Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/67

 will have the riches, that is positive; if I can possibly command myself enough to resist my lover's importunities, in case he should persist in my going away with him. Thus ended this dialogue; in which vanity seemed to have had a fair chance of gaining the victory over love; or, in other words, where a young lady seemed to promise herself more pleasure from the purse than the person of her lover. And I hope to be excused by those gentlemen who 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: hahe [sic] 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, and very few people the other. But it is now time to think of poor David, who has been all this time in a great deal of misery; the reason of which the next chapter will disclose.