"'Partnership!' cried I, falling on my knees. 'Noble, generous man!'

"'Stay a bit,' continued my father-in-law. 'What funds do you think
requisite for carrying on a bank? You look puzzled! Not a shilling!
You will put in just as much as I do. You will put in rather more; for
you once put in L500, which has been spent long ago. I don't put in a
shilling of my own. I live on my clients, and I very willingly offer you
half of them!'

"Imagine, dear Paul, my astonishment, my dismay! I saw myself married to
a hideous shrew,--son-in-law to a penniless scoundrel, and cheated out of
my whole fortune! Compare this view of the question with that which had
blazed on me when I contemplated being son-in-law to the rich Mr.
Asgrave. I stormed at first. Mr. Asgrave took up Bacon 'On the
Advancement of Learning,' and made no reply till I was cooled by
explosion. You will perceive that when passion subsided, I necessarily
saw that nothing was left for me but adopting my father-in-law's
proposal. Thus, by the fatality which attended me at the very time I
meant to reform, I was forced into scoundrelism, and I was driven into
defrauding a vast number of persons by the accident of being son-in-law
to a great moralist. As Mr. Asgrave was an indolent man, who passed his
mornings in speculations on virtue, I was made the active partner. I
spent the day at the counting-house; and when I came home for recreation,
my wife scratched my eyes out."

"But were you never recognized as 'the stranger' or 'the adventurer' in
your new capacity?"

"No; for of course I assumed, in all my changes, both aliases and