This man had from nature a very happy address, formed to win much upon
the hearts of unexperienced girls; and his two cousins respected him
greatly. He placed them at the house of an old, out-of-fashion aunt,
who had been a keen partizan of the royal cause during the civil wars;
she was full of the heroic stiffness of her own times, and would read
books of Chivalry, and Romances with her spectacles.

This sort of conversation, much infected the mind of our poetess,
and fill'd her imagination with lovers, heroes, and princes; made
her think herself in an inchanted region, and that all the men who
approached her were knights errant. In a few years the old aunt died,
and left the two young ladies without any controul; which as soon as
their cousin Mr. Manley heard, he hasted into the country, to visit
them; appeared in deep mourning, as he said for the death of his wife;
upon which the young ladies congratulated him, as they knew his wife
was a woman of a most turbulent temper, and ill fitted to render the
conjugal life tolerable.

This gentleman, who had seen a great deal of the world, and was
acquainted with all the artifices of seducing, lost no time in making
love to his cousin, who was no otherwise pleased with it, than as
it answered something to the character she had found in those books,
which had poisoned and deluded her dawning reason. Soon after these
protestations of love were made, the young lady fell into a fever,
which was like to prove fatal to her life.

The lover and her sister never quitted the chamber for sixteen nights,
nor took any other repose than throwing themselves alternately upon a
little pallet in the same room. Having in her nature a great deal of
gratitude, and a very tender sense of benefits; she promised upon