world was truly valuable for the strictest
honesty of intention, this was the man; and if ever woman in her senses
rejected a man of merit on so trivial and frivolous a pretence, I was
the woman; but surely it was the most preposterous thing that ever woman
did.

He would have taken me as a wife, but would not entertain me as a whore.
Was ever woman angry with any gentleman on that head? And was ever woman
so stupid to choose to be a whore, where she might have been an honest
wife? But infatuations are next to being possessed of the devil. I was
inflexible, a