any's health. The
country, to be sure, talked and wondered at my lady's being shut up,
but nobody chose to interfere or ask any impertinent questions, for they
knew my master was a man very apt to give a short answer himself, and
likely to call a man out for it afterwards: he was a famous shot, had
killed his man before he came of age, and nobody scarce dared look at
him whilst at Bath. Sir Kit's character was so well known in the
country that he lived in peace and quietness ever after, and was a great
favourite with the ladies, especially when in process of time, in
the fifth year of her confinement, my Lady Rackrent fell ill and took
entirely to her bed, and he gave out that she was now skin and bone,
and could not last through the winter. In this he had two physicians'
opinions to back him (for now he called in two physicians for her), and
tried all his arts to get the diamond cross from her on her death-bed,
and to get her to make a will in his favour of her separate possessions;
but there she was too tough for him. He used to swear at her behind her
back after kneeling to her face, and call her in the presence of his
gentleman his stiff-necked Israelite, though before he married her that
same gentleman told me he used to call her (how he could bring it out,
I don't know) 'my pretty Jessica!' To be sure it must have been hard for
her to guess what sort of a husband he reckoned to make her. When she
was lying, to all expectation, on her death-bed of a broken heart, I
could not but pity her, though she was a Jewish, and considering too it
was no fault of hers to be taken with my master, so young as she was at
the Bath, and so fine a gentleman as Sir Kit was when he courted her;
and considering too, after all they had heard and seen of him as a
husband, there were now no less than three ladies in our county talked
of for his second wife, all at daggers drawn with each other, as his
gentleman swore, at the balls, for Sir Kit for their partner--I could
not but think them bewitched, but they all reasoned with themselves
that Sir Kit would make a good husband to any Christian but a Jewish,
I suppose, and especially as he was now a reformed rake; and it was not
known how my lady's fortune was settled in her will, nor how the Castle
Rackrent estate was all mortgaged, and bonds out against him, for he was
never cured of his gaming tricks; but that was the only fault he had,
God bless him!

My lady had a sort of fit, and it wa