The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

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 had continued alive together. One evening, as we were

sitting and talking very friendly together under a little awning, which

served 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 agreement 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 my 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.