'I would talk in blank verse if I could. It is, indeed, literally true. I have received an--estate--in portable property worth nearly forty thousand pounds.' 'Oh! Then we shall be really rich, and not have to pretend quite so much? A little pretence, Alec, I like. It makes me feel like returning to society: too much pretence reminds one of the policeman.' 'Don't you want to know how I have come into this money?' 'I am not curious, Alec. I like everything to be done for me. When I was a girl there were carriages and horses and everything that I wanted--all ready--all done for me, you know. Then I was stripped of all. I had nothing to do or to say in the matter. It was done for me. Now, you tell me you have got eighty thousand pounds. Oh! Heavens! It is done for me. The ways of fate are so wonderful. Things are given and things are taken away. Why should I inquire how things come? Perhaps this will be taken away in its turn.' 'Not quite, Zoe. I have got my hand over it. You can trust your husband, I think, to keep what he has got.' Indeed, he looked at this moment cunning enough to be trusted with keeping the National Debt itself. 'Eighty thousand pounds!' she said. 'Let me write it down. Eighty thousand pounds! Eight and one, two, three, four oughts.' She wrote them down, and clasped her hands, saying, 'Oh! the beauty--the incomparable beauty--of the last ought!' 'Perhaps not quite so much,' said her husband, thinking that the exaggeration was a little too much. 'Don't take off one of my oughts--not my fourth: not my Napoleon of oughts!' 'No--no. Keep your four oughts. Well, my dear, if it is only sixty thousand or so, there is two thousand a year for us. Two thousand a year!' 'Don't, Alec; don't! Not all at once. Break it gently.' 'We will carry on the paper; and perhaps do something or other--carefully, you know--in Art. There is no need to knock things off. And if you can make the paper succeed, as you think, there will be so much the more. Well, we can use it all. For my part, Zoe, my dear, I don't care how big the income is. I am equal to ten thousand.' 'Of course, and you will still pronounce judgments and be a leader. Now let us talk of what we will do--where we will live--and all. Two thousand is pretty big to begin with, after three years' tight fit; but the paper will bring in another two thousand easily. I've been looking through the accounts--bills and returns--and I am sure it has been villanously managed. We will run it up: we will have ten thousand a year to spend. A vast deal may be done with ten thousand a year: we will have a big weekly dinner as well as an At Home. We will draw all the best people in London to the house: we will----' She enlarged with great freedom on what could be done with this income: she displayed all the powers of a rich imagination: not even the milkmaid of the fable more largely anticipated the joys of the future.