So poor Miss Lavinia went into her home wringing her hands in despair. She was perfectly helpless.
V.
The summer days went on. Mr. Edwin Fennel, with all the impudence in the world, had taken up his abode in the Petite Maison Rouge, without saying with your leave or by your leave.
“How could you think of bringing him here, Ann?” Lavinia demanded of her sister in the first days.
“I did not think of it; it was he thought of it,” returned Mrs. Fennel in her simple way. “I feared you would not like it, Lavinia; but what could I do? He seemed to look upon it as a matter of course that he should come.”
Yes, there he was; “a matter of course;” making one in the home. Lavinia could not show fight; he was Ann’s husband, and the place was as much Ann’s as hers. The more Lavinia saw of him the more she disliked him; which was perhaps unreasonable, since he made himself agreeable to her in social intercourse, though he took care to have things his own way. If Lavinia’s will went one way in the house and his the other, she found herself smilingly set at naught. Ann was his willing slave; and when opinions differed she sided with her husband.
It was no light charge, having a third person in the house to live upon their small income, especially one who studied his appetite. For a very short time Lavinia, in her indignation at affairs generally, turned the housekeeping over to Mrs. Fennel. But she had to take to it again. Ann was naturally an incautious manager; she ordered in delicacies to please her husband’s palate without regard to cost, and nothing could have come of that but debt and disaster.
That the gallant ex-Captain Fennel had married Ann Preen just to have a roof over his head, Lavinia felt as sure of as that the moon occasionally shone in the heavens. She did not suppose he had any other refuge in the wide world. And through something told her by Ann she judged that he had believed he was doing better for himself in marrying than he had done.