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The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Page 62

'And now, my dear,' says I to him, 'I am very sorry to tell you, that

there is all, and that I have given you my whole fortune.' I added,

that if the person who had my #600 had not abused me, I had been worth

#1000 to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful to him, and

reserved nothing to myself, but if it had been more he should have had

it.

He was so obliged by the manner, and so pleased with the sum, for he

had been in a terrible fright lest it had been nothing at all, that he

accepted it very thankfully. And thus I got over the fraud of passing

for a fortune without money, and cheating a man into marrying me on

pretence of a fortune; which, by the way, I take to be one of the most

dangerous steps a woman can take, and in which she runs the most hazard

of being ill-used afterwards.

My husband, to give him his due, was a man of infinite good nature, but

he was no fool; and finding his income not suited to the manner of

living which he had intended, if I had brought him what he expected,

and being under a disappointment in his return of his plantations in

Virginia, he discovered many times his inclination of going over to

Virginia, to live upon his own; and often would be magnifying the way

of living there, how cheap, how plentiful, how pleasant, and the like.

I began presently to understand this meaning, and I took him up very

plainly one morning, and told him that I did so; that I found his

estate turned to no account at this distance, compared to what it would

do if he lived upon the spot, and that I found he had a mind to go and

live there; and I added, that I was sensible he had been disappointed

in a wife, and that finding his expectations not answered that way, I

could do no less, to make him amends, than tell him that I was very

willing to go over to Virginia with him and live there.

He said a thousand kind things to me upon the subject of my making such

a proposal to him. He told me, that however he was disappointed in his

expectations of a fortune, he was not disappointed in a wife, and that

I was all to him that a wife could be, and he was more than satisfied

on the whole when the particulars were put together, but that this

offer was so kind, that it was more than he could express.

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