Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/96

82 He was very thick with the widow; but that lady had a very capacious heart, and there were a number of other gentlemen who seemed equally smitten with her. "Look at that Mrs. Manasseh," said a gentleman (it was droll, he was a Jew, too), sitting at dinner by me; "she is old, and ugly, and, yet, because she has money, all the men are flinging themselves at her."

"She has money, has she?"

Eighty thousand pounds, and twenty thousand for each of her children; I know it for a fact," said the strange gentleman. "I am in the law, and we, of our faith, you know, know pretty well what the great families amongst us are worth."

"Who was Mr. Manasseh?" said I.

"A man of enormous wealth—a tobacco merchant—West Indies; a fellow of no birth, however; and who, between ourselves, married a woman that is not much better than she should be. My dear sir," whispered he, "she is always in love—now it is with that Captain Dobble; last week it was somebody else—and