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
