Question

What does the narrator allude to at the end of this sentence from Mark Twain's "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note"? So I loved her all the more, seeing she could be so cheerful when there wasn't anything to be cheerful about; for I might soon need that kind of wife, you know, the way things looked.

A. the possibility of Adams having to leave the country to escape his creditors B. the possibility of requiring a wife who could match Adams’s social standards C. the possibility of Adams’s failure and having a lot of debt to repay
D. the possibility of Adams taking up permanent residence in London

Answer 1

The correct answer is C. the possibility of Adams’s failure and having a lot of debt to repay. Indeed, at this point in time Henry Adams is just going with the flow of his incredible story, knowing that there are things in motion above and beyond his control and is somewhat resigned to fail. When he meets Portia Langham at the US Ambassador’s party, they hit it off together immediately and since she is also a woman of the same social station as his, who on top of that is capable of finding humor in a very Kafkaesque situation, he realizes they are a perfect match.