My mistress was greatly to be pitied. It was impossible to conceal my master's illness from her, tho’ we did not acquaint her how violent his fever was. She was so weak, she could not walk alone; and we were so continually alarmed with fresh appearances of the irruption, that the physician, apprehending a relapse would be the consequence of the least cold, would not permit her to be carried out of her room; which however we could not have prevented, if we had not pretended that my master declared himself so sensible of the danger she would incur by moving, that nothing would be so hurtful to him as her attempting it.

We were reduced to urge this in the strongest manner, and to invent a thousand messages from him, when he was incapable of sending any; for he soon became delirious; a circumstance which, if known to her, might have proved fatal; therefore we were obliged to pretend he was as well as the nature of the distemper would permit; the doctor thinking it adviseable to deceive her as long as was possible, in hopes Mr. Lafew might recover; and not let her suffer by her fears of an event, which, in her weak state, he thought her unable to support. His fever was indeed excessively violent; but the natural strength and goodness of his constitution gave his physician hopes that he might struggle thro’ it.

The whole family was in affliction; but no one in it surely more to be pitied than myself; who, tho’ overwhelmed with grief, was obliged to go often to my mistress with a chearful countenance, and rack my imagination, which was tormented with a thousand dreadful phantoms, for pretended messages, and every other invention that might serve to persuade her he was in a better way.