Like most people who have badly known the want of money, she was decidedly extravagant in spending it now that she had plenty; and, unlike most husbands and wives in such circumstances, she and Mr. Kingston had no pleasanter episodes in their domestic life than those which had reference to her financial embarrassments.
It was charming to him (since his banking account was much too solid to be easily affected by her operations) to see her come, with her timid and anxious face, to confess that she had spent all her money, and to ask him, with the sweetest wifely meekness, if he could spare her a little more; and to her he never showed to better advantage than when he declared, so obviously without meaning it, that she would ruin him, and then gave her twice as much as she had asked for.
She always flushed and glowed with pleasure at this delicate and generous, and gentlemanly way of doing things, and would put her arms round his neck and kiss him; and, naturally, he would thereafter set forth to his club, feeling proud of himself and pleased with things in general, his young wife and he being so thoroughly in their right places in their relation to one another.
And then there came to Rachel that which to every true woman is the greatest and dearest and best—save one—of all life's many good things, and which to her must inevitably have made even the most loveless marriage lovely:—
"On the 17th inst., at Toorak, the wife of Graham Kingston, Esq., of a son."
This little notice appeared in "The Argus," of the 18th, and caused a flutter and sensation in all well-regulated Melbourne households.
"Dear me, how nice! and a son, too. How pleased Mr. Kingston will be! An heir to all that fine property at last! Dear me, how nice! We must call and make inquiries."
And when kind inquiries resulted in the satisfactory information that both mother and infant were progressing favourably, society congratulated Mr. Kingston with effusive and impressive cordiality, which that gentleman, deprecating a fuss with airs of smiling indifference, felt to be by no means more than the occasion demanded.
Of course, the interesting event made a pleasant commotion in the great Toorak house and in the Hardy family.
Mrs. Hardy assumed the functions of mother-in-law to Mr. Kingston, and introduced him to his son and heir with a genuine maternal pride, that could not have been more touching or more complimentary to either of the delighted parents, had the featureless little atom been a lineal fifth grandchild.