At this moment the bell rang, and Mrs. Newt, not wishing to be caught with red eyes, called May, who had looked on at this debate, and left the room.
While Mrs. Dagon had been so volubly talking she had also been busily thinking. She knew that if Alfred were a fool his mother was not—at least, not in the way she meant. There had been no love lost between the ladies, so that Mrs. Dagon was disposed to criticise the other’s conduct very closely. She saw, therefore, that if Alfred Dinks were not rich—and it certainly was a question whether he were so really, or only in expectation from Mr. Burt—then also he might not be engaged to Hope Wayne. But the story of his wealth and his engagement might very easily have been the ruse by which the skillful Mrs. Dinks meant to conduct her campaign in New York. In that case, what was more likely than that she should have improved Fanny’s evident delusion in regard to her son, and, by suggesting to him an elopement, have secured for him the daughter of a merchant so universally reputed wealthy as Boniface Newt?
Mrs. Dagon was clever—so was Mrs. Dinks; and it is the homage that one clever person always pays to another to believe the other capable of every thing that occurs to himself.
In the matter of the marriage Mrs. Budlong Dinks had been defeated, but she was not dismayed. She had lost Hope Wayne, indeed, and she could no longer hope, by the marriage of Alfred with his cousin, to consolidate the Burt property in her family. She had been very indignant—very deeply disappointed. But she still loved her son, and the meditation of a night refreshed her.
Upon a survey of the field, Mrs. Dinks felt that under no circumstances would Hope have married Alfred; and he had now actually married Fanny. So much was done. It was useless to wish impossible wishes. She did not desire her son to starve or come to social shame, although he had married Fanny; and Fanny, after all, was rather a belle, and the daughter of a rich merchant, who would have to support them. She knew, of course, that Fanny supposed her husband would share in the great Burt property. But as Mrs. Dinks herself believed the same thing, that did not surprise her. In fact, they would all be gainers by it; and nothing now remained but to devote herself to securing that result.
The first step under the circumstances was clearly a visit to the Newts, and the ring which had sent Mrs. Newt from the room was Mrs. Dinks’s.
Mrs. Dagon was alone when Mrs. Dinks entered, and Mrs. Dagon was by no means sure, whatever she said to Nancy, that Mrs. Dinks had not outwitted them all. As she entered Mrs. Dagon put up her glasses and gazed at her; and when Mrs. Dinks saluted her, Mrs. Dagon bowed behind the glasses, as if she were bowing through a telescope at the planet Jupiter.
“Good-morning, Mrs. Dagon!”
“Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks!” replied that lady, still contemplating the other as if she were a surprising and incomprehensible phenomenon.
Profound silence followed. Mrs. Dinks was annoyed by the insult which Mrs. Dagon was tacitly putting upon her, and resolving upon revenge. Meanwhile she turned over some illustrated books upon the table, as if engravings were of all things those that afforded her the profoundest satisfaction.