“A miserable pittance! O yes! Ten thousand a year for pin-money is a very miserable pittance.”
“So it is, when one lays by five times that amount of superfluous income. Thank me that I don’t force you to double the allowance. Do you think to juggle me with your groans about family expenses and the hard times? Am I so easily duped, think you, as not to see through the miserly sham?”
“This is the woman that promised to love, honor, and obey!”
“Do you twit me with that? Go back, Charlton, to that first day you pressed me to be your wife. I frankly told you I could not love you,—that I loved another. You made light of all that. You enlisted the influence of my parents against me. You drove me into the toils. No sooner was I married than I found that you, with all your wealth, had chosen me merely because you thought I was rich. What a satisfaction it was to me when I heard of my father’s failure! What was your disappointment,—your rage! But there was no help for it. And so we settled down to a loveless life, in which we have thus far been thoroughly consistent. You go your way, and I mine. You find your rapture in your coupons and dividends; I seek such distraction as I can in my little charities, my Sanitary Aid Societies, and my Seaman’s Relief. If you think to cut me off from these resources, the worst will probably be your own.”
Charlton was cowed and nonplussed, as usual in these altercations. “There, go!” said he. “Go and make ducks and drakes of your money in your own way. That old Pomposity has left his damned Prospectus here on the table.”
Mrs. Charlton passed out and down-stairs. On a slab in the hall was a bouquet which a neighboring greenhouse man she had befriended had just left. She stooped to smell of it. What was there in the odors which brought back associations that made her bow her head while the tears gushed forth? Conspicuous among the flowers was a bunch of English violets,—just such a little bunch as Frederick Ireton used to bring her in those far-off days, when the present and the future seemed so flooded with rose-hues.
“Miss Lucy wants to know if you’re ever coming?” said a servant.
“Yes!” replied Mrs. Charlton. “’T is too bad to keep her waiting so!” And the next moment she joined her daughter in the carriage.
Meanwhile Charlton, as his wife left him, had groaned out, in soliloquy, “What a devil of a woman! How different from my first wife!” Then he sought consolation in the quotations of stock. While he read and chuckled, there was a knock. It was only Pompilard returned for his Prospectus. As the old man was folding it up, the white-gloved footman laid a card before Charlton. “Vance!” exclaimed the latter: “I’m acquainted with no such person. Show him up.”
Vance had donned his citizen’s dress. He wore a blue frock, fastened by a single black silk button at the top, a buff vest, white pantaloons, and summer shoes. Without a shoulder-strap, he looked at once the soldier and the gentleman. Rapidly and keenly he took Charlton’s physiognomical measure, then glanced at Pompilard. The latter having folded up his Prospectus, was turning to quit the room. As he bowed on departing, Charlton remarked, “Good day to you, Mr. Pompilard.”