Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/96

84 Norton, alone created for me any difficulty. It never -seemed to occur to them, that the question was not whether my husband should provide for me; but whether he should cheat me of a covenanted debt, on the quibble that he could not contract with his. That if he had contracted to pay this money to the Duke of Bedford,—instead of to me,—he could not have disputed the debt on the ground that the Duke was already so well off, that it was unnecessary to pay him; even on proof of all the large hospitalities of Woburn. As a matter of justice, the ground taken was simply ridiculous; and perhaps they felt it to be so; for, after vainly arguing that I ought to have spent less, (and so made a sort of nest-egg and provision against the event of my being defrauded); that ground was shifted, and the sources of my income examined into, Mr Norton, who left me, when we first parted, without any provision at all for two years,—who had insisted, at the time of our contract, on a retrospective advantage for himself, through the whole period of our separation,—and who still holds property of mine, which no referee could persuade him to give back;—took, not an average of the past, but such selected years as he pleased, from the banker's books; adding in (as income) the money, still unpaid, which I had borrowed of them; while Mr Needham, not being familiar perhaps with, the lines, —

or not being of the poet's opinion as to the fate of —

"Chi pur sempre

Col sue destin garrisce e col disagio—"

bravely added, that I must make at least 500l. a year by my writings!

All this I could have borne; and almost smiled at it; false and foolish as it was; and wide of the real question, whether Mr Norton should break his written bond or not. But I was not so to be released. " The children of darkness are wiser in their