 behaves herself so handsomely as you have done ever since you
have been under my Keys, should be guilty of killing a Man without being very
highly provoked to do it.«
    Mr. Murphy was, I believe, going to answer, when he was called out of the
Room; after which, nothing passed between the remaining Persons worth relating,
till Booth and the Lady retired back again into the Lady's Apartment.
    Here they fell immediately to commenting on the foregoing Discourse; but as
their Comments were, I believe, the same with what most Readers have made on the
same Occasion, we shall omit them. At last Miss Mathews reminding her Companion
of his Promise of relating to her what had befallen him since the Interruption
of their former Acquaintance, he began, as is written in the next Book of this
History.
 

                                    Book II

                                   Chapter I

              In which Captain Booth begins to relate his History.

The Tea-table being removed, and Mr. Booth and the Lady left alone, he proceeded
as follows:
    »Since you desire, Madam, to know the Particulars of my Courtship to that
best and dearest of Women, whom I afterwards married; I will endeavour to
recollect them as well as I can, at least all those Incidents which are most
worth relating to you.
    If the vulgar Opinion of the Fatality in Marriage had ever any Foundation,
it surely appeared in my Marriage with my Amelia. I knew her in the first Dawn
of her Beauty; and, I believe, Madam, she had as much as ever fell to the Share
of a Woman; but though I always admired her, it was long without any Spark of
Love. Perhaps the general Admiration which at that Time pursued her, the Respect
paid her by Persons of the highest Rank, and the numberless Addresses which were
made her by Men of great Fortune, prevented my aspiring at the Possession of
those Charms, which seemed so absolutely out of my Reach. However it was, I
assure you, the Accident which deprived her of the Admiration of others, made
the first great Impression on my Heart in her Favour. The Injury done to her
Beauty by the overturning of a Chaise, by which, as you may well remember, her
lovely Nose was beat all to pieces, gave me an Assurance that the Woman who had
been so much adored for the Charms of her Person, deserved a much higher
Adoration to be paid to her Mind: For that she was in the latter Respect
infinitely more superior to the rest of her Sex, than she had ever been in the
former.«
    »I admire
