Well, let her life have been what it would then, it was certain that my
life was very uneasy to me; for I lived, as I have said, but in the
worst sort of whoredom, and as I could expect no good of it, so really
no good issue came of it, and all my seeming prosperity wore off, and
ended in misery and destruction. It was some time, indeed, before it
came to this, for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything
went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband
grew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind, and I was as
impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage was unreasonable and
unjust. These things proceeded so far, that we came at last to be in
such ill terms with one another, that I claimed a promise of him, which
he entered willingly into with me when I consented to come from England
with him, viz. that if I found the country not to agree with me, or
that I did not like to live there, I should come away to England again
when I pleased, giving him a year's warning to settle his affairs.
I say, I now claimed this promise of him, and I must confess I did it
not in the most obliging terms that could be in the world neither; but
I insisted that he treated me ill, that I was remote from my friends,
and could do myself no justice, and that he was jealous without cause,
my conversation having been unblamable, and he having no pretense for
it, and that to remove to England would take away all occasion from him.
I insisted so peremptorily upon it, that he could not avoid coming to a
point, either to keep his word with me or to break it; and this,
notwithstanding he used all the skill he was master of, and employed
his mother and other agents to prevail with me to alter my resolutions;
indeed, the bottom of the thing lay at my heart, and that made all his
endeavours fruitless, for my heart was alienated from him as a husband.
I loathed the thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand
pretenses of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing
nothing more than to be with child by him, which to be sure would have
prevented, or at least delayed, my going over to England.
However, at last I put him so out of humour, that he took up a rash and
fatal resolution; in short, I should not go to England; and though he
had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable thing for me to desire it;
that it would be ruinous to his affairs, would unhinge his whole
family, and be next to an undoing him in the world; that therefore I
ought not to desire it of him, and that no wife in the world that
valued her family and her husband's prosperity would insist upon such a
thing.