happened; you shall always have my respect, and my sincere
affection, only then it shall be honest, and perfectly just to my
brother; you shall be my dear sister, as now you are my dear----' and
there he stopped.

'Your dear whore,' says I, 'you would have said if you had gone on, and
you might as well have said it; but I understand you. However, I
desire you to remember the long discourses you have had with me, and
the many hours' pains you have taken to persuade me to believe myself
an honest woman; that I was your wife intentionally, though not in the
eyes of the world, and that it was as effectual a marriage that had
passed between us as is we had been publicly wedded by the parson of
the parish. You know and cannot but remember that these have been your
own words to me.'

I found this was a little too close upon him, but I made it up in what
follows. He stood stock-still for a while and said nothing, and I went
on thus: 'You cannot,' says I, 'without the highest injustice, believe
that I yielded upon all these persuasions without a love not to be
questioned, not to be shaken again by anything that could happen
afterward. If you have such dishonourable thoughts of me, I must ask
you what foundation in any of my behaviour have I given for such a
suggestion?

'If, then, I have yielded to the importunities of my affection, and if
I have been persuaded to believe that I am really, and in the essence
of the thing, your wife, shall I now give the lie to all those
arguments and call myself your whore, or mistress, which is the same
thing? And will you transfer me to your brother? Can you transfer my
affection? Can you bid me cease loving you, and bid me love him? It
is in my power, think you, to make such a change at demand? No, sir,'
said I, 'depend upon it 'tis impossible, and whatever the change of
your side may be, I will ever be true; and I had much rather, since it
is come that unhappy length, be your whore than your brother's wife.'

He appeared pleased and touched with the impression of this last
discourse, and told me that he stood where he did before; that he had
not been unfaithful to me in any one promise he had ever made yet, but
that there were so many terrible things presented themselves to his
view in the affair before me, and that on my account in particular,
that he had thought of the other as a remedy so effectual as nothing
could come up to it. That he thought this would not be entire pa