He smiled and, standing up, with great respect saluted me.  He told me he could not but take it very kindly that I had so good an opinion of him; that he would not deceive me, that he would do anything in his power to serve me, and expect no salary; but that he could not by any means accept of a trust, that it might bring him to be suspected of self-interest, and that if I should die he might have disputes with my executors, which he should be very loth to encumber himself with.

I told him if those were all his objections I would soon remove them, and convince him that there was not the least room for any difficulty; for that, first, as for suspecting him, if ever I should do it, now is the time to suspect him, and not put the trust into his hands, and whenever I did suspect him, he could but throw it up then and refuse to go any further.  Then, as to executors, I assured him I had no heirs, nor any relations in England, and I should alter my condition before I died, and then his trust and trouble should cease together, which, however, I had no prospect of yet; but I told him if I died as I was, it should be all his own, and he would deserve it by being so faithful to me as I was satisfied he would be.

He changed his countenance at this discourse, and asked me how I came to have so much good-will for him; and, looking very much pleased, said he might very lawfully wish he was a single man for my sake.  I smiled, and told him as he was not, my offer could have no design upon him in it, and to wish, as he did, was not to be allowed, ’twas criminal to his wife.

He told me I was wrong.  ‘For,’ says he, ’madam, as I said before, I have a wife and no wife, and ’twould be no sin to me to wish her hanged, if that were all.’  ’I know nothing of your circumstances that way, sir,’ said I; ’but it cannot be innocent to wish your wife dead.’  ‘I tell you,’ says he again, ’she is a wife and no wife; you don’t know what I am, or what she is.’

‘That’s true,’ said I; ’sir, I do not know what you are, but I believe you to be an honest man, and that’s the cause of all my confidence in you.’

‘Well, well,’ says he, ’and so I am, I hope, too.  But I am something else too, madam; for,’ says he, ’to be plain with you, I am a cuckold, and she is a whore.’  He spoke it in a kind of jest, but it was with such an awkward smile, that I perceived it was what struck very close to him, and he looked dismally when he said it.

‘That alters the case indeed, sir,’ said I, ’as to that part you were speaking of; but a cuckold, you know, may be an honest man; it does not alter that case at all.  Besides, I think,’ said I, ’since your wife is so dishonest to you, you are too honest to her to own her for your wife; but that,’ said I, ’is what I have nothing to do with.’

‘Nay,’ says he, ’I do not think to clear my hands of her; for, to be plain with you, madam,’ added he, ’I am no contended cuckold neither:  on the other hand, I assure you it provokes me the highest degree, but I can’t help myself; she that will be a whore, will be a whore.’