He was very thick with the widow: but that lady had a very capacious heart, and there were a number of other gentlemen who seemed equally smitten with her. "Look at that Mrs. Manasseh," said a gentleman (it was droll, _he_ was a Jew, too), sitting at dinner by me; "she is old and ugly, and yet because she has money, all the men are flinging themselves at her."
"Eighty thousand pounds, and twenty thousand for each of her children. I know it _for a fact_," said the strange gentleman. "I am in the law, and we, of our faith, you know, know pretty well what the great families amongst us are worth."
"A man of enormous wealth—a tobacco-merchant—West Indies; a fellow of no birth, however; and who, between ourselves, married a woman that is not much better than she should be. My dear sir," whispered he, "she is always in love—now it is with that Captain Dobble; last week it was somebody else; and it may be you next week, if—ha! ha! ha!—you are disposed to enter the lists."
"I wouldn't, for _my_ part, have the woman with twice her money."
What did it matter to me, whether the woman was good or not, provided she was rich? My course was quite clear. I told Dobble all that this gentleman had informed me, and being a pretty good hand at making a story, I made the widow appear _so_ bad, that the poor fellow was quite frightened, and fairly quitted the field. Ha! ha! I'm dashed if I did not make him believe that Mrs. Manasseh had _murdered_ her last husband.
I played my game so well, thanks to the information that my friend the lawyer had given me, that, in a month, I had got the widow to show a most decided partiality for me. I sat by her at dinner; I drank with her at the Wells; I rode with her; I danced with her; and at a pic-nic to Kenilworth, where we drank a good deal of champagne, I actually popped the question, and was accepted. In another month, Robert Stubbs, Esq., led to the altar Leah, widow of the late Z. Manasseh, Esq., of St. Kitt's!
We drove up to London in her comfortable chariot; the children and servants following in a post-chaise. I paid, of course, for everything; and until our house in Berkeley Square was painted, we stopped at Stevens's Hotel.
My own estate had been sold, and the money was lying at a bank, in the city. About three days after our arrival, as we took our breakfast in the hotel, previous to a visit to Mrs. Stubbs's banker, where certain little transfers were to be made, a gentleman was introduced, who, I saw at a glance, was of my wife's persuasion.