Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/17

 are quite sure they have found one woman, who is a perfect angel, and that all the rest are perfect devils, for drawing the character of a woman who was neither; for Miss Nanny Johnson was very good-humoured, had a great deal of softness, and had no alloy to these good qualities, but a great share of vanity, with some small spices of envy, which must always accompany it. And I make no matter of doubt, but if she had not met with this temptation, she would have made a very affectionate wife to the man who loved her: he would have thought himself extremely happy, with a perfect assurance that nothing could have tempted her to abandon him. And when she had had the experience, what it was to be constantly beloved by a man of Mr. Simple's goodness of heart, she would have exulted in her own happiness, and been the first to have blamed any other woman for giving up the pleasure of having the man she loved for any advantage of fortune; and would have thought it utterly impossible for her ever to have been tempted to such an action; which then might possibly have appeared in the most dishonourable light: for to talk of a temptation at a distance, and to feel it present, are two such very different things, that everybody can resist the one, very few people the other."

author:Ernest Albert Baker1em

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