assured her by such other tokens as she could not deny, that I was no other, nor more nor less than her own child-her daughter born of her body in Newgate-the same that had saved her from the gallows by being in her belly, and the same that she left in such and such hands when she was transported. It is impossible to express the astonishment she was in; she was not inclined to believe the story, or to remember the particulars, for she immediately foresaw the confusions that must follow in the family upon it; but everything concurred so exactly with the stories she had told me of herself, and which, if she had not told me, she would perhaps have been content to have denied, that she had stopped her own mouth, and she had nothing to do but to take me about the neck and kiss me, and cry most vehemently over me, without speaking one word for a long time together. At last she broke out, "Unhappy child !" says she, "what miserable chance could bring thee hither? And in the arms of my own son too! Dreadful girl!" says she, why we are all undone! Married to thy own brother! Three children, and two alive, all of the same flesh and blood! My son and my daughter lying together as husband and wife! All confusion and distraction for ever! Miserable family! what will become of us? What is to be said? What is to be done?" and thus she run on for a great while, nor had I any power to speak, or if I had I did not know what to say, for every word wounded ine to the soul. With this kind of amazement on our thoughts we parted for the first time, though my mother was more surprised than I was, because it was more news to her than to me. However, she promised again to me at parting, that she would say nothing of it to her son till we had talked of it again. It was not long, you may be sure, before we had a second conference upon the same subject; when, as if she had been willing to forget the story she had told me of herself, or to suppose that I had forgot some of the particulars, she began to tell them with alterations and omissions: but I refreshed her memory, and set her to rights in many things which I supposed she had forgot, and then came in so opportunely with the whole history, that it was impossible for her to go from it; and then she fell into her rhapsodies again, and exclamations at the severity of her misfortunes. When these things were a little over with her, we fell into a close debate about what should be first done before we gave an account of the matter to my husband, but to what purpose could be all consultations. We could neither of us see our way through it, nor see how it could be safe to open such a scene to him. It was impossible to make any judgment, or give any guess at what temper he would receive it in, or what measures he would take upon it; and if he should have so little government of himself as to make it public, we easily foresaw that it would be the ruin of the whole family, and expose my mother and me to the last degree; and if at last he should take the advantage the law would give him, he might put me away with disdain, and leave me to sue for the little portion that I had, and perhaps waste it all in the suit, and then be a beggar. The children would be ruined too, having no legal claim to any of his effects; and thus I should see him perhaps in the arms of another wife in a few months, and be myself the most miserable creature alive. My mother was as sensible of this as I, and upon the whole, we knew not what to do. After some time, we came to more sober resolutions; but then it was with this misfortune too, that my mother's opinion and mine were quite different from one another, and indeed inconsistent with one another for my mother's opinion was, that I should bury the whole thing entirely, and continue to live with him as my husband, till some other event should make the discovery of it more convenient; and that, in the meantime, she would endeavour to reconcile us together again, and restore our mutual comfort and family peace; that we might lie as we used to do together, and so let the whole matter remain a secret as close as death: For child," says she, "we are both undone if it comes out." To encourage me to this, she promised to make me easy in my circumstances as far as she was able, and to leave me what she could at her death, secured for me separately from any husband; so that if it should come out afterwards, I should not be left destitute, but be able to stand on my own feet, and procure justice from him. This proposal did not agree at all with my judgment of the thing, though it was very fair and kind in my mother; but my thoughts run quite another way. As to keeping the thing in our own breasts, and letting it all remain as it was, I told her it was impossible; and I asked her how she could think I could bear the thoughts of lying with my own brother? In the next place I told her that her being alive was the only support of the dis|covery, and that while she owned me for her child, and saw reason to be satisfied that I was so, nobody else would doubt it; but if that she should die before the discovery, I should be taken for an impudent creature that had forged such a thing to go away from my husband, or should be counted crazed and distracted: then I told her how he had threatened already to put me into a madhouse, and what concern I had been in about it; and how that was the thing that drove me to the necessity of discovering it to her as I had done. From all which I told her, that I had on the most serious reflection I was able to make in the case, come to this resolution, which I hoped she would like, as a medium between both, viz. that she would use her endeavours with her son to give me leave to go for England, as I had desired, and to furnish me with a sufficient sum of money, either in goods along with me, or in bills for my support there, all along suggesting, that he might one time or other think it proper to come over to me. This was my scheme, and my reasons were good. I was really alienated from him in consequence of these things; indeed, I mortally hated him as a husband, and it was impossible