ng of that kind of me; I hope he won't attempt it. If he does, I
know not what to say to him."

"Not ask you!" says Amy. "Depend upon it, he will ask you, and you will
grant it too. I am sure my mistress is no fool. Come, pray, madam, let
me go air you a clean shift; don't let him find you in foul linen the
wedding-night."

"But that I know you to be a very honest girl, Amy," says I, "you would
make me abhor you. Why, you argue for the devil, as if you were one of
his privy councillors."

"It's no matter for that, madam, I say nothing but what I think. You own
you love this gentleman, and he has given you sufficient testimony of
his affection to you; your conditions are alike unhappy, and he is of
opinion that he may take another woman, his first wife having broke her
honour, and living from him; and that though the laws of the land will
not allow him to marry formally, yet that he may take another woman into
his arms, provided he keeps true to the other woman as a wife; nay, he
says it is usual to do so, and allowed by the custom of the place, in
several countries abroad. And, I must own, I am of the same mind; else
it is in the power of a whore, after she has jilted and abandoned her
husband, to confine him from the pleasure as well as convenience of a
woman all the days of his life, which would be very unreasonable, and,
as times go, not tolerable to all people; and the like on your side,
madam."

Had I now had my senses about me, and had my reason not been overcome by
the powerful attraction of so kind, so beneficent a friend; had I
consulted conscience and virtue, I should have repelled this Amy,
however faithful and honest to me in other things, as a viper and engine
of the devil. I ought to have remembered that neither he or I, either
by the laws of God or man, could come together upon any other terms
than that of notorious adultery. The ignorant jade's argument, that he
had brought me out of the hands of the devil, by which she meant the
devil of poverty and distress, should have been a powerful motive to me
not to plunge myself into the jaws of hell, and into the power of the
real devil, in recompense for that deliverance. I should have looked
upon all the good this man had done for me to have been the particular
work of the goodness of Heaven, and that goodness should have moved me
to a return of duty and humble obedience. I should have received the
mercy thankfully, and applied it soberly, to the praise a