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his power, or any other villain's, to murder me. I confess at
the same time I was heartily frighted at his thoughts of putting
me into a madhouse, which would at once have destroyed all
the possibility of breaking the truth out, whatever the occasion
might be; for that then no one would have given credit to a
word of it.

This therefore brought me to a resolution, whatever came of
it, to lay open my whole case; but which way to do it, or to
whom, was an inextricable difficulty, and took me many months
to resolve. In the meantime, another quarrel with my husband
happened, which came up to such a mad extreme as almost
pushed me on to tell it him all to his face; but though I kept it
in so as not to come to the particulars, I spoke so much as put
him into the utmost confusion, and in the end brought out the
whole story.

He began with a calm expostulation upon my being so resolute
to go to England; I defended it, and one hard word bringing
on another, as is usual in all family strife, he told me I did not
treat him as if he was my husband, or talk of my children as if
I was a mother; and, in short, that I did not deserve to be used
as a wife; that he had used all the fair means possible with me;
that he had argued with all the kindness and calmness that a
husband or a Christian ought to do, and that I made him such
a vile return, that I treated him rather like a dog than a man,
and rather like the most contemptible stranger than a husband;
that he was very loth to use violence with me, but that, in short,
he saw a necessity of it now, and that for the future he should
be obliged to take such measures as should reduce me to my
duty.

My blood was now fired to the utmost, though I knew what
he had said was very true, and nothing could appear more
provoked. I told him, for his fair means and his foul, they
were equally contemned by me; that for my going to England,
I was resolved on it, come what would; and that as to treating
him not like a husband, and not showing myself a mother to
my children, there might be something more in it than he
understood at present; but, for his further consideration, I
thought fit to tell him thus much, that he neither was my lawful
husband, nor they lawful children, and that I had reason to
regard neither of them more than I did.

I confess I was moved to pity him when I spoke it, for he
turned pale as death, and stood mute as one thunderstruck,
and once or twice I thought he would have fainted; in short,
it put him in a fit something like an apoplex; he trembled, a
sweat or dew ran off his face, and yet he was cold as a clod,

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