to remove that rivetted aversion I had to him. At 135 the same time, it being an unlawful, incestuous living, added to that aversion, and everything added to make cohabiting with him the most nauseous thing to me in the world, and I think verily it was come to such a height, that I could almost as willingly have embraced a dog as have let him offer the least thing of that kind to me; for which reason I could not bear the thoughts of coming between the sheets with him. I cannot say I was right in point of policy in carrying it such a length,-while, at the same time, I did not resolve to discover the thing to him, but I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be. In this directly opposite opinion to one another my mother and I continued a long time, and it was impossible to reconcile our judgments; many disputes we had about it, but we could never either of us yield our own, or bring over the other. I insisted on my aversion to lying with my own brother; and she insisted upon its being impossible to bring him to consent to my going from him to England; and in this uncertainty we continued, not differing so as to quarrel, or any thing like it; but so as not to be able to resolve what we should do to make up the terrible breach that was before us. At last I resolved on a desperate course, and told my mother my resolution, viz. that in short, I would tell him of it myself. My mother was frightened to the last degree at the very thoughts of it; but I bid her be easy, told her I would do gradually and softly, and with all the art and good humour I was mistress off, and time it also as well as I could, taking him in good humour too: I told her I did not question but if I could be hypocrite enough to feign more affection to him than I really had, I should succeed in all my designs, and we might part by consent, and with a good agreement, for I might love him well enough for a brother, though I could not for a husband. All this while he lay at my mother to find out, if possible, what was the meaning of that dreadful expression of mine, as he called it, I mentioned before; namely, that I was not his lawful wife, nor my children his legal children: my mother put him off, told him she could bring me to no explanations, but found there was something that disturbed me very much, and she hoped she should get it out of me in time, and in the meantime recommended to him earnestly to use me more tenderly, and win me with his usual good carriage; told him of his terrifying and affrighting me with his threats of sending me to a madhouse, and the like, and advised him not to make a woman desperate on any account whatever. He promised her to soften his behaviour, and bid her assure me that he loved me as well as ever, and that he had no such design as that of sending me to a madhouse, whatever he might say in his passion; also he desired my mother to use the same persuasions to me too, that our affection might be renewed, and we might live together in a good understanding as we used to do. I found the effects of this treaty presently; my husband's conduct was immediately altered. and he was quite another man to me; nothing could be kinder and more obliging than he was to me upon all occasions; and I could do no less than make some return to it, which I did as well as I could; but it was but in an awkward manner at best, for nothing was more frightful to me than his caresses, and the apprehensions of being with child again by him, was ready to throw me into fits; and this made me see that there was an absolute necessity of breaking the case to him without any more delay, which however I did with all the caution and reserve imaginable. He had continued his altered carriage to me near a month, and we began to live a new kind of life with one another; and could I have satisfied myself to have gone on with it, I believe it might have continued as long as we continued alive together. One evening as we were sitting and talking very friendly together under a little awning, which served us as an arbour, at the entrance from our house into the garden, he was in a very pleasant agreeable humour, and said abundance of kind things to me, relating to the pleasure of our present good agreement, and the disorders of our past breach, and what a satisfaction it was to him, that we had room to hope we should never have any more of it. I fetched a deep sigh, and told him there was nobody in the world could be more delighted than I was in the good agreeinent we had always kept up, or more afflicted with the breach of it, and should be so still, but I was sorry to tell him that there was an unhappy circumstance in our case, which lay too close to heart, and which I knew not how to break to him, that rendered my part of it very miserable, and took from me all the comfort of the rest. He importuned me to tell him what it was; I told him I could not tell how to do it, that while it was concealed from him I alone was unhappy; but if he knew it also we should be both so; and that, therefore, to keep him in the dark about it was the kindest thing that I could do; and it was on that account alone that I kept a secret from him, the very keeping of which I thought would first or last be my destruction. It is impossible to express his surprise at this relation, and the double importunity which he used with me to discover it to him. He told me I could not be called kind to him, nay, could not be faithful to him if I concealed it from him; I told him I thought so too, and yet I could not do it. He went back to what I had said before to him, and told me he hoped it did not relate to what I had said in my passion; and that he had resolved to forget all that, as the effect of a rash provoked spirit. I told him I wished I could forget it all too, but that it was not to be done; the impression was too deep, and I could not do it, it was impossible. He then told me he was resolved not to differ with me in anything, and that, therefore, he would importune me no more about it, resolving to acquiesce in whatever I did or said; only begged I would then agree, that whatever it was, it should no more interrupt our quiet, and our mutual kindness. This was the most provoking thing he could have said to me, for I really wanted his farther importunities, that I might be prevailed with to bring out that which indeed it was like death to me to conceal; so I answered him plainly, that I could not say I was glad not to be importuned, though I could not tell how to comply; "but come, my dear," said I, "what conditions will you make with me upon the opening this affair to you?"