me upon the subject of my wealth.
"Ignorant creature!" said I to myself, considering him as a lord, "was
there ever woman in the world that could stoop to the baseness of being
a whore, and was above taking the reward of her vice! No, no, depend
upon it, if your lordship obtains anything of me, you must pay for it;
and the notion of my being so rich serves only to make it cost you the
dearer, seeing you cannot offer a small matter to a woman of L2000 a
year estate."

After he had harangued upon that subject a good while, and had assured
me he had no design upon me, that he did not come to make a prize of me,
or to pick my pocket, which, by the way, I was in no fear of, for I took
too much care of my money to part with any of it that way, he then
turned his discourse to the subject of love, a point so ridiculous to me
without the main thing, I mean the money, that I had no patience to hear
him make so long a story of it.

I received him civilly, and let him see I could bear to hear a wicked
proposal without being affronted, and yet I was not to be brought into
it too easily. He visited me a long while, and, in short, courted me as
closely and assiduously as if he had been wooing me to matrimony. He
made me several valuable presents, which I suffered myself to be
prevailed with to accept, but not without great difficulty.

Gradually I suffered also his other importunities; and when he made a
proposal of a compliment or appointment to me for a settlement, he said
that though I was rich, yet there was not the less due from him to
acknowledge the favours he received; and that if I was to be his I
should not live at my own expense, cost what it would. I told him I was
far from being extravagant, and yet I did not live at the expense of
less than L500 a year out of my own pocket; that, however, I was not
covetous of settled allowances, for I looked upon that as a kind of
golden chain, something like matrimony; that though I knew how to be
true to a man of honour, as I knew his lordship to be, yet I had a kind
of aversion to the bonds; and though I was not so rich as the world
talked me up to be, yet I was not so poor as to bind myself to hardships
for a pension.

He told me he expected to make my life perfectly easy, and intended it
so; that he knew of no bondage there could be in a private engagement
between us; that the bonds of honour he knew I would be tied by, and
think them no burthen; and for other obligations, he s