undred thousand
pounds estate (for, between us, we had little less); not honour and
titles, attendants and equipages; in a word, not all the things we call
pleasure, could give me any relish, or sweeten the taste of things to
me; at least, not so much but I grew sad, heavy, pensive, and
melancholy; slept little, and ate little; dreamed continually of the
most frightful and terrible things imaginable: nothing but apparitions
of devils and monsters, falling into gulfs, and off from steep and high
precipices, and the like; so that in the morning, when I should rise,
and be refreshed with the blessing of rest, I was hag-ridden with
frights and terrible things formed merely in the imagination, and was
either tired and wanted sleep, or overrun with vapours, and not fit for
conversing with my family, or any one else.

My husband, the tenderest creature in the world, and particularly so to
me, was in great concern for me, and did everything that lay in his
power to comfort and restore me; strove to reason me out of it; then
tried all the ways possible to divert me: but it was all to no purpose,
or to but very little.

My only relief was sometimes to unbosom myself to poor Amy, when she and
I was alone; and she did all she could to comfort me. But all was to
little effect there; for, though Amy was the better penitent before,
when we had been in the storm, Amy was just where she used to be now, a
wild, gay, loose wretch, and not much the graver for her age; for Amy
was between forty and fifty by this time too.

But to go on with my own story. As I had no comforter, so I had no
counsellor; it was well, as I often thought, that I was not a Roman
Catholic; for what a piece of work should I have made, to have gone to a
priest with such a history as I had to tell him; and what penance would
any father confessor have obliged me to perform, especially if he had
been honest, and true to his office!

However, as I had none of the recourse, so I had none of the absolution,
by which the criminal confessing goes away comforted; but I went about
with a heart loaded with crime, and altogether in the dark as to what I
was to do; and in this condition I languished near two years. I may well
call it languishing, for if Providence had not relieved me, I should
have died in little time. But of that hereafter.

I must now go back to another scene, and join it to this end of my
story, which will complete all my concern with England, at least al