Jenny Crow went away, crying openly, having promised to be a party to the innocent deception which Captain Davy had suggested. “That Nelly Kinvig is as hard as a flint,” she told herself, bitterly. “I’ve no patience with such flinty people; and won’t I give it her piping hot at the very next opportunity?”
CHAPTER V.
Jenny’s opportunity was a week in coming, and various events of some consequence in this history occurred in the mean time. The first of these was