and
wicked course which I had gone through before, but I began to look back
upon it with that horror and that detestation which is the certain
companion, if not the forerunner, of repentance.

Sometimes the wonders of my present circumstances would work upon me,
and I should have some raptures upon my soul, upon the subject of my
coming so smoothly out of the arms of hell, that I was not ingulfed in
ruin, as most who lead such lives are, first or last; but this was a
flight too high for me; I was not come to that repentance that is raised
from a sense of Heaven's goodness; I repented of the crime, but it was
of another and lower kind of repentance, and rather moved by my fears of
vengeance, than from a sense of being spared from being punished, and
landed safe after a storm.

The first thing which happened after our coming to the Hague (where we
lodged for a while) was, that my spouse saluted me one morning with the
title of countess, as he said he intended to do, by having the
inheritance to which the honour was annexed made over to him. It is
true, it was a reversion, but it soon fell, and in the meantime, as all
the brothers of a count are called counts, so I had the title by
courtesy, about three years before I had it in reality.

I was agreeably surprised at this coming so soon, and would have had my
spouse have taken the money which it cost him out of my stock, but he
laughed at me, and went on.

I was now in the height of my glory and prosperity, and I was called the
Countess de ----; for I had obtained that unlooked for, which I secretly
aimed at, and was really the main reason of my coming abroad. I took now
more servants, lived in a kind of magnificence that I had not been
acquainted with, was called "your honour" at every word, and had a
coronet behind my coach; though at the same time I knew little or
nothing of my new pedigree.

The first thing that my spouse took upon him to manage, was to declare
ourselves married eleven years before our arriving in Holland; and
consequently to acknowledge our little son, who was yet in England, to
be legitimate; order him to be brought over, and added to his family,
and acknowledge him to be our own.

This was done by giving notice to his people at Nimeguen, where his
children (which were two sons and a daughter) were brought up, that he
was come over from England, and that he was arrived at the Hague with
his wife, and should reside there some time, and that he w