The number of stupid people who at this time stalked the streets unchecked was phenomenal. Among them was Annandale. It was not a beggarly twenty-five thousand a year that he had, but fifty, with, in addition, more to come. This, though measurably satisfactory, was not brilliant. Not brilliant, that is, as Mrs. Price used that term. Still it was sufficient to remove him from the menagerie of paupers in which she had classed him. Assured whereof, Mrs. Price, pocketing further objections, gave in. Two months by the clock after the episodes at Narragansett she assisted at his marriage to her daughter. A little later Annandale took a house in Gramercy Park.
This house, leased fully furnished from November to June, Fanny selected. She liked the neighborhood. Annandale, whose bachelor quarters had, of course, been given up, liked it too. It was convenient. He had got an idea that he ought to have something to do. The something which he hit on consisted in going downtown every day and standing, in a broker's office, over a ticker. Such were the quantities of stupid money afloat that the ticker was very loquacious. It talked and talked, generally in jumps. As it jumped Annandale bought. As it continued to jump, he made. Whereupon he regarded himself as a born financier. It was an illusion which that year very many men shared.
But the illusion was agreeable to him. It was equally so to Fanny. It took him out of the way and induced pleasant dreams. He talked of drags and yachts. On fifty thousand a year these things are impossibilities. But Annandale, believing himself a born financier, believed, too, that the day was not remote when they would solidify into facts. Pending which, Fanny, from her own carriage, distributed to Annette, Juliette and the rest of them such orders as she liked.
It was in this carriage that Marie had seen her with Loftus. Others also saw her. Fanny being a little more than a bride and Loftus a good deal more than a beau, the spectacle caused comment. There were, though, other things that the future had in charge which were to cause more. But among those who beheld the particular spectacle was Fanny's husband.
Annandale was in a hansom with Mr. Skitt, the broker in whose office he looked over the tape. As Fanny drove by, Annandale raised his hat, then, with a mimic which he meant to be humorously indignant, he shook his stick at Loftus much as though he were saying, "Aha! making up to my wife!"
Loftus entering into the spirit of the jest, ducked his head in feigned alarm.
"That's a deuced pretty woman," remarked Mr. Skitt when the carriage had passed.
"It is Mrs. Annandale," his client returned with some hauteur.
"Oh, beg pardon, I didn't know."
"Yes," Annandale resumed, "and that was Loftus, an old friend of mine."