Fantomina

She had often seen him in the Drawing-Room, had talk’d with him; but then her Quality and reputed Virtue kept him from using her with that Freedom she now expected he wou’d do, and had discover’d something in him, which had made her often think she shou’d not be displeas’d, if he wou’d abate some Part of his Reserve.

He look’d in her Face, and fancy’d, as many others had done, that she very much resembled that Lady whom she really was; but the vast Disparity there appear’d between their Characters, prevented him from entertaining even the most distant Thought that they cou’d be the same.

All the Charms of Beauplaisir came fresh into her Mind; she languish’d, she almost dy’d for another Opportunity of conversing with him; and not all the Admonitions of her Discretion were effectual to oblige her to deny laying hold of that which offer’d itself the next Night.

He could not imagine for what Reason a Woman, who, if she intended not to be a Mistress, had counterfeited the Part of one, and taken so much Pains to engage him, should lament a Consequence which she could not but expect[.]

Thus did this Lady’s Wit and Vivacity assist her in all, but where it was most needful.—She had Discernment to foresee, and avoid all those Ills which might attend the Loss of her Reputation, but was wholly blind to those of the Ruin of her Virtue; and having managed her Affairs so as to secure the one, grew perfectly easy with the Remembrance, she had forfeited the other.

A thousand Times has he stood amaz’d at the prodigious Likeness between his little Mistress, and this Court Beauty; but was still as far from imagining that they were the same, as he was the first Hour he had accosted her in the Playhouse, though it is not impossible, but that her Resemblance to this celebrated Lady, might keep his Inclination alive something longer than otherwise they would have been; and that it was to the Thoughts of this (as he supposed) unenjoy’d Charmer, she ow’d in great measure the vigor of his later caresses.

But he varied not so much from his Sex as to be able to prolong Desire, to any great Length after Possession[.]

Not but a Woman of her Beauty and Accomplishments might have beheld a Thousand in that Condition Beauplaisir had been; but with her Sex’s Modesty, she had not also thrown off another Virtue equally valuable, tho’ generally unfortunate, Constancy[.]

His Stay at Bath exceeded not a Month; but in that Time his suppos’d Country Lass had persecuted him so much with her Fondness, that in spite of the Eagerness with which he first enjoy’d her, he was at last grown more weary of her, than he had been of Fantomina[.]

But bethinking himself of the celebrated Story of the Ephesian Matron, it came into his Head to make Tryal, she who seem’d equally susceptible of Sorrow, might not also be so too of Love[.]

“Traytor! (cry’d she,) as soon as she had read them, ‘tis thus our silly, fond, believing Sex are serv’d when they put Faith in Man: So had I been deceiv’d and cheated, had I like the rest believ’d, and sat down mourning in Absence, and vainly waiting recover’d Tendernesses.

She made herself, most certainly, extremely happy in the Reflection on the Success of her Stratagems; and while the Knowledge of his Inconstancy and Levity of Nature kept her from having that real Tenderness for him she would else have had, she found the Means of gratifying the Inclination she had for his agreeable person, in as full a Manner as she could wish.

[W]hen the next day she received him as Fantomina, she perceiv’d a prodigious Difference; which led her again into Reflections on the Unaccountableness of Men’s Fancies, who still prefer the last Conquest, only because it is the last.—Here was an evident Proof of it; for there could not be a Difference in Merit, because they were the same Person; but the Widow Bloomer was a more new Acquaintance than Fantomina, and therefore esteem’d more valuable.

Finding her in an outer Room, he made no Scruple of expressing the Sense he had of the little Trust she reposed in him, and at last plainly told her, he could not submit to receive Obligations from a Lady, who thought him uncapable of keeping a Secret[.]

She was with Child; and though she would easily have found Means to have skreen’d even this from the Knowledge of the World, had she been at liberty to have acted with the same unquestionable Authority over herself, as she did before the coming of her Mother, yet now all her Invention was at a Loss for a Stratagem to impose on a Woman of her Penetration.

[H]e is, indeed, the innocent Cause of my Undoing.