"Isn't it clear, Mr. D.," said she, "that when marrying a woman with a large fortune he ought to have something himself?"
"It would be better he had; no doubt of it!"
"And if he has n't? if what should have come to him was squandered and made away with by a life of—No matter, I'll restrain my feelings."
"Don't, then," said I, "for I find that mine would like a little expansion."
It took her five minutes, and a hard struggle besides, before she could resume. She had, so to say, "taken off the gloves," Tom, and it went hard with her not to have a few "rounds" for her pains. By degrees, however, she calmed down to explain that by a settlement on James she never contemplated actual value, but an inconvertible medium, a mere parchmentary figment to represent lands and tenements,—just, in fact, what we had done before, and with such memorable success, in Mary Anne's case.
"No," said I, aloud, and at once,—"no more of that humbug! You got me into that mess before I knew where I was. You involved me in such a maze of embarrassments that I was glad to take any, even a bad road, to get away from them. But you 'll not catch me in the same scrape again; and rather than deliberately sit down to sign, seal, and deliver myself a swindler, James must die a bachelor, that's all!"
If I had told her, Tom, that I was going into holy orders, and intended to be Bishop of Madagascar, she could not have stared at me with more surprise.
"What's come over you?" said she, at last; "what 's the meaning of all these elegant fine sentiments and scruples? Are you going to die, Mr. D.? Is it making your soul you are?"
"However unmannerly the confession, Mrs. D.," said I, "I 'm afraid I 'm not going to die; but the simple truth is that I can't be a rogue in cold blood; maybe, if I had the luck to be born a M'Carthy, I might have had better ideas on the subject." This was a poke at Morgan James M'Carthy that was transported for altering a will.
She could n't speak with passion; she was struck dumb with rage, and so, finding the enemy's artillery spiked, I opened a brisk fire at musket-range; in other words, I told her that all we had been hitherto doing abroad rarely went beyond making ourselves ridiculous, but that, though I liked fun, I could n't push a joke as far as a felony. And, finally, I declared, in a loud and very unmistakable manner, that as I had n't a sixpence to settle on James, I 'd not go through the mockery of engrossing a lie on parchment; that I thought very meanly of the whole farce we were carrying on; and that if I was only sure I could make myself intelligible in my French, I 'd just go straight to the Countess and say,—I 'm afraid to write the words as I spoke them, lest my spelling should be even worse than my pronunciation, for they were in French, but the meaning was,—"I 'm no more a Prince than I 'm Primate of Ireland. I 'm a small country gentleman, with an embarrassed estate and a rascally tenantry. I came abroad for economy, and it has almost ruined me. If you like my son, there he is for you; but don't flatter yourself that we possess either nobility or fortune."