-"Any conditions in the world," said he, "that you can in reason desire of me." Well," said I, "come, give it me under your hand, that if you do not find I am in any fault, or that I am willingly concerned in the causes of the misfortune that is to follow, you will not blame me, use me the worse, do me any injury, or make me the sufferer for that which is not my fault." 66 66 Very just again," says he, "with all my heart." So he wrote down that also, and signed it. "Well, my dear," says I, "then I have but one condition more to make with you, and that is, that, as there is nobody concerned in it but you and I, you shall not discover it to any person in the world except your own mother; and that in all the measures you shall take upon the discovery, as I am equally concerned in it with you, though as innocent as yourself, you shall do nothing in a passion, nothing to my prejudice, or to your mother's prejudice, without my knowledge and consent." This a little amazed him; and he wrote down the words distinctly, but read them over and over before he signed them, hesitating at them several times, and repeating them; "my mother's prejudice! and your prejudice! what mysterious thing can this be?" However, at last, he signed it. it with presence of mind; for who could have said more to prepare you for it than I have done? However, I called a servant, and got him a small glass of rum, which is the usual dram of the country, for he was just fainting away. When he was a little recovered I said to him, "This story you may be sure requires a long explanation, and therefore have patience and com pose your mind to hear it out and I will make it as short as I can, and with this I told him what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how my mother came to discover it to me as above; and now my dear," says I, "you will see reason for my capitulations, and that I neither have been the cause of this matter nor could be so, and that I could know nothing of it before now." I am fully satisfied of that," says he, "but it is a dreadful surprise to me. However, I know a remedy that shall put an end to all your diffi. culties without your going to England." "That would be as strange," said I, as all the rest-" No, no," says he, "I will make it easy; there is nobody in the way of it all but myself." He looked a little disordered when he said this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at that time, believing, as it used to be said, that they who do these things never talk of them; or that they who talk of such things never do them. But things were not come to their height with him, and I observed he became pensive and melancholy, and in a word, as I thought, a little distempered in his head; I endeavoured to talk him into temper, and to reason him into a kind of scheme for our government in the affair, and sometimes he would be well, and talk with some courage about it; but the weight of it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and in short, it went so far that he made two attempts upon himself, and in one of them had actually strangled himself, and had not his mother come into the room in the very moment, he had died; but with the help of a negro servant she cut him down and recovered him. Things were now come to a lamentable height in the family. My pity for him now began to revive that affection which at first I really had for him, and I endeavoured sincerely by all the "Well," says I, "my dear, I will ask no more kind carriage I could to make up the breach; under your hand; but as you are to bear the but in short it had gotten too great a head, it most unexpected and surprising thing that per-preyed upon his spirits and it threw him into a haps ever befel any family in the world, I beg you to promise me you will receive it with composure and a presence of mind suitable to a man of sense. "I will do my utmost," says he; "upon condition you will keep me no longer in suspense, for you terrify me with all these preliminaries." "Well, then," says I, "it is this, as I told you before in a heat, that I was not your lawful wife, and that our children were not legal children; so I must let you know now in calmness, and in kindness, but with affliction enough, that I am your own sister, and you my own brother, and that we are both the children of our mother now alive, and in the house, who is convinced of the truth of it in a manner not to be denied or contradicted." I saw him turn pale, and look wild, and I said "Now, remember your promise, and receive long lingering consumption, though it happened not to be mortal. In this distress I did not know what to do as his life was apparently declining, and I might perhaps have married again there very much to my advantage; it had been certainly my business to have staid in the country; but my mind was restless too and uneasy; hankered after coming to England and nothing would satisfy me without it. I In short, by an unwearied importunity my hus band, who was apparently decaying, as I observed, was at last prevailed with, and so my own fate pushing me on, the way was made clear for me, and my mother concurring, I obtained a very good cargo for my coming to England. When I parted with my brother, for such I am now to to call him, we agreed that after arrived he should pretend to have an account that I was dead in England, and so might marry again when he would; he promised and engaged to me to correspond with me as a sister, and to assist and support me as long as I lived; and that if he died before me he would leave sufficient to his mother to take care of me still in the name of a sister, and he was in some