I forget what
sign it was at.

Here my spouse, talking of my going to Ireland, asked me if I had no
affairs to settle at London before we went off. I told him No, not of
any great consequence, but what might be done as well by letter from
Dublin. 'Madam,' says he, very respectfully, 'I suppose the greatest
part of your estate, which my sister tells me is most of it in money in
the Bank of England, lies secure enough, but in case it required
transferring, or any way altering its property, it might be necessary
to go up to London and settle those things before we went over.'

I seemed to look strange at it, and told him I knew not what he meant;
that I had no effects in the Bank of England that I knew of; and I
hoped he could not say that I had ever told him I had. No, he said, I
had not told him so, but his sister had said the greatest part of my
estate lay there. 'And I only mentioned it, me dear,' said he, 'that
if there was any occasion to settle it, or order anything about it, we
might not be obliged to the hazard and trouble of another voyage back
again'; for he added, that he did not care to venture me too much upon
the sea.

I was surprised at this talk, and began to consider very seriously what
the meaning of it must be; and it presently occurred to me that my
friend, who called him brother, had represented me in colours which
were not my due; and I thought, since it was come to that pitch, that I
would know the bottom of it before I went out of England, and before I
should put myself into I knew not whose hands in a strange country.

Upon this I called his sister into my chamber the next morning, and
letting her know the discourse her brother and I had been upon the
evening before, I conjured her to tell me what she had said to him, and
upon what foot it was that she had made this marriage. She owned that
she had told him that I was a great fortune, and said that she was told
so at London. 'Told so!' says I warmly; 'did I ever tell you so?' No,
she said, it was true I did not tell her so, but I had said several
times that what I had was in my own disposal. 'I did so,' returned I
very quickly and hastily, 'but I never told you I had anything called a
fortune; no, not that I had #100, or the value of #100, in the world.
Any how did it consist with my being a fortune,' said I, 'that I should
come here into the north of England with you, only upon the account of
living cheap?' At these words, which I sp