Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/58

44 affairs in her own hands and showing great tact and ability in the management of them. It was but natural that a widow of such wealth and position should be sought in marriage, and Manu Jan Khanum was not without suitors. Among them was Nawab Khan Jahan Khan of Hooghly but, suspecting his motives, she replied to the messengers whom he sent with the offer of his hand. "Affection is greater than wealth. You have not been able to offer me the greater, how therefore can I give you the less?"

With advancing years, however, the management of her vast estates became too heavy a burden for her. Her thoughts naturally turned to the stepbrother, the companion of her youth, from whom she had been so long parted, and she resolved to summon him from Murshidabad and entrust the whole of her property to his management. It was only on her earnest solicitations that Mahomed Moshin was prevailed upon to leave his retreat at Murshidabad. Feeling, that it was his duty to come to her assistance, he gave up the life of study and seclusion that he had marked out for himself, and came to Hooghly to undertake the arduous duties of manager of his half-sister's great estates. The years that followed must have been busy ones for Mahomed Mohsin, very different from those that he had spent wandering from city to city with no worldly cares to harass him. The knowledge of the help he was enabled to render to his sister and the pleasure of her society were,