ide and vanity? In short, have you inquired whether you are
able to keep her?

"II. You have married a wife here, and given her a great many fine
things, and you maintain her like a princess, and sometimes call her so.
Pray what portion have you had with her? what fortune has she been to
you? and where does her estate lie, that you keep her so fine? I am
afraid that you keep her in a figure a great deal above her estate, at
least above all that you have seen of it yet. Are you sure you han't got
a bite, and that you have not made a beggar a lady?"

"Well," says he, "have you any more questions to ask? Let's have them
all together; perhaps they may be all answered in a few words, as well
as these two." "No," says I, "these are the two grand questions--at
least for the present." "Why, then," says he, "I'll answer you in a few
words; that I am fully master of my own circumstances, and, without
farther inquiry, can let my wife you speak of know, that as I have made
her a lady I can maintain her as a lady, wherever she goes with me; and
this whether I have one pistole of her portion, or whether she has any
portion or no; and as I have not inquired whether she has any portion or
not, so she shall not have the less respect showed her from me, or be
obliged to live meaner, or be anyways straitened on that account; on the
contrary, if she goes abroad to live with me in my own country, I will
make her more than a lady, and support the expense of it too, without
meddling with anything she has; and this, I suppose," says he, "contains
an answer to both your questions together."

He spoke this with a great deal more earnestness in his countenance than
I had when I proposed my questions, and said a great many kind things
upon it, as the consequence of former discourses, so that I was obliged
to be in earnest too. "My dear," says I, "I was but in jest in my
questions; but they were proposed to introduce what I am going to say to
you in earnest; namely, that if I am to go abroad, 'tis time I should
let you know how things stand, and what I have to bring you with your
wife; how it is to be disposed and secured, and the like; and therefore
come," says I, "sit down, and let me show you your bargain here; I hope
you will find that you have not got a wife without a fortune."

He told me then, that since he found I was in earnest, he desired that I
would adjourn it till to-morrow, and then we would do as the poor people
do after they marr