Brown, as if I had been the criminal
and she the person injur'd; a mistake which you will not
think so strange, on distinguishing that neither virtue
nor principles had the least share in the defence I had
made, but only the particular aversion I had conceiv'd
against the first brutal and frightful invader of my
tender innocence.
I pass'd then the time till Mrs. Brown's return home,
under all the agitations of fear and despair that may
easily be guessed.
PART 2
About eleven at night my two ladies came home, and hav-
ing receiv'd rather a favourable account from Martha, who
had run down to let them in, for Mr. Crofts (that was the
name of my brute) was gone out of the house, after waiting
till he had tired his patience for Mrs. Brown's return, they
came thundering up-stairs, and seeing me pale, my face
bloody, and all the marks of the most thorough dejection,
they employed themselves more to comfort and re-inspirit me,
than in making me the reproaches I was weak enough to fear,
I who had so many juster and stronger to retort upon them.
Mrs. Brown withdrawn, Phoebe came presently to bed to
me, and what with the answers she drew from me, what with
her own method of palpably satisfying herself, she soon dis-
covered that I had been more frighted than hurt; upon which
I suppose, being herself seiz'd with sleep, and reserving
her lectures and instructions till the next morning, she
left me, properly speaking, to my unrest; for, after tossing
and turning the greatest part of the night, and tormenting
myself with the falsest notions and apprehensions of things,
I fell, through mere fatigue, into a kind of delirious doze,
out of which I waded late in the morning, in a violent fever:
a circumstance which was extremely critical to reprieve me,
at least for a time, from the attacks of a wretch infinitely
more terrible to me than death itself.
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