"Money?"
"For my picture—I am to paint him one, am I not? he has ordered it. Well! I want money in advance."
Blanche would have been highly delighted at such a speech, had it been uttered in a different tone, and had not Captain Heath, already, that very day, given a cheque in advance.
She made no reply.
"Well!" he said, "are you ready? Write it at once."
"But the fifty pounds...."
"Gone! I met a man to whom I owed it—he demanded payment—I was forced to let him have the cheque. You can explain it all to Heath, and tell him I must have ten pounds more to buy materials with. Tell him what you please, but get the money."
He resumed his contemplation of the fire after this speech, and scarcely opened his lips again for the evening. Blanche wrote the letter, but it was with loathing, and she hated herself while she was doing it, and was sure Captain Heath would also hate her.
Glad as she would have been to see her husband relinquish his absurd jealousy of the captain, it came with quite a different aspect when that relinquishment was not a matter of conviction, but of degraded calculation. She guessed at once the truth of the whole history; she saw that Cecil had gambled away the fifty pounds, and that he had not only reconciled himself to it, but had made up his mind to extort from the generosity of the captain certain sums which would enable him to indulge his unhappy passion.
What a situation for a loving wife! Never before, not even in his worst exhibitions of selfishness and weakness, had Blanche despised her husband; but she could not master the feeling now; a lurking sense of contempt would intrude itself upon her thoughts.