Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded

Should'st thou like this, creature? said she to me.--If your ladyship

think it not too great an honour for me, madam, said I. Yes, replied

she, but my ladyship does think it would be too great an honour.

Now I think of it, said he, this must not be neither; for, without you'd

give her the hand in your own chariot, my wife would be thought your

woman, and that must not be. Why, that would, may be, said she, be the

only inducement for me to bear her near me, in my chariot.--But, how

then?--Why then, when we came home, we'd get Lord Davers to come to us,

and stay a month or two. And what if he was to come?--Why I would have you, as I know you have

a good fancy, give Pamela your judgment on some patterns I expect from

London, for clothes.--Provoking wretch! said she; now I wish I may keep

my hands to myself. I don't say it to provoke you, said he, nor ought it

to do so. But when I tell you I am married, is it not a consequence that

we must have new clothes?

Hast thou any more of these obliging things to say to me, friend? said

she. I will make you a present, returned he, worth your acceptance,

if you will grace us with your company at church, when we make our

appearance.--Take that, said she, if I die for it, wretch that thou art!

and was going to hit him a great slap; but he held her hand. Her kinsman

said, Dear aunt, I wonder at you! Why, all these are things of course.

I begged leave to withdraw; and, as I went out, my good master said,

There's a person! There's a shape! There's a sweetness! O, Lady Davers!

were you a man, you would doat on her, as I do. Yes, said the naughty

lady, so I should, for my harlot, but not for my wife. I turned, on

this, and said, Indeed your ladyship is cruel; and well may gentlemen

take liberties, when ladies of honour say such things! And I wept, and

added, Your ladyship's inference, if your good brother was not the most

generous of men, would make me very unhappy.

No fear, wench; no fear, said she; thou'lt hold him as long as any body

can, I see that!--Poor Sally Godfrey never had half the interest in him,

I'll assure you. Stay, my Pamela, said he, in a passion; stay, when I bid you. You

have now heard two vile charges upon me!--I love you with such a true

affection, that I ought to say something before this malicious accuser,

that you may not think your consummate virtue linked to so black a

villain. Her nephew seemed uneasy, and blamed her much; and I came back, but

trembled as I stood; and he set me down, and said, taking my hand, I

have been accused, my dear, as a dueller, and now as a profligate, in

another sense; and there was a time I should not have received these

imputations with so much concern as I now do, when I would wish, by

degrees, by a conformity of my manners to your virtue, to shew every one

the force your example has upon me. But this briefly is the case of the

first. I had a friend, who had been basely attempted to be assassinated by

bravoes, hired by a man of title in Italy, who, like many other persons

of title, had no honour; and, at Padua, I had the fortune to disarm

one of these bravoes in my friend's defence, and made him confess his

employer; and him, I own, I challenged. At Sienna we met, and he died

in a month after, of a fever; but, I hope, not occasioned by the slight

wounds he had received from me; though I was obliged to leave Italy

upon it, sooner than I intended, because of his numerous relations, who

looked upon me as the cause of his death; though I pacified them by a

letter I wrote them from Inspruck, acquainting them with the baseness of

the deceased: and they followed me not to Munich, as they intended.