respect careful of me when he heard of me; but it was so oddly managed that I felt the disappointments very sensibly afterwards, as you shall hear in its time. I came away in the month of August, after I had been eight years in that country, and now a new scene of misfortunes attended me, which perhaps few women have gone through the like of. We had an indifferent good voyage till we came just upon the coast of England, and where we arrived in two-and-thirty days, but were then ruffled with two or three storms, one of which drove us away to the coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsale. We remained there about thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore and put to sea again, though we met with very bad weather again, in which the ship sprung her mainmast, as they called it, for I knew not what they meant. But we got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote from our port, yet, having my foot safe upon the firm ground of my native country, the Isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more upon the waters, which had been so terrible to me, so getting my clothes and money on shore, with my bills of lading and other papers, I resolved to come for London and leave the ship to get her port as she could; the port whither she was bound was to Bristol, where my brother's chief correspondent lived. The Bath is a place of gallantry enough; expensive and full of snares: I went thither indeed in the view of taking anything that might offer; but I must do myself that justice as to protest I knew nothing amiss, I meant nothing but in an honest way; nor had I any thoughts about me at first that looked the way which afterwards I suffered them to be guided. Here I stayed the whole latter season, as it is called there, and contracted some unhappy acquaintance, which rather prompted the follies I fell afterwards into than fortified me against them. I lived pleasantly enough, kept good company, that is to say, gay, fine company; but had the discouragement to find this way of living sunk me exceedingly, and that as I had no settled income, so spending upon the main stock was but a certain kind of bleeding to death, and this gave me many sad reflections in the intervals of my other thoughts. However I shook them off, and still flattered myself that something or other might offer for my advantage. But I was in the wrong place for it; I was not now at Redriff, where, if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea-captain or other might have talked with me upon honourable terms of matrimony. But I was at the Bath, where men find a mistress sometimes, but very rarely look for a wife, and consequently all the particular acquaintance a woman can expect to make there must have some tendency that way. I had spent the first season well enough, for though I had contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to the Bath for his diversion, yet I had entered into no felonious treaty, as it might be called. I had resisted some casual offers of gallantry, and had managed that way well enough; I was not wicked enough to come into the crime for the mere vice of it, and I had no extraordinary offers made me that tempted me with the main thing which I I got to London in about three weeks, where I heard a little while after that the ship was arrived in Bristol, but at the same time had the misfortune to know that by the violent weather she had been in, and the breaking of her main-wanted. mast, she had great damage on board, and that a great part of her cargo was spoiled. I had now a new scene of life upon my hands, and a dreadful appearance it had. I was come away with a kind of final farewell. What I brought with me was indeed considerable had it come safe, and by the help of it I might have married again tolerably well; but as it was was reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the whole, and this without any hope of recruit. I was entirely without friends, nay, even so much as without acquaintance, for I found it was absolutely necessary not to revive former acquaintances; and as for my subtle friend that set me up formerly for a fortune, she was dead, and her husband also, as I was informed upon sending a person,unknown, to inquire. The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that affair I took the diversion of going to the Bath, for as I was still far from being old, so my humour, which was always gay, continued so to an extreme; and being now as it were a woman of fortune, though I was a woman without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in my way that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before. However, I went this length the first season, viz. I contracted an acquaintance with a woman in whose house I lodged, who, though she did not keep an ill house, as we call it, yet had none of the best principles in herself: I had on all occasions behaved myself so well as not to get the least slur upon my reputation on any account whatever, and all the men that I had conversed with were of so good reputation that I had not given the least reflection by conversing with them; nor did any of them seem to think there was room for a wicked correspondence, if they had any of them offered it; yet there was one gentleman, as above, who always singled me out for the diversion of my company, as he called it, which, as he was pleased to say, was very agreeable to him, but at that time there was no more in it. I had many melancholy hours at the Bath after all the company was gone, for though I went to Bristol sometimes for the disposing my effects, and for recruits of money, yet I chose to come back to Bath for my residence, because, being on good terms with the woman in whose house I lodged in the summer, I found that during the winter I lived rather cheaper there than I could do anywhere else; here, I say, I passed the winter as heavily as I had passed the autumn cheerfully; but having contracted a nearer intimacy with the said woman in whose house I lodged, I could not avoid communicating to her something of what lay hardest upon my mind, and particularly the narrowness of my circumstances, and the loss of my fortune by the damage of my goods by sea: I told her also that I had a good mother and a brother in Virginia in good circumstances, and as I had really written back to my mother in particular to represent my condition, and the great loss I had received, which indeed came to almost 500l., so did not fail to let my new friend know that I expected a supply from thence, and so indeed I did; and as the ships went from Bristol to York river in Virginia, and back again generally in less time than from London, and that my brother corresponded chiefly at Bristol, I thought it was much better for me to wait here for my returns than to go London, where also I had not the least acquaintance. My new friend appeared sensibly affected with my condition, and indeed was so very kind as to reduce the rate of my living with her to so low a price during the winter, that she convinced me she got nothing by me; and as for lodging during the winter, I paid nothing at all. When the spring season came on she continued to be as kind to me as she could, and I lodged with her for a time, till it was found necessary to do otherwise; she had some persons of character that frequently lodged in her house, and in particular the gentleman who, as I said, singled me out for his companion the winter before; and he came down again with another gentleman in his company and two servants, and lodged in the same house: I suspected that my landlady had invited him thither, letting him know that I was still with her, but she denied it, and protested to me that she did not, and he said the same. In a word, this gentleman came down and continued to single me out for his peculiar confidence as well as conversation. He was a complete gentleman, that must be confessed, and his company was very agreeable to me, as mine, if I might believe him, was to him. He made no profession to me but of an extraordinary respect, and he had such an opinion of my virtue that, as he often professed, he believed if he should offer anything else I should reject him with contempt. He soon understood from me that I was a widow that had arrived at Bristol from Virginia by the last ships; and that I waited at Bath till the next Virginia fleet should arrive, by which I expected considerable effects. I understood by him, and by others of him, that he had a wife, but that the lady was distempered in her head, and was under the conduct of her own relations, which he consented to, to avoid any reflections that might, as was not unusual in such cases, be cast on him for mismanaging her cure; and in the meantime he came to Bath to divert his thoughts from the disturbance of such a melancholy circumstance as that was. My landlady, who of her own accord encouraged the correspondence on all occasions, gave me an advantageous character of him, as of a man of honour and of virtue, as well as of a great estate; and indeed I had a great deal of reason to say so of him too; for though we lodged both on a floor, and he had frequently come into my chamber, even when I was in bed, and I also into his when he was in bed, yet he never offered anything to me farther than a kiss, or so much as solicited me to anything till long after, as you shall hear. I frequently took notice to my landlady of his exceeding modesty, and she again used to tell me she believed it was so from the beginning. However, she used to tell me that she thought I ought to expect some gratification from him for my company, for indeed he did, as it were, engross me, and I was seldom from him. I told her I had not given him the least occa sion to think I wanted it, or that I would accept of it from him; she told me she would take that part upon her, and she did so, and managed it so dexterously, that the first time we were together alone, after she had talked with him, he began to inquire a little into my circumstances, as how I had subsisted myself since I came on shore? and whether I did not want money? I stood off very boldly; I told him that though my cargo of tobacco was damaged, yet that it was not quite lost; that the merchant I had been consigned to had so honestly managed for me that I had not wanted; and that I hoped, with frugal management, I should make it hold out till more should come, which I expected by the next fleet. That in the meantime I had retrenched my expenses, and whereas I kept a maid last season, now I lived without; and whereas I had a chamber and a dining-room then on the first floor, as he knew, I now had but one room up two pair of stairs, and the like; but I live, said I, as well satisfied now as I did then; adding, that his company had been a means to make me live much more cheerfully than otherwise I should have done, for which I was much obliged to him; and so I put off all room for any offer for the present. However, it was not long before he attacked me again, and told me he found that I was backward to trust him with the secret of my circumstances, which he was sorry for; assuring me that he inquired into it with no design to satisfy his own curiosity, but merely to assist me, if there was any occasion; but since I would not own myself to stand in need of any assistance, he had but one thing more to desire of me, and that was, that I would promise him that when I was any way straightened, or like to be so, I would frankly tell him of it, and that I would make use of him with the same freedom that he made the offer, adding, that I should always find I had a true friend, though perhaps I was afraid to trust him. I omitted nothing that was fit to be said by one infinitely obliged, to let him know that I had a due sense of his kindness; and indeed, from that time, I did not appear so much reserved to him as I had done before, though still within the bounds of the strictest virtue on both sides; but how free soever our conversation was, I could not arrive at that sort of freedom which he desired, viz. to tell him I wanted money, though I was secretly very glad of his offer. Some weeks passed after this, and still I never asked him for money; when my landlady, a cun |