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.

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 b