I gave a great scream, and dropped my petticoat: the thunder-struck lad stood trembling and pale, waiting his sentence of death. Mr. H.... looked sometimes at one, sometimes at the other, with a mixture of indignation and scorn; and, without saying a word, spun upon his heel and went out.
As confused as I was, I heard him very distinctly turn the key, and lock the chamber door upon us, so that there was no escape but through the dining room, where he himself was walking about with distempered strides, stamping in a great chafe, and doubtless debating what he would do with us.
In the mean time, poor William was frightened out of his senses, and, as much need as I had of spirits myself, I was obliged to employ them all to keep his a little up. The misfortune I had now brought upon him, endeared him the more to me, and I could have joyfully suffered any punishment he had not shared in. I watered, plentifully, with my tears, the face of the frightened youth, who sat, not having strength to stand, as cold and as lifeless as a statue.
Presently Mr. H.... comes in to us again, and made us go before him into the dining room, trembling and dreading the issue, Mr. H.....sat down on a chair whilst we stood like criminals under examination; and, beginning with me, asked me, with an even firm tone of voice, neither soft nor severe, but cruelly indifferent, what I could say for myself, for having abused him in so unworthy a manner, with his own servant too, and how he had deserved this of me?
Without adding to the guilt of my infidelity, that of an audacious defence of it, in the old style of a common kept miss, my answer was modest, and often interrupted by my tears, in substance as follows: “That I never had a single thought of wronging him” (which was true), “till I had seen him taking the last liberties with my servant wench” (here he coloured prodigiously), “and that my resentment at that, which I was over-awed from giving vent to by complaints, or explanations with him, had driven me to a course that I did not pretend to justify; but that as to the young man, he was entirely faultless; for that, in the view of making him the instrument of my revenge, I had down right seduced him to what he had done; and therefore hoped, whatever he determined about me, he would distinguish between the guilty and the innocent; and that; for the rest, I was entirely at his mercy.”