Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders

2. MOLL FLANDERS (continued)

This was my man; but I was to try him to the bottom, and indeed in that consisted my safety; for if he baulked, I knew I was undone, as surely as he was undone if he took me; and if I did not make some scruple about his fortune, it was the way to lead him to raise some about mine; and first, therefore, I pretended on all occasions to doubt his sincerity, and told him, perhaps he only courted me for my fortune. He stopped my mouth in that part with the thunder of his protestations, as above, but still I pretended to doubt.

One morning he pulls off his diamond ring, and writes upon the glass of the sash in my chamber this line--

'You I love, and you alone.'

I read it, and asked him to lend me his ring, with which I wrote under it, thus--

'And so in love says every one.'

He takes his ring again, and writes another line thus--

'Virtue alone is an estate.'

I borrowed it again, and I wrote under it--

'But money's virtue, gold is fate.'

He coloured as red as fire to see me turn so quick upon him, and in a kind of a rage told me he would conquer me, and writes again thus--

'I scorn your gold, and yet I love.'

I ventured all upon the last cast of poetry, as you'll see, for I wrote boldly under his last--

'I'm poor: let's see how kind you'll prove.'