She soon found she had gone too far with me, and, in short, that she was extremely out in her politics; that she had to do with one that was not listed yet among the whining sort of lovers, and knew not what it was to adore a mistress in order to abuse her; and that it was not with me as it was with the usual sort of men in love, that are warmed by the cold, and rise in their passions as the ladies fall in their returns. On the contrary, she found that it was quite altered. I was civil to her, as before, but not so forward. When I saw her at her chamber-window, I did not throw mine open, as I usually had done, to talk with her. When she sung in the parlour, where I could easily hear it, I did not listen. When she visited at the house where I lodged, I did not always come down; or if I did, I had business which obliged me to go abroad; and yet all this while, when I did come into her company, I was as intimate as ever.
I could easily see that this madded her to the heart, and that she was perplexed to the last degree, for she found that she had all her game to play over again; that so absolute a reservedness, even to rudeness and ill manners, was a little too much; but she was a mere posture-mistress in love, and could put herself into what shapes she pleased.
She was too wise to show a fondness or forwardness that looked like kindness. She knew that was the meanest and last step a woman can take, and lays her under the foot of the man she pretends to. Fondness is not the last favour indeed, but it is the last favour but one that a woman can grant, and lays her almost as low; I mean, it lays her at the mercy of the man she shows it to; but she was not come to that neither. This chameleon put on another colour, turned, on a sudden, the gravest, soberest, majestic madam, so that any one would have thought she was advanced in age in one week from two-and-twenty to fifty, and this she carried on with so much government of herself that it did not in the least look like art; but if it was a representation of nature only, it was so like nature itself that nobody living can be able to distinguish. She sung very often in her parlour, as well by herself as with two young ladies who came often to see her. I could see by their books, and her guitar in her hand, that she was singing; but she never opened the window, as she was wont to do. Upon my coming to my window, she kept her own always shut; or if it was open, she would be sitting at work, and not look up, it may be, once in half-an-hour.