When I had shown him all these, I laid them upon the table, and bade him take them, that he might be able to give me an answer to the second question. What fortune he had with his wife? and laughed a little at it.
He looked at them awhile, and then handed them all back again to me: 'I will not touch them', says he, 'nor one of them, till they are settled in trustees' hands for your own use, and the management wholly your own.'
I cannot omit what happened to me while all this was acting; though it was cheerful work in the main, yet I trembled every joint of me, worse for aught I know than ever Belshazzar did at the handwriting on the wall, and the occasion was every way as just. 'Unhappy wretch', said I to myself, 'shall my ill-got wealth, the product of prosperous lust, and of a vile and vicious life of whoredom and adultery, be intermingled with the honest well-gotten estate of this innocent gentleman, to be a moth and a cater pillar among it, and bring the judgments of heaven upon him, and upon what he has, for my sake? Shall my wickedness blast his comforts? Shall I be fire in his flax, and be a means to provoke heaven to curse his blessing? God forbid! I'll keep them asunder if it be possible.'
This is the true reason why I have been so particular in the account of my vast acquired stock; and how his estate, which was perhaps the product of many years' fortunate industry, and which was equal if not superior to mine at best, was, at my request, kept apart from mine, as is mentioned above.
I have told you how he gave back all my writings into my own hands again. 'Well', says I, 'seeing you will have it be kept apart, it shall be so, upon one condition, which I have to propose, and no other.' 'And what is the condition?' says he. 'Why', says I, 'all the pretence I can have for the making over my own estate to me is, that in case of your mortality, I may have it reserved for me, if I outlive you.' 'Well', says he, 'that is true.' 'But then', said I, 'the annual income is always received by the husband, during his life, as 'tis supposed, for the mutual subsistence of the family; now', says I, 'here is £2000 a year, which I believe is as much as we shall spend, and I desire none of it may be saved; and all the income of your own estate, the interest of the £17,000 and the £1320 a year, may be constantly laid by for the increase of your estate; and so', added I, 'by joining the interest every year to the capital you will perhaps grow as rich as you would do if you were to trade with it all, if you were obliged to keep house out of it too.'
He liked the proposal very well , and said it should be so; and this way I, in some measure, satisfied myself that I should not bring my husband under the blast of a just Providence, for mingling my cursed ill-gotten wealth with his honest estate. This was occasioned by the reflections which, at some certain intervals of time, came into my thoughts of the justice of heaven, which I had reason to expect would some time or other still fall upon me or my effects, for the dreadful life I had lived.
And let nobody conclude from the strange success I met with in all my wicked doings, and the vast estate which I had raised by it, that therefore I either was happy or easy. No, no, there was a dart struck into the liver; there was a secret hell within, even all the while, when our joy was at the highest; but more especially now, after it was all over, and when, according to all appearance, I was one of the happiest women upon earth;
