"But I was greatly mistaken: for I had insensibly brought myself to admire her in every thing she said or did; and there was so much gracefulness, humility, and innocence in her whole behaviour, and I saw so many melting scenes between her lady and her, that I found I could not master my esteem for her.
"My mother's illness increasing beyond hopes of recovery, and having settled all her greater affairs, she talked to me of her servants; I asked what she would have done for Pamela and Mrs. Jervis.
"'Make Mrs. Jervis, my dear son, as happy as you can: she is a gentlewoman born, you know; let her always be treated as such; but for your own sake, don't make her independent; for then you'll want a faithful manager. Yet if you marry, and your lady should not value her as she deserves, allow her a competency for the rest of her life, and let her live as she pleases.
"'As for Pamela, I hope you will be her protector!—She is a good girl: I love her next to you and your dear sister. She is just arriving at a trying time of life. I don't know what to say for her. What I had designed was, that if any man of a genteel calling should offer, I would give her a little pretty portion, had God spared my life till then. But were she made independent, some idle fellow might snap her up; for she is very pretty: or if she should carry what you give her to her poor parents, as her duty would lead her to do, they are so unhappily involved, that a little matter would be nothing to them, and the poor girl might be to seek again. Perhaps Lady Davers will take her. But I wish she was not so pretty! She may be the bird for which some wicked fowler will spread his snares; or, it may be, every lady will not choose to have such a waiting-maid. You are a young gentleman, and I am sorry to say, not better than I wish you to be—Though I hope my Pamela would not be in danger from her master, who owes all his servants protection, as much as the king does to his subjects. Yet I don't know how to wish her to stay with you, for your own reputation's sake, my dear son;—for the world will censure as it lists.—Would to God!' said she, 'the dear girl had the small-pox in a mortifying manner: she'd be lovely though in the genteelness of her person and the excellencies of her mind; and more out of danger of suffering from the transcient beauties of countenance. Yet I think,' added she, 'she might be safe and happy under Mrs. Jervis's care; and if you marry, and your lady parts with Mrs. Jervis, let 'em go together, and live as they like. I think that will be the best for both. And you have a generous spirit enough: I will not direct you in the quantum. But, my dear son, remember that I am the less concerned, that I have not done for the poor girl myself, because I depend upon you: the manner how fitly to provide for her, has made me defer it till now, that I have so much more important concerns on my hands; life and strength ebbing so fast, that I am hardly fit for any thing, or to wish for any thing, but to receive the last releasing stroke.'"
Here he stopped, being under some concern himself, and we in much more. At last he resumed the subject.
"You will too naturally think, my lord—and you, my good ladies—that the mind must be truly diabolical, that could break through the regard due to the solemn injunctions of a dying parent. They did hold me a good while indeed; and as fast as I found any emotions of a contrary nature rise in my breast, I endeavoured for some time to suppress them, and to think and act as I ought; but the dear bewitching girl every day rose in her charms upon me: and finding she still continued the use of her pen and ink, I could not help entertaining a jealousy, that she was writing to somebody who stood well in her opinion; and my love for her, and my own spirit of intrigue, made it a sweetheart of course. And I could not help watching her emotions; and seeing her once putting a letter she had just folded up, into her bosom, at my entrance into my mother's dressing-room, I made no doubt of detecting her, and her correspondent; and so I took the letter from her stays, she trembling and curtseying with a sweet confusion: and highly pleased I was to find it contained only innocence and duty to the deceased mistress, and the loving parents, expressing her joy that, in the midst of her grief for losing the one, she was not obliged to return to be a burden to the other; and I gave it her again, with words of encouragement, and went down much better satisfied than I had been with her correspondence.
"But when I reflected upon the innocent simplicity of her style, I was still more in love with her, and formed a stratagem, and succeeded in it, to come at her other letters, which I sent forward, after I had read them, all but three or four, which I kept back, when my plot began to ripen for execution; although the little slut was most abominably free with my character to her parents.
"You will censure me, no doubt, that my mother's injunctions made not a more lasting impression. But really I struggled hard with myself to give them their due force: and the dear girl, as I said, every day grew lovelier, and more accomplished. Her letters were but so many links to the chains in which she had bound me; and though once I had resolved to part with her to Lady Davers, and you, Madam, had an intention to take her, I could not for my life give her up; and thinking more honourably then of the state of a mistress than I have done since, I could not persuade myself (since I intended to do as handsomely by her as ever man did to a lady in that situation) but that I should do better for her than my mother had wished me to do, and so more than answer all her injunctions, as to the providing for her: and I could not imagine I should meet with a resistance I had seldom encountered from persons much her superiors as to descent; and was amazed at it; for it confounded me in all the notions I had of her sex, which, like a true libertine, I supposed wanted nothing but importunity and opportunity, a bold attempter, and a mind not ungenerous. Sometimes I admired her for her virtue; at other times, impetuous in my temper, and unused to control, I could have beat her. She well, I remember, describes the tumults of my soul, repeating what once passed between us, in words like, these:—'Take the little witch from me, Mrs. Jervis.—I can neither bear, nor forbear her—But stay-you shan't go—Yet be gone!—No, come back again.'—She thought I was mad, she says in her papers. Indeed I was little less. She says, I took her arm, and griped it black and blue, to bring her back again; and then sat down and looked at her as silly as such a poor girl as she!—Well did she describe the passion I struggled with; and no one can conceive how much my pride made me despise myself at times for the little actions my love for her put me upon, and yet to find that love increasing every day, as her charms and her resistance increased.—I have caught myself in a raging fit, sometimes vowing I would have her, and, at others, jealous that, to secure herself from my attempts, she would throw herself into the arms of some menial or inferior, whom otherwise she would not have thought of.
"Sometimes I soothed, sometimes threatened her; but never was such courage, when her virtue seemed in danger, mixed with so much humility, when her fears gave way to her hopes of a juster treatment.—Then I would think it impossible (so slight an opinion had I of woman's virtue) that such a girl as this, cottage-born, who owed every thing to my family, and had an absolute dependence upon my pleasure: myself not despicable in person or mind, as I supposed; she unprejudiced in any man's favour, at an age susceptible of impressions, and a frame and constitution not ice or snow: 'Surely,' thought I, 'all this frost must be owing to the want of fire in my attempts to thaw it: I used to dare more, and succeed better. Shall such a girl as this awe me by her rigid virtue? No, she shall not.'
"Then I would resolve to be more in earnest. Yet my love was a traitor, that was more faithful to her than to me; it had more honour in it at bottom than I had designed. Awed by her unaffected innocence, and a virtue I had never before encountered, so uniform and immovable, the moment I saw her I was half disarmed; and I courted her consent to that, which, though I was not likely to obtain, yet it went against me to think of extorting by violence. Yet marriage was never in my thoughts: I scorned so much as to promise it.