The bare loss of him as a gallant was not so much my affliction as the loss of his person, whom indeed I loved to distraction; and the loss of all the expectations I had, and which I always had built my hopes upon, of having him one day for my husband. These things oppressed my mind so much, that, in short, I fell very ill; the agonies of my mind, in a word, threw me into a high fever, and long it was, that none in the family expected my life.
I was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious and lightheaded; but nothing lay so near me as the fear that, when I was lightheaded, I should say something or other to his prejudice. I was distressed in my mind also to see him, and so he was to see me, for he really loved me most passionately; but it could not be; there was not the least room to desire it on one side or other, or so much as to make it decent.
It was near five weeks that I kept my bed and though the violence of my fever abated in three weeks, yet it several times returned; and the physicians said two or three times, they could do no more for me, but that they must leave nature and the distemper to fight it out, only strengthening the first with cordials to maintain the struggle. After the end of five weeks I grew better, but was so weak, so altered, so melancholy, and recovered so slowly, that the physicians apprehended I should go into a consumption; and which vexed me most, they gave it as their opinion that my mind was oppressed, that something troubled me, and, in short, that I was in love. Upon this, the whole house was set upon me to examine me, and to press me to tell whether I was in love or not, and with whom; but as I well might, I denied my being in love at all.
They had on this occasion a squabble one day about me at table, that had like to have put the whole family in an uproar, and for some time did so. They happened to be all at table but the father; as for me, I was ill, and in my chamber. At the beginning of the talk, which was just as they had finished their dinner, the old gentlewoman, who had sent me somewhat to eat, called her maid to go up and ask me if I would have any more; but the maid brought down word I had not eaten half what she had sent me already.
“Alas,” says the old lady, “that poor girl! I am afraid she will never be well.”
“Well!” says the elder brother, “how should Mrs. Betty be well? They say she is in love.”
“I believe nothing of it,” says the old gentlewoman.
“I don’t know,” says the eldest sister, “what to say to it; they have made such a rout about her being so handsome, and so charming, and I know not what, and that in her hearing too, that has turned the creature’s head, I believe, and who knows what possessions may follow such doings? For my part, I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Why, sister, you must acknowledge she is very handsome,” says the elder brother.
“Ay, and a great deal handsomer than you, sister,” says Robin, “and that’s your mortification.”
“Well, well, that is not the question,” says his sister; “that girl is well enough, and she knows it well enough; she need not be told of it to make her vain.”
“We are not talking of her being vain,” says the elder brother, “but of her being in love; it may be she is in love with herself; it seems my sisters think so.”
“I would she was in love with me,” says Robin; “I’d quickly put her out of her pain.”
“What d’ye mean by that, son,” says the old lady; “how can you talk so?”
“Why, madam,” says Robin, again, very honestly, “do you think I’d let the poor girl die for love, and of one that is near at hand to be had, too?”
“Fie, brother!” says the second sister, “how can you talk so? Would you take a creature that has not a groat in the world?”
“Prithee, child,” says Robin, “beauty’s a portion, and good-humour with it is a double portion; I wish thou hadst half her stock of both for thy portion.” So there was her mouth stopped.
“I find,” says the eldest sister, “if Betty is not in love, my brother is. I wonder he has not broke his mind to Betty; I warrant she won’t say No.”
“They that yield when they’re asked,” says Robin, “are one step before them that were never asked to yield, sister, and two steps before them that yield before they are asked; and that’s an answer to you, sister.”
This fired the sister, and she flew into a passion, and said, things were come to that pass that it was time the wench, meaning me, was out of the family; and but that she was not fit to be turned out, she hoped her father and mother would consider of it as soon as she could be removed.
Robin replied, that was business for the master and mistress of the family, who where not to be taught by one that had so little judgment as his eldest sister.
It ran up a great deal farther; the sister scolded, Robin rallied and bantered, but poor Betty lost ground by it extremely in the family. I heard of it, and I cried heartily, and the old lady came up to me, somebody having told her that I was so much concerned about it. I complained to her, that it was very hard the doctors should pass such a censure upon me, for which they had no ground;
