The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm. It was easy, I

say, to see that their carriage to me was altered, and that it grew

worse and worse every day; till at last I got information among the

servants that I should, in a very little while, be desired to remove.

I was not alarmed at the news, having a full satisfaction that I should

be otherwise provided for; and especially considering that I had reason

every day to expect I should be with child, and that then I should be

obliged to remove without any pretences for it.

After some time the younger gentleman took an opportunity to tell me

that the kindness he had for me had got vent in the family. He did not

charge me with it, he said, for he know well enough which way it came

out. He told me his plain way of talking had been the occasion of it,

for that he did not make his respect for me so much a secret as he

might have done, and the reason was, that he was at a point, that if I

would consent to have him, he would tell them all openly that he loved

me, and that he intended to marry me; that it was true his father and

mother might resent it, and be unkind, but that he was now in a way to

live, being bred to the law, and he did not fear maintaining me

agreeable to what I should expect; and that, in short, as he believed I

would not be ashamed of him, so he was resolved not to be ashamed of

me, and that he scorned to be afraid to own me now, whom he resolved to

own after I was his wife, and therefore I had nothing to do but to give

him my hand, and he would answer for all the rest.

I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I repented heartily

my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any reflection of

conscience, but from a view of the happiness I might have enjoyed, and

had now made impossible; for though I had no great scruples of

conscience, as I have said, to struggle with, yet I could not think of

being a whore to one brother and a wife to the other. But then it came

into my thoughts that the first brother had promised to made me his

wife when he came to his estate; but I presently remembered what I had

often thought of, that he had never spoken a word of having me for a

wife after he had conquered me for a mistress; and indeed, till now,

though I said I thought of it often, yet it gave me no disturbance at

all, for as he did not seem in the least to lessen his affection to me,

so neither did he lessen his bounty, though he had the discretion

himself to desire me not to lay out a penny of what he gave me in

clothes, or to make the least show extraordinary, because it would

necessarily give jealousy in the family, since everybody know I could

come at such things no manner of ordinary way, but by some private

friendship, which they would presently have suspected.