The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Is not that it, Mrs. Betty?' I smiled and said nothing. 'Nay,' says

he, 'I think the effect has proved it to be love, for it seems the

doctor has been able to do you but little service; you mend very

slowly, they say. I doubt there's somewhat in it, Mrs. Betty; I doubt

you are sick of the incurables, and that is love.' I smiled and said,

'No, indeed, sir, that's none of my distemper.' We had a deal of such discourse, and sometimes others that signified as

little. By and by he asked me to sing them a song, at which I smiled,

and said my singing days were over. At last he asked me if he should

play upon his flute to me; his sister said she believe it would hurt

me, and that my head could not bear it. I bowed, and said, No, it

would not hurt me. 'And, pray, madam.' said I, 'do not hinder it; I

love the music of the flute very much.' Then his sister said, 'Well,

do, then, brother.' With that he pulled out the key of his closet.

'Dear sister,' says he, 'I am very lazy; do step to my closet and fetch

my flute; it lies in such a drawer,' naming a place where he was sure

it was not, that she might be a little while a-looking for it.

As soon as she was gone, he related the whole story to me of the

discourse his brother had about me, and of his pushing it at him, and

his concern about it, which was the reason of his contriving this visit

to me. I assured him I had never opened my mouth either to his brother

or to anybody else. I told him the dreadful exigence I was in; that my

love to him, and his offering to have me forget that affection and

remove it to another, had thrown me down; and that I had a thousand

times wished I might die rather than recover, and to have the same

circumstances to struggle with as I had before, and that his

backwardness to life had been the great reason of the slowness of my

recovering. I added that I foresaw that as soon as I was well, I must

quit the family, and that as for marrying his brother, I abhorred the

thoughts of it after what had been my case with him, and that he might

depend upon it I would never see his brother again upon that subject;

that if he would break all his vows and oaths and engagements with me,

be that between his conscience and his honour and himself; but he

should never be able to say that I, whom he had persuaded to call

myself his wife, and who had given him the liberty to use me as a wife,

was not as faithful to him as a wife ought to be, whatever he might be

to me.