Page:Moll Flanders (1906 edition).djvu/418

386 she thought Amy had found some way to persuade her to be quiet and easy, and to give over teasing and following me, and rejoiced in it for my sake; as she thought nothing of any evil herself, so she suspected none in anybody else, and was exceeding glad of having such good news to write to me; but my thoughts of it run otherwise.

I was struck, as with a blast from heaven, at the reading her letter; I fell into a fit of trembling from head to foot, and I ran raving about the room like a mad woman. I had nobody to speak a word to, to give vent to my passion; nor did I speak a word for a good while, till after it had almost overcome me. I threw myself on the bed, and cried out, 'Lord, be merciful to me, she has murdered my child!'; and with that a flood of tears burst out, and I cried vehemently for above an hour.

My husband was very happily gone out a-hunting, so that I had the opportunity of being alone, and to give my passions some vent, by which I a little recovered myself. But, after my crying was over, then I fell in a new rage at Amy; I called her a thousand devils and monsters and hard-hearted tigers; I reproached her with her knowing that I abhorred it, and had let her know it sufficiently, in that I had, as it were, kicked her out of doors, after so many years' friendship and service, only for naming it to me.

Well, after some time, my spouse came in from his sport, and I put on the best looks I could to deceive him; but he did not take so little notice of me as not to see I had been crying, and that something troubled me, and he pressed me to tell him. I seemed to bring it out with reluctance, but told him my backwardness was more because I was ashamed that such a trifle should have any effect upon me, than for any weight that was in it; so I told him I had been vexing myself about my woman Amy's not coming again; that she might have known me better than not to believe I should have been friends with her again, and the like; and that, in short, I had lost the best servant by my rashness that ever woman had.

'Well, well', says he, 'if that be all your grief, I hope you will soon shake it off; I'll warrant you, in a little while we shall hear of Mrs Amy again.' And so it went off for that time. But it did not go off with me; for I was uneasy and terrified to the last degree, and wanted to get some farther account of the thing. So I went away to my sure and certain comforter, the Quaker, and there I had the whole story of it; and the good, innocent Quaker gave me joy of my being rid of such an unsufferable tormentor.

'Rid of her! Ay', says I, 'if I was rid of her fairly and honourably; but I don't know what Amy may have done. Sure, she ha'n't made her away?' 'Oh fie! I says my Quaker; 'how canst thou entertain such a notion! No, no. Made her away? Amy didn't talk like that; I dare say thou may'st be easy in that; Amy has nothing of that in her head, I dare say', says she; and so threw it, as it were, out of my thoughts.

But it would not do; it run in my head continually; night and day I could think of nothing else; and it fixed such a horror of the fact upon my spirits, and such a detestation of Amy, who I looked upon as the murderer, that, as for her, I believe, if I could have seen her, I should certainly have sent her to Newgate, or to a worse place, upon suspicion; indeed, I think I could have killed her with my own hands. As for the poor girl herself, she was ever before my eyes; I saw her