The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

You may easily believe, that when the plot was thus, as they thought,

broke out, and that every one thought they knew how things were

carried, it was not so difficult or so dangerous for the elder brother,

whom nobody suspected of anything, to have a freer access to me than

before; nay, the mother, which was just as he wished, proposed it to

him to talk with Mrs. Betty. 'For it may be, son,' said she, 'you may

see farther into the thing than I, and see if you think she has been so

positive as Robin says she has been, or no.' This was as well as he

could wish, and he, as it were, yielding to talk with me at his

mother's request, she brought me to him into her own chamber, told me

her son had some business with me at her request, and desired me to be

very sincere with him, and then she left us together, and he went and

shut the door after her.

He came back to me and took me in his arms, and kissed me very

tenderly; but told me he had a long discourse to hold with me, and it

was not come to that crisis, that I should make myself happy or

miserable as long as I lived; that the thing was now gone so far, that

if I could not comply with his desire, we would both be ruined. Then

he told the whole story between Robin, as he called him, and his mother

and sisters and himself, as it is above. 'And now, dear child,' says

he, 'consider what it will be to marry a gentleman of a good family, in

good circumstances, and with the consent of the whole house, and to

enjoy all that he world can give you; and what, on the other hand, to

be sunk into the dark circumstances of a woman that has lost her

reputation; and that though I shall be a private friend to you while I

live, yet as I shall be suspected always, so you will be afraid to see

me, and I shall be afraid to own you.' He gave me no time to reply, but went on with me thus: 'What has

happened between us, child, so long as we both agree to do so, may be

buried and forgotten. I shall always be your sincere friend, without

any inclination to nearer intimacy, when you become my sister; and we

shall have all the honest part of conversation without any reproaches

between us of having done amiss. I beg of you to consider it, and to

not stand in the way of your own safety and prosperity; and to satisfy

you that I am sincere,' added he, 'I here offer you #500 in money, to

make you some amends for the freedoms I have taken with you, which we

shall look upon as some of the follies of our lives, which 'tis hoped

we may repent of.' He spoke this in so much more moving terms than it is possible for me

to express, and with so much greater force of argument than I can

repeat, that I only recommend it to those who read the story, to

suppose, that as he held me above an hour and a half in that discourse,

so he answered all my objections, and fortified his discourse with all

the arguments that human wit and art could devise.