Poor Mr. Crane! if he had dreamed of the volcano of feeling that smouldered at his side beneath that cold, calm exterior, he would assuredly have flung open the carriage-door, sprung out (albeit not accustomed to such feats of activity), and never ceased running until he had reached Manchester. Fortunately, however, his wife’s mind was a sealed book to him, and so he reached the end of his journey in peace and safety.
Having borne the honeymoon with resignation, Kate endured her bad bargain tête-à-tête at various watering-places, and amongst innumerable lakes and mountains of tourist notoriety, until she had taught him the only accomplishment she cared to inculcate, viz., obedience, which he learned very readily, seeing that it relieved him from all trouble and responsibility. This point accomplished, she took him to a fashionable hotel in St. James’s Street, where she wrote to her friend, Arabella Crofton, to join her. However, before that excellent young woman of the world had time to wind up the ends of a few trifling skeins of policy, with which she had been constructing nets for small birds at Baden-Baden, Horace D’Almayne found out the residence of the happy couple, and proceeded to call upon, dine with, and make himself generally useful and agreeable to them. Kate did not like him, but she had been for two months tête-à-tête with Mr. Crane, and Horace possessed this advantage over that devoted husband, that he was not a fool, and Mr. Crane was. Horace was not a fool; on the contrary, he was such a clever knave that it was really a pity that he was not something better: he saw the game he had to play, and he resolved to play it as skilfully as his faculties and experience would enable him. He possessed considerable insight into character, and sufficient tact to accommodate himself to the peculiarities, and avail himself of the weaknesses, he might thus discover. Accordingly, his first move was to endeavour to lull Kate’s suspicions of him, which he saw had been aroused; his next to make himself by degrees useful to her—necessary to her; then, let him win her confidence on any subject (he would have been delighted if she had told him the day of the month, or that she had dropped a pin, in confidence, for it would have been a beginning), until by word, look, or sign, she admitted her indifference towards her husband, and then the game would be his own.
With Mr. Crane D’Almayne’s course appeared very simple. The millionaire’s one clear idea was the omnipotence of wealth; he knew D’Almayne was poor, and that he had lent him money which he never expected to be repaid. He considered him in the light of a sort of Master of the Ceremonies, who could guide him in the ways of fashionable life, whereof he felt his ignorance—a kind of upper upper-servant—the Vizier to his Caliphship, and he lent him money as a delicate way of paying his wages. At present D’Almayne was in high favour with Mr. Crane; his wife was looking very handsome, quite a gem of a wife—equal to his pictures or his port wine; D’Almayne had negotiated his marriage for him, and the speculation had been a successful one; he lent D’Almayne £500 before he had been in town a week. Horace saw it all, but he was not proud; as he would have said, “It suited his book too well,” so he pocketed his wages meekly.
“My dear Kate, can you amuse yourself for a couple of hours or so alone? D’Almayne and I are going to look at a pair of carriage-horses—a—I shall bring him home to luncheon, and—a—now I think of it, I asked him to dine here and go to the concert at the Hanover Square Rooms with us afterwards;” and having thus unfolded his programme for the day, Mr. Crane glanced timidly towards his wife, to learn whether it would receive her sanction and approval. There was a moment’s silence, and then in a low, musical voice, Kate replied coldly—
“I have letters to write this morning, so the arrangement will suit me perfectly. If the horses are fine ones, I hope you will buy them.”
Mr. Crane stroked his chin (a habit in which he indulged when anything pleased him) and smiled. His wife was satisfied with him—happy man! But he had stroked his chin rather prematurely, for, in the same cold tone, Kate resumed—
“There is one point on which I am anxious clearly to understand you. Is it your wish that Mr. D’Almayne should virtually live with us? because, that he will do so, unless some decided measures are taken to discourage him, is self-evident.”
This was a straightforward and uncompromising way of putting the case which slightly discomposed poor Mr. Crane.
D’Almayne was, as we have said, eminently useful to his patron, so much so, that at that precise epoch the good gentleman would have been sorely puzzled how to get on without him; but the more he acknowledged this in his secret soul, the less did he desire that any one, and especially his young wife, should perceive it.
“Well, my dear Kate,” he began, “you see Mr. D’Almayne has turned his attention to points which, engaged as I have been for many years in commerce, I have never found time or opportunity to render myself acquainted with.”