BECOME PENSIVE AND MELANCHOLY.

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with him, to send him another, and promised that he would marry her I had sent him, to a friend of his, who liked her better than he did; but I took it so ill, that I would not send him another, and withal, stopped another article of 1,000l. which I had appointed to send him. He considered of it afterwards, and offered to take her; but then truly she took so ill the first affront he put upon her, that she would not have him, and I sent him word I thought she was very much in the right. However, after courting her two years, and some friends interposing, she took him, and made him an excellent wife, as I knew she would, but I never sent him the thousand pounds cargo, so that he lost that money for misusing me, and took the lady at last without it.

My new spouse and I lived a very regular contemplative life; and, in itself, certainly a life filled with all human felicity. But if I looked upon my present situation with satisfaction, as I certainly did, so, in proportion, I, on all occasions, looked back on former things with detestation, and with the utmost affliction; and now, indeed, and not till now, those reflections began to prey upon my comforts, and lessen the sweets of my other enjoyments. They might be said to have gnawed a hole in my heart before; but now they made a hole quite through it: now they eat into all my pleasant things, made bitter every sweet, and mixed my sighs with every smile.

Not all the affluence of a plentiful fortune; not a hundred thousand pounds' estate (for, between us, we had little less); not honour and titles, attendants and equipages; in a word, not all the things we call pleasure, could give me any relish, or sweeten the taste of things to me; at least, not so much but I grew sad, heavy, pensive, and melancholy; slept little, and eat little; dreamed continually of the most frightful and terrible things imaginable; nothing but apparitions of devils and monsters, falling into gulfs, and off from steep and high precipices, and the like; so that in the morning, when I should rise, and be refreshed with the blessing of rest, I was hag-ridden with frights and terrible things formed merely in the imagination, and was either tired and wanted sleep, or overrun with vapours, and not fit for conversing with my family, or any one else.

My husband, the tenderest creature in the world, and particularly so to me, was in great concern for me, and did

everything that lay in his power to comfort and restore me; strove to reason me out of it; then tried all the ways possible to divert me: but it was all to no purpose, or to but very little.

My only relief was sometimes to unbosom myself to poor Amy, when she and I was alone; and she did all she could to comfort me: but all was to little effect there; for, though Amy was the better penitent before, when we had been in the storm, Amy was just where she used to be now, a wild, gay, loose wretch, and not much the graver for her age; for Amy was between forty and fifty by this time too.

But to go on with my own story. As I had no comforter, so I had no counsellor; it was well, as I often thought, that I was not a Roman Catholic; for what a piece of work should I have made, to have gone to a priest with such a history as I had to tell him; and what penance would any father confessor have obliged me to perform, especially if he had been honest, and true to his office.

However, as I had none of the recourse, so I had none of the absolution, by which the criminal confessing goes away comforted; but I went about with a heart loaded with crime, and altogether in the dark as to what I was to do; and in this condition I languished near two years. I may well call it languishing, for if Providence had not relieved me, I should have died in little time. But of that hereafter.

I must now go back to another scene, and join it to this end of my story, which will complete all my concern with England, at least all that I shall bring into this account. I have hinted at large what I had done for my two sons, one at Messina, and the other in the Indies.

But I have not gone through the story of my two daughters; I was so in danger of being known by one of them, that I durst not see her, so as to let her know who I was; and for the other, I could not well know how to see her, and own her, and let her see me, because she must then know that I would not let her sister know me, which would look strange; so that, upon the whole, I resolved to see neither of them at all; but Amy managed all that for me; and when she had made gentlewomen of them both, by giving them a good, though late education, she had like to have blown up the whole case, and herself and me too, by an unhappy discovery of herself to the last of them, that is, to her who was our cook.

MY DAUGHTER BELIEVES AMY TO BE HER MOTHER. 235

maid, and who, as I said before, Amy had been obliged to turn away, for fear of the very discovery which now happened. I have observed already in what manner Amy managed her by a third person; and how the girl, when she was set up for a lady, as above, came and visited Amy at my lodgings; after which, Amy going, as was her custom, to see the girl's brother (my son) at the honest man's house in Spitalfields, both the girls were there, merely by accident, at the same time; and the other girl unawares discovered the secret, namely, that this was the lady that had done all this for them.

Amy was greatly surprised at it; but as she saw there was no remedy, she made a jest of it, and so after that conversed openly, being still satisfied that neither of them could make much of it, as long as they knew nothing of me. So she took them together one time, and told them the history, as she called it, of their mother, beginning at the miserable carrying them to their aunt's; she owned she was not their mother herself, but described her to them. However, when she said she was not their mother, one of them expressed herself very much surprised, for the girl had taken up a strong fancy that Amy was really her mother, and that she had, for some particular reasons, concealed it from her; and therefore, when she told her frankly that she was not her mother, the girl fell a crying, and Amy had much ado to keep life in her. This was the girl who was at first my cook-maid in the Pall Mall. When Amy had brought her to again a little, and she had recovered her first disorder, Amy asked what ailed her? the poor girl hung about her, and kissed her, and was in such a passion still, though she was a great wench of nineteen or twenty years old, that she could not be brought to speak a great while; at last, having recovered her speech, she said still, But O do not say you a'n't my mother! I'm sure you are my mother; and then the girl cried again like to kill herself. Amy could not tell what to do with her a good while; she was loath to say again she was not her mother, because she would not throw her into a fit of crying again; but she went round about a little with her: Why, child, says she, why would you have me be your mother? If it be because I am so kind to you, be easy, my dear, says Amy; I'll be as kind to you still, as if I was your mother.

Ay, but, says the girl, I am sure you are my mother too; and what have I done that you won't own me, and that you

will not be called my mother? though I am poor, you have made me a gentlewoman, says she, and I won't do anything to disgrace you; besides, added she, I can keep a secret too, especially for my own mother, sure; then she calls Amy her dear mother, and hung about her neck again, crying still vehemently.

This last part of the girl's words alarmed Amy, and, as she told me, frighted her terribly; nay, she was so confounded with it, that she was not able to govern herself, or to conceal her disorder from the girl herself, as you shall hear. Amy was at a full stop, and confused to the last degree; and the girl, a sharp jade, turned it upon her. My dear mother, says she, do not be uneasy about it; I know it all; but do not be uneasy, I won't let my sister know a word of it, or my brother either, without you giving me leave; but don't disown me now you have found me;' don't hide yourself from me any longer; I can't bear that, says she, it will break my heart.

I think the girl's mad, says Amy; why, child, I tell thee, if I was thy mother I would not disown thee; don't you see I am as kind to you as if I was your mother? Amy might as well have sung a song to a kettledrum, as talk to her. Yes, says the girl, you are very good to me indeed; and that was enough to make anybody believe she was her mother too; but, however, that was not the case, she had other reasons to believe, and to know, that she was her mother; and it was a sad thing she would not let her call her mother, who was her own child.

Amy was so heart-full with the disturbance of it, that she did not enter farther with her into the inquiry, as she would otherwise have done; I mean, as to what made the girl so positive; but comes away, and tells me the whole story.

I was thunderstruck with the story at first, and much more afterwards, as you shall hear; but, I say, I was thunderstruck at first, and amazed, and said to Amy, There must be something or other in it more than we know of; but, having examined farther into it, I found the girl had no notion of anybody but of Amy; and glad I was that I was not concerned in the pretence, and that the girl had no notion of me in it. But even this easiness did not continue long; for the next time Amy went to see her, she was the same thing, and rather more violent with Amy than she was before. Amy

GREATLY ALARMED AT MY DAUGHTER'S DISCOVERIES. 237

endeavoured to pacify her by all the ways imaginable: first, she told her she took it ill that she would not believe her; and told her, if she would not give over such a foolish whimsey, she would leave her to the wide world as she found her.

This put the girl into fits, and she cried ready to kill herself, and hung about Amy again, like a child. Why, says Amy, why can you not be easy with me, then, and compose yourself, and let me go on to do you good, and show you kindness, as I would do, and as I intend to do? Can you think that if I was your mother, I would not tell you so? What whimsey is this that possesses your mind? says Amy. Well, the girl told her, in a few words (but those few such as frighted Amy out of her wits, and me too), that she knew well enough how it was: I know, says she, when you left naming the village, where I lived when my father went away from us all, that you went over to France; I know that too, and who you went with, says the girl; did not my Lady Roxana come back again with you? I know it all well enough, though I was but a child, I have heard it all. And thus she run on with such discourse, as put Amy out of all temper again; and she raved at her like a bedlam, and told her she would never come near her any more; she might go a begging again if she would; she'd have nothing to do with her. The girl, a passionate wench, told her she knew the worst of it, she could go to service again, and if she would not own her own child, she must do as she pleased; then she fell into a passion of crying again, as if she would kill herself.

In short, this girl's conduct terrified Amy to the last degree, and me too; and was it not that we knew the girl was quite wrong in some things, she was yet so right in some other, that it gave me a great deal of perplexity; but that which put Amy the most to it, was, that the girl (my daughter) told her, that she (meaning me, her mother) had gone away with the jeweller, and into France too; she did not call him the jeweller, but with the landlord of the house; who, after her mother fell into distress, and that Amy had taken all the children from her, made much of her, and afterwards married her.

In short, it was plain the girl had but a broken accout of things, but yet that she had received some accounts that had