and alter our scheme of settling, for that I found I should be known if
I stayed in that part of the country; for that my mother being dead,
several of my relations were come into that part where we then was, and
that I must either discover myself to them, which in our present
circumstances was not proper on many accounts, or remove; and which to
do I knew not, and that this it was that made me so melancholy and so
thoughtful.

He joined with me in this, that it was by no means proper for me to
make myself known to anybody in the circumstances in which we then
were; and therefore he told me he would be willing to remove to any
other part of the country, or even to any other country if I thought
fit. But now I had another difficulty, which was, that if I removed to
any other colony, I put myself out of the way of ever making a due
search after those effects which my mother had left. Again I could
never so much as think of breaking the secret of my former marriage to
my new husband; it was not a story, as I thought, that would bear
telling, nor could I tell what might be the consequences of it; and it
was impossible to search into the bottom of the thing without making it
public all over the country, as well who I was, as what I now was also.

In this perplexity I continued a great while, and this made my spouse
very uneasy; for he found me perplexed, and yet thought I was not open
with him, and did not let him into every part of my grievance; and he
would often say, he wondered what he had done that I would not trust
him with whatever it was, especially if it was grievous and afflicting.
The truth is, he ought to have been trusted with everything, for no man
in the world could deserve better of a wife; but this was a thing I
knew not how to open to him, and yet having nobody to disclose any part
of it to, the burthen was too heavy for my mind; for let them say what
they please of our sex not being able to keep a secret, my life is a
plain conviction to me of the contrary; but be it our sex, or the man's
sex, a secret of moment should always have a confidant, a bosom friend,
to whom we may communicate the joy of it, or the grief of it, be it
which it will, or it will be a double weight upon the spirits, and
perhaps become even insupportable in itself; and this I appeal to all
human testimony for the truth of.

And this is the cause why many times men as well as women, and men of
the greatest and best qualities other