into the water: at which his
mistress started up, and at the next instant he jumped across the
fountain and met her in an embrace. She, half recovering from her fright,
said, in the most charming voice imaginable, and with a tone of
complaint, "I thought how well you would drown yourself. No, no, you
won't drown yourself till you have taken your leave of Susan Holiday."
The huntsman, with a tenderness that spoke the most passionate love, and
with his cheek close to hers, whispered the softest vows of fidelity in
her ear, and cried, "Don't, my dear, believe a word Kate Willow says; she
is spiteful, and makes stories because she loves to hear me talk to
herself for your sake." "Look you there," quoth Sir Roger, "do you see
there, all mischief comes from confidants! But let us not interrupt them;
the maid is honest, and the man dares not be otherwise, for he knows I
loved her father: I will interpose in this matter, and hasten the
wedding. Kate Willow is a witty mischievous wench in the neighbourhood,
who was a beauty, and makes me hope I shall see the perverse widow in her
condition. She was so flippant with her answers to all the honest fellows
that came near her, and so very vain of her beauty, that she has valued
herself upon her charms till they are ceased. She therefore now makes it
her business to prevent other young women from being more discreet than
she was herself: however, the saucy thing said the other day well
enough, 'Sir Roger and I must make a match, for we are both despised by
those we loved.' The hussy has a great deal of power wherever she comes,
and has her share of cunning.

"However, when I reflect upon this woman, I do not know whether in the
main I am the worse for having loved her: whenever she is recalled to my
imagination my youth returns, and I feel a forgotten warmth in my veins.
This affliction in my life has streaked all my conduct with a softness,
of which I should otherwise have been incapable. It is, perhaps, to this
dear image in my heart owing that I am apt to relent, that I easily
forgive, and that many desirable things are grown into my temper, which I
should not have arrived at by better motives than the thought of being
one day hers. I am pretty well satisfied such a passion as I have had is
never well cured; and, between you and me, I am often apt to imagine it
has had some whimsical[129] effect upon my brain: for I frequently find,
that in my most serious discourse I let fall some