upper;" so he rose
up, gave me another kiss, and took his horse for London.

This kind of discourse had fired my blood, I confess, and I knew not
what to think of it. It was plain now that he intended to lie with me,
but how he would reconcile it to a legal thing, like a marriage, that I
could not imagine. We had both of us used Amy with so much intimacy, and
trusted her with everything, having such unexampled instances of her
fidelity, that he made no scruple to kiss me and say all these things to
me before her; nor had he cared one farthing, if I would have let him
lie with me, to have had Amy there too all night. When he was gone,
"Well, Amy," says I, "what will all this come to now? I am all in a
sweat at him." "Come to, madam?" says Amy. "I see what it will come to;
I must put you to bed to-night together." "Why, you would not be so
impudent, you jade you," says I, "would you?" "Yes, I would," says she,
"with all my heart, and think you both as honest as ever you were in
your lives."

"What ails the slut to talk so?" said I. "Honest! How can it be honest?"
"Why, I'll tell you, madam," says Amy; "I sounded it as soon as I heard
him speak, and it is very true too; he calls you widow, and such indeed
you are; for, as my master has left you so many years, he is dead, to be
sure; at least he is dead to you; he is no husband. You are, and ought
to be, free to marry who you will; and his wife being gone from him, and
refusing to lie with him, then he is a single man again as much as ever;
and though you cannot bring the laws of the land to join you together,
yet, one refusing to do the office of a wife, and the other of a
husband, you may certainly take one another fairly."

"Nay, Amy," says I, "if I could take him fairly, you may be sure I'd
take him above all the men in the world; it turned the very heart within
me when I heard him say he loved me. How could it be otherwise, when you
know what a condition I was in before, despised and trampled on by all
the world? I could have took him in my arms and kissed him as freely as
he did me, if it had not been for shame."

"Ay, and all the rest too," says Amy, "at the first word. I don't see
how you can think of denying him anything. Has he not brought you out of
the devil's clutches, brought you out of the blackest misery that ever
poor lady was reduced to? Can a woman deny such a man anything?"

"Nay, I don't know what to do, Amy," says I. "I hope he won't desire
anythi