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.
It is impossible to express his surprise at this relation, and the
double importunity which he used with me to discover it to him.
He told me I could not be called kind to him, nay, I could not
be faithful to him if I concealed it from him. I told him I thought
so too, and yet I could not do it. He went back to what I had
said before to him, and told me he hoped it did not relate to
what I had said in my passion, and that he had resolved to
forget all that as the effect of a rash, provoked spirit. I told
him I wished I could forget it all too, but that it was not to be
done, the impression was too deep, and I could not do it: it
was impossible.
He then told me he was resolved not to differ with me in
anything, and that therefore he would importune me no more
about it, resolving to acquiesce in whatever I did or said; only
begged I should then agree, that whatever it was, it should no
more interrupt our quiet and our mutual kindness.
This was the most provoking thing he could have said to me,
for I really wanted his further importunities, that I might be
prevailed with to bring out that which indeed it was like death
to me to conceal; so I answered him plainly that I could not
say I was glad not to be importuned, thought I could not tell
how to comply. ‘But come, my dear,’ said I, ‘what conditions
will you make with me upon the opening this affair to you?’
‘Any conditions in the world,’ said he, ‘that you can in reason
desire of me.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘come, give it me under your
hand, that if you do not find I am in any fault, or that I am
willingly concerned in the causes of the misfortune that is to
follow, you will not blame me, use me the worse, do my any
injury, or make me be the sufferer for that which is not my fault.’
‘That,’ says he, ‘is the most reasonable demand in the world: