, so I have no reason to blame you if you have nothing at
all.'

'That's is so just,' said I, 'and so generous, that it makes my having
but a little a double affliction to me.'

'The less you have, my dear,' says he, 'the worse for us both; but I
hope your affliction you speak of is not caused for fear I should be
unkind to you, for want of a portion. No, no, if you have nothing,
tell me plainly, and at once; I may perhaps tell the captain he has
cheated me, but I can never say you have cheated me, for did you not
give it under your hand that you were poor? and so I ought to expect
you to be.'

'Well,' said I, 'my dear, I am glad I have not been concerned in
deceiving you before marriage. If I deceive you since, 'tis ne'er the
worse; that I am poor is too true, but not so poor as to have nothing
neither'; so I pulled out some bank bills, and gave him about #160.
'There's something, my dear,' said I, 'and not quite all neither.'

I had brought him so near to expecting nothing, by what I had said
before, that the money, though the sum was small in itself, was doubly
welcome to him; he owned it was more than he looked for, and that he
did not question by my discourse to him, but that my fine clothes, gold
watch, and a diamond ring or two, had been all my fortune.

I let him please himself with that #160 two or three days, and then,
having been abroad that day, and as if I had been to fetch it, I
brought him #100 more home in gold, and told him there was a little
more portion for him; and, in short, in about a week more I brought him
#180 more, and about #60 in linen, which I made him believe I had been
obliged to take with the #100 which I gave him in gold, as a
composition for a debt of #600, being little more than five shillings
in the pound, and overvalued too.

'And now, my dear,' says I to him, 'I am very sorry to tell you, that
there is all, and that I have given you my whole fortune.' I added,
that if the person who had my #600 had not abused me, I had been worth
#1000 to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful to him, and
reserved nothing to myself, but if it had been more he should have had
it.

He was so obliged by the manner, and so pleased with the sum, for he
had been in a terrible fright lest it had been nothing at all, that he
accepted it very thankfully. And thus I got over the fraud of passing
for a fortune without money, and cheating a man into marrying me on
pretence of a fortune; whic