Read "Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress" by Daniel Defoe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
THE first satisfaction, however, that I took in the new condition I was in, was in reflecting that at length the life of crime was over, and that I was like a passenger coming back from the Indies, who having, after many years' fatigues and hurry in business, gotten a good estate with innumerable difficulties and hazards, is arrived safe at London with all his effects, and has the pleasure of saying he shall never venture upon the seas any more.
When we were married we came back immediately to my lodgings ( for the church was but just by), and we were so privately married that none but Amy and my friend the Quaker were acquainted with it. As soon as we came into the house he took me in his arms, and kissing me, "Now you are my own," says he. "Oh that you had been so good to have done this eleven years ago." "Then," said I, "perhaps you would have been tired of me long ago; 'tis much better now, for now all our happy days are to come. Besides," said I, "I should not have been half so rich"; but that I said to myself, for there was no letting him into the reason of it. "Oh," says he, "I should not have been tired of you; but besides having the satisfaction of your company, it had saved me that unlucky blow at Paris, which was a dead loss to me of above 8,000 pistoles, and all the fatigues of so many years' hurry and business." And then he added, "But I'll make you pay for it all, now I have you." I started a little at the words. "Ay," said I, "do you threaten already? Pray what d'ye mean by that?" and began to look a little grave.