It is I who asked his hand.
But really I was obliged to act thus.

Never, never, would he have spoken; I had become too rich, and as it was me he loved, and not my money, he was becoming terribly afraid of me.

That is the history of my marriage.

As to the history of my fortune, it can be told in a few words.

There were indeed millions in those wide lands of Colorado; they discovered there abundant mines of silver, and from those mines we draw every year an income which is beyond reason, but we have agreed--my husband, my sister, and myself--to give a very large share of this income to the poor.