The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

This was news too good for me to make light of, and, you may be sure,

filled my heart with a thousand thoughts, what course I should take,

how, and when, and in what manner I should make myself known, or

whether I should ever make myself know or no.

Here was a perplexity that I had not indeed skill to manage myself in,

neither knew I what course to take. It lay heavy upon my mind night

and day. I could neither sleep nor converse, so that my husband

perceived it, and wondered what ailed me, strove to divert me, but it

was all to no purpose. He pressed me to tell him what it was troubled

me, but I put it off, till at last, importuning me continually, I was

forced to form a story, which yet had a plain truth to lay it upon too.

I told him I was troubled because I found we must shift our quarters

and alter our scheme of settling, for that I found I should be known if

I stayed in that part of the country; for that my mother being dead,

several of my relations were come into that part where we then was, and

that I must either discover myself to them, which in our present

circumstances was not proper on many accounts, or remove; and which to

do I knew not, and that this it was that made me so melancholy and so

thoughtful.

He joined with me in this, that it was by no means proper for me to

make myself known to anybody in the circumstances in which we then

were; and therefore he told me he would be willing to remove to any

other part of the country, or even to any other country if I thought

fit. But now I had another difficulty, which was, that if I removed to

any other colony, I put myself out of the way of ever making a due

search after those effects which my mother had left. Again I could

never so much as think of breaking the secret of my former marriage to

my new husband; it was not a story, as I thought, that would bear

telling, nor could I tell what might be the consequences of it; and it

was impossible to search into the bottom of the thing without making it

public all over the country, as well who I was, as what I now was also.

In this perplexity I continued a great while, and this made my spouse

very uneasy; for he found me perplexed, and yet thought I was not open

with him, and did not let him into every part of my grievance; and he

would often say, he wondered what he had done that I would not trust

him with whatever it was, especially if it was grievous and afflicting.

The truth is, he ought to have been trusted with everything, for no man

in the world could deserve better of a wife; but this was a thing I

knew not how to open to him, and yet having nobody to disclose any part

of it to, the burthen was too heavy for my mind; for let them say what

they please of our sex not being able to keep a secret, my life is a

plain conviction to me of the contrary; but be it our sex, or the man's

sex, a secret of moment should always have a confidant, a bosom friend,

to whom we may communicate the joy of it, or the grief of it, be it

which it will, or it will be a double weight upon the spirits, and

perhaps become even insupportable in itself; and this I appeal to all

human testimony for the truth of.