at my hand. He had in one sense saved my
life, but he had saved that life from ruin in a most remarkable manner.
He loved me even to distraction, and had come from Paris to Rotterdam on
purpose to seek me. He had offered me marriage even after I was with
child by him, and had offered to quit all his pretensions to my estate,
and give it up to my own management, having a plentiful estate of his
own. Here I might have settled myself out of the reach even of disaster
itself; his estate and mine would have purchased even then above two
thousand pounds a year, and I might have lived like a queen--nay, far
more happy than a queen; and, which was above all, I had now an
opportunity to have quitted a life of crime and debauchery, which I had
been given up to for several years, and to have sat down quiet in plenty
and honour, and to have set myself apart to the great work which I have
since seen so much necessity of and occasion for--I mean that of
repentance.
But my measure of wickedness was not yet full. I continued obstinate
against matrimony, and yet I could not bear the thoughts of his going
away neither. As to the child, I was not very anxious about it. I told
him I would promise him it should never come to him to upbraid him with
its being illegitimate; that if it was a boy, I would breed it up like
the son of a gentleman, and use it well for his sake; and after a little
more such talk as this, and seeing him resolved to go, I retired, but
could not help letting him see the tears run down my cheeks. He came to
me and kissed me, entreated me, conjured me by the kindness he had shown
me in my distress, by the justice he had done me in my bills and money
affairs, by the respect which made him refuse a thousand pistoles from
me for his expenses with that traitor the Jew, by the pledge of our
misfortunes--so he called it--which I carried with me, and by all that
the sincerest affection could propose to do, that I would not drive him
away.
But it would not do. I was stupid and senseless, deaf to all his
importunities, and continued so to the last. So we parted, only desiring
me to promise that I would write him word when I was delivered, and how
he might give me an answer; and this I engaged my word I would do. And
upon his desiring to be informed which way I intended to dispose of
myself, I told him I resolved to go directly to England, and to London,
where I proposed to lie in; but since he resolved to leave me, I told
hi
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