e must say no more of it to
me, he added with an unusual coldness, that he did not know anything
else we had to talk of; and so he rose up to take his leave. I rose up
too, as if with the same indifference; but when he came to give me as
it were a parting kiss, I burst out into such a passion of crying, that
though I would have spoke, I could not, and only pressing his hand,
seemed to give him the adieu, but cried vehemently.

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.