The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

In their 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 anything like it, but so as not to be

able to resolve what we should do to make up that 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 frighted to the last degree at the very thoughts of it; but

I bid her be easy, told her I would do it gradually and softly, and

with all the art and good-humour I was mistress of, 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 design, and we might

part by consent, and with a good agreement, for I might live 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, which

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 so 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

affections might be renewed, and we might lie together in a good

understanding as we used to do.