Her complexion, fair as
it was, appeared yet more fair from the effect of two black
eyes, the brilliancy of which gave her face more vivacity
than belonged to the colour of it, which was only defended
from paleness by a sweetly pleasing blush in her cheeks,
that grew fainter and fainter, till at length it died away
insensibly into the overbearing white. Then her miniature
features join'd to finish the extreme sweetness of it,
which was not belied by that of temper turned to indolence,
languor, and the pleasures of love. Press'd to subscribe
her contingent, she smiled, blushed a little, and thus
complied with our desires:
"My father was neither better nor worse than a miller
near the city of York; and both he and my mother dying
whilst I was an infant, I fell under the care of a widow
and childless aunt, housekeeper to my lord N . . ., at his
seat in the county of . . ., where she brought me up with
all imaginable tenderness. I was not seventeen, as I am
not now eighteen, before I had, on account of my person
purely (for fortune I had notoriously none), several advan-
tageous proposals; but whether nature was slow in making me
sensible in her favourite passion, or that I had not seen
any of the other sex who had stirr'd up the least emotion
or curiosity to be better acquainted with it, I had, till
that age, preserv'd a perfect innocence, even of thought:
whilst my fears of I did not well know what, made me no
more desirous of marrying than of dying.
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