THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS
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low, but had lived well; and though, if I had had a fortune, I should have been enraged at the slut for betraying me; yet really for the man, a fortune would not have been ill bestowed on him, for he was a lovely person indeed, of generous principles, good sense, and of abundance of good humour.
We had a great deal close conversation that night, for we neither of us slept much; he was as penitent for having put all those cheats upon me as if it had been felony, and that he was going to execution; he offered me again every shilling of the money he had about him, and said he would go into the army and seek for more.
I asked him why he would be so unkind to carry me into Ireland, when I might suppose he could not have subsisted me there. He took me in his arms. 'My dear', said he, 'I never designed to go to Ireland at all, much less to have carried you thither, but came hither to be out of the observation of the people, who had heard what I pretended to, and that nobody might ask me for money before I was furnished to supply them.'
'But, where then', said I, 'were we to have gone next?'
'Why, my dear', said he, 'I'll confess the whole scheme to you as I had laid it: I purposed here to ask you something about your estate, as you see I did, and when you, as I expected you would, had entered into some account of the particulars, I would have made an excuse to have put off our voyage to Ireland for some time, and so have gone for London. Then, my dear', says he, 'I resolved to have confessed all the circumstances of my own affairs to you, and let you know I had indeed made use of these artifices to obtain your consent to marry me, but had now nothing to do but to ask your pardon, and to tell you how abundantly I would endeavour to make you forget what was past, by the felicity of the days to come.'
'Truly', said I to him, 'I find you would soon have conquered me; and it is my affliction now that I am not in a condition to let you see how easily I should have been reconciled to you, and have passed by all the tricks you had put upon me, in recompense of so much good humour. But, my dear', said I, 'what can we do now? We are both undone; and what better are we for our being reconciled, seeing we have nothing to live on?'
We proposed a great many things, but nothing could offer where there was nothing to begin with. He begged me at last to talk no more of it, for, he said, I would break his heart; so we talked of other things a little, till at last he took a husband's leave of me, and so went to sleep.
He rose before me in the morning; and, indeed, having lain awake almost all night, I was very sleepy, and lay till near eleven o'clock. In this time he took his horses, and three servants, and all his linen and baggage, and away he went, leaving a short but moving letter for me on the table, as follows:
