FINDING arguments of no avail, her father, at length, told the lovers they might marry if they pleased; but, in so doing, his daughter would forfeit every fraction of her fortune.
He expected this would cool the ardour of both; but he was mistaken. My father knew too well my mother’s superior worth not to be sensible that she was a valuable fortune in herself: and if she would but consent to embellish his humble hearth he should be happy to take her on any terms; while she, on her part, would rather labour with her own hands than be divided from the man she loved.
So her fortune went to swell the purse of a wiser sister, who had married a rich nabob;* and she, to the wonder and compassionate regret of all who knew her, went to bury herself in the homely village parsonage. And yet, in spite of all this, and in spite of my mother’s high spirit and my father’s whims, I believe you might search all England through, and fail to find a happier couple.
That is, a man who had made his fortune out in India, in the service of the East India Company. The word derives from Urdu ‘nawab’, possibly via Portuguese ‘nababo’, meaning a provincial governor in India’s Mughal (Mogul) Empire. Nawabs were of course Indian nobility; the application of the term to European civil servants was facetious.