not to blame you for that which is not your fault. Give me a
pen and ink,’ says he; so I ran in and fetched a pen, ink, and
paper, and he wrote the condition down in the very words I
had proposed it, and signed it with his name. “Well,’ says he,
‘what is next, my dear?’
‘Why,’ says I, ‘the next is, that you will not blame me for not
discovering the secret of it to you before I knew it.’
‘Very just again,’ says he; ‘with all my heart’; so he wrote
down that also, and signed it.
‘Well, my dear,’ says I, ‘then I have but one condition more
to make with you, and that is, that as there is nobody concerned
in it but you and I, you shall not discover it to any person in
the world, except your own mother; and that in all the measures
you shall take upon the discovery, as I am equally concerned
in it with you, though as innocent as yourself, you shall do
nothing in a passion, nothing to my prejudice or to your
mother’s prejudice, without my knowledge and consent.’
This a little amazed him, and he wrote down the words distinctly,
but read them over and over before he signed them,
hesitating at them several times, and repeating them: “My
mother’s prejudice! and your prejudice! What mysterious thing
can this be?’ However, at last he signed it.
‘Well, says I, ‘my dear, I’ll ask you no more under your hand;
but as you are to hear the most unexpected and surprising thing
that perhaps ever befell any family in the world, I beg you to
promise me you will receive it with composure and a presence
of mind suitable to a man of sense.’
‘I’ll do my utmost,’ says he, ‘upon condition you will keep me
no longer in suspense, for you terrify me with all these
preliminaries.’
“Well, then,’ says I, ‘it is this: as I told you before in a heat,
that I was not your lawful wife, and that our children were not
legal children, so I must let you know now in calmness and in
kindness, but with affliction enough, that I am your own sister,
and you my own brother, and that we are both the children of
our mother now alive, and in the house, who is convinced of
the truth of it, in a manner not to be denied or contradicted.’
I saw him turn pale and look wild; and I said, ‘Now remember
your promise, and receive it with presence of mind; for who
could have said more to prepare you for it than I have done?
However, I called a servant, and got him a little glass of rum
(which is the usual dram of that country), for he was just
fainting away. When he was a little recovered, I said to him,
‘This story, you may be sure, requires a long explanation, and
therefore, have patience and compose your mind to hear it out,
and I’ll make it as short as I can’; and with this, I told him
what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how
my mother came to discover it to me, as above. ‘And now,
my dear,’ says I, ‘you will see reason for my capitulations,
and that I neither have been the cause of this matter, nor could
be so, and that I could know nothing of it before now.’
‘I am fully satisfied of that,’ says he, ‘but ’tis a dreadful surprise
to me; however, I know a remedy for it all, and a remedy
that shall put an end to your difficulties, without your going to
England.’ ‘That would be strange,’ said I, ‘as all the rest.’
‘No, no,’ says he, ‘I’ll make it easy; there’s nobody in the way
of it but myself.’ He looked a little disordered when he said
this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at that time,
believing, as it used to be said, that they who do those things
never talk of them, or that they who talk of such things never
do them.
But things were not come to their height with him, and I