The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

He was sensibly moved with this; so he sat down again, and said a great

many kind things to me, to abate the excess of my passion, but still

urged the necessity of what he had proposed; all the while insisting,

that if I did refuse, he would notwithstanding provide for me; but

letting me plainly see that he would decline me in the main point--nay,

even as a mistress; making it a point of honour not to lie with the

woman that, for aught he knew, might come to be his brother's wife.

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

light-headed; but nothing lay so near me as the fear that, when I was

light-headed, 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 they 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.