_waist and ixtravygance_ which I _prophycied_ would be your ruin.
Such waist and ixtravygance never, never, never did I see. Buttar
waisted as if it had been dirt, coles flung away, candles burnt _at
both ends_, tea and meat the same. The butcher's bill in this house
was enough to support six famalies.

"And now you have the audassaty, being placed in prison justly for
your crimes,--for cheating me of 3,000_l_., for robbing your mother of
an insignificient summ, which to her, poor thing, was everything
(though she will not feel her loss as I do, being all her life next
door to a beggar), for incurring detts which you cannot pay, wherein
you knew that your miserable income was quite unable to support your
ixtravygance--you come upon me to pay your detts! No, sir, it is
quite enough that your mother should go on the parish, and that your
wife should sweep the streets, to which you have indeed brought them;
_I_, at least, though cheated by you of a large summ, and obliged to
pass my days in comparative ruin, can retire, and have some of the
comforts to which my rank entitles me. The furnitur in this house is
mine; and as I presume you intend _your lady_ to sleep in the streets,
I give you warning that I shall remove it all tomorrow.

"Mr. Smithers will tell you that I had intended to leave you my intire
fortune. I have this morning, in his presents, solamly toar up my
will; and hereby renounce all connection with you and your beggarly
family.

"SUSAN HOGGARTY.

"P.S.--I took a viper into my bosom, _and it stung me_."

I confess that, on the first reading of this letter, I was in such a fury
that I forgot almost the painful situation in which it plunged me, and
the ruin hanging over me.

"What a fool you were, Titmarsh, to write that letter!" said Mr.
Smithers. "You have cut your own throat, sir,--lost a fine
property,--written yourself out of five hundred a year. Mrs. Hoggarty,
my client, brought the will, as she says, downstairs, and flung it into
the fire before our faces."

"It's a blessing that your wife was from home," added Gus. "She went to
church this morning with Dr. Salt's family, and sent word that she would
spend the day with them. She was always glad to be away from Mrs. H.,
you know."

"She never knew on which side her bread was buttered," said Mr. Smithers.
"You should have taken the lady when she was in the humour, sir