ou came to be so little squeamish about
a wife, as to choose a woman who had just been making love to your own
son?" says Deuceace, growing fierce.

"How can you ask such a question? I owe forty thousand pounds--there
is an execution at Sizes Hall--every acre I have is in the hands of
my creditors; and that's why I married her. Do you think there was any
love? Lady Crabs is a dev'lish fine woman, but she's not a fool--she
married me for my coronet, and I married her for her money."

"Well, my lord, you need not ask me, I think, why I married the
daughter-in-law."

"Yes, but I DO, my dear boy. How the deuce are you to live? Dawkins's
five thousand pounds won't last forever; and afterwards?"

"You don't mean, my lord--you don't--I mean, you can't-- D---!" says he,
starting up, and losing all patience, "you don't dare to say that Miss
Griffin had not a fortune of ten thousand a year?"

My lord was rolling up, and wetting betwigst his lips, another segar; he
lookt up, after he had lighted it, and said quietly--

"Certainly, Miss Griffin had a fortune of ten thousand a year."

"Well, sir, and has she not got it now? Has she spent it in a week?"

"SHE HAS NOT GOT A SIX-PENCE NOW: SHE MARRIED WITHOUT HER MOTHER'S
CONSENT!"

Deuceace sunk down in a chair; and I never see such a dreadful picture
of despair as there was in the face of that retchid man!--he writhed,
and nasht his teeth, he tore open his coat, and wriggled madly the stump
of his left hand, until, fairly beat, he threw it over his livid pale
face, and sinking backwards, fairly wept alowd.

Bah! it's a dreddfle thing to hear a man crying! his pashn torn up from
the very roots of his heart, as it must be before it can git such a
vent. My lord, meanwhile, rolled his segar, lighted it, and went on.

"My dear boy, the girl has not a shilling. I wished to have left you
alone in peace, with your four thousand pounds: you might have lived
decently upon it in Germany, where money is at 5 per cent, where your
duns would not find you, and a couple of hundred a year would have kept
you and your wife in comfort. But, you see, Lady Crabs would not listen
to it. You had injured her; and, after she had tried to kill you and
failed, she determined to ruin you, and succeeded. I must own to you
that I directed the arresting business, and put her up to buying your
protested bills: she got them for a trifle, and as you have paid them,
has made a good two thousand pounds by h