quare, which
was to have been mine as the husband of Mrs. Manasseh. What a place!--in
an odious, dismal street leading from Chancery Lane. A hideous Jew boy
opened the second of three doors and shut it when Mr. Nabb and I (almost
fainting) had entered; then he opened the third door, and then I was
introduced to a filthy place called a coffee-room, which I exchanged for
the solitary comfort of a little dingy back-parlor, where I was left for
a while to brood over my miserable fate. Fancy the change between this
and Berkeley Square! Was I, after all my pains, and cleverness, and
perseverance, cheated at last? Had this Mrs. Manasseh been imposing
upon me, and were the words of the wretch I met at the table-d'hote at
Leamington only meant to mislead me and take me in? I determined to send
for my wife, and know the whole truth. I saw at once that I had been the
victim of an infernal plot, and that the carriage, the house in town,
the West India fortune, were only so many lies which I had blindly
believed. It was true that the debt was but a hundred and fifty pounds;
and I had two thousand at my bankers'. But was the loss of HER 80,000L.
nothing? Was the destruction of my hopes nothing? The accursed addition
to my family of a Jewish wife and three Jewish children, nothing? And
all these I was to support out of my two thousand pounds. I had better
have stopped at home with my mamma and sisters, whom I really did love,
and who produced me eighty pounds a year.

I had a furious interview with Mrs. Stubbs; and when I charged her, the
base wretch! with cheating me, like a brazen serpent as she was, she
flung back the cheat in my teeth, and swore I had swindled her. Why did
I marry her, when she might have had twenty others? She only took me,
she said, because I had twenty thousand pounds. I HAD said I possessed
that sum; but in love, you know, and war all's fair.

We parted quite as angrily as we met; and I cordially vowed that when I
had paid the debt into which I had been swindled by her, I would take
my 2,000L. and depart to some desert island; or, at the very least, to
America, and never see her more, or any of her Israelitish brood. There
was no use in remaining in the spunging-house (for I knew that there
were such things as detainers, and that where Mrs. Stubbs owed a hundred
pounds, she might owe a thousand) so I sent for Mr. Nabb, and tendering
him a cheque for 150L. and his costs, requested to be let out forthwith.
"Her