Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/103

Rh at last? Had this Mrs. Manasseh been imposing upon me, and were the words of the wretch I met at the table-d'hôte at Leamington, only meant to mislead me and take me in? I determined to send for my wife, and know the whole truth. I saw at once that I had been the victim of an infernal plot, and that the carriage, the house in town, the West India fortune, were only so many lies which I had blindly believed. It was true the debt was but a hundred and fifty pounds; and I had two thousand at my bankers. But was the loss of her £80,000 nothing? Was the destruction of my hopes nothing?—The accursed addition to my family of a Jewish wife, and three Jewish children nothing? and all these I was to support out of my two thousand pounds. I had better have stopped at home, with my mamma and sisters, whom I really did love, and who produced me eighty pounds a year.

I had a furious interview with Mrs. Stubbs; and when I charged her, the base wretch! with cheating me, like a brazen serpent, as she was, she flung back