Portia affected to be affronted, and left the court, saying: 'You teach
me, sir, how a beggar should be answered.'

'Dear Bassanio,' said Antonio, 'let him have the ring; let my love and
the great service he has done for me be valued against your wife's
displeasure,' Bassanio, ashamed to appear so ungrateful, yielded, and
sent Gratiano after Portia with the ring; and then the clerk Nerissa,
who had also given Gratiano a ring, she begged his ring, and Gratiano
(not choosing to be outdone in generosity by his lord) gave it to her.
And there was laughing among these ladies to think, when they got
home, how they would tax their husbands with giving away their
rings, and swear that they had given them as a present to some
woman.

Portia, when she returned, was in that happy temper of mind which
never fails to attend the consciousness of having performed a good
action; her cheerful spirits enjoyed everything she saw: the moon
never seemed to shine so bright before; and when that pleasant moon
was hid behind a cloud, then a light which she saw from her house at
Belmont as well pleased her charmed fancy, and she said to Nerissa:
'That light we see is burning in my hall; how far that little candle
throws its beams, so shines a good deed in a naughty world'; and
hearing the sound of music from her house, she said: 'Methinks that
music sounds much sweeter than by day.'

And now Portia and Nerissa entered the house, and dressing
themselves in their own apparel, they awaited the arrival of their
husbands, who soon followed them with Antonio; and Bassanio
presenting his dear friend to the lady Portia, the congratulations and
welcomings of that lady were hardly over, when they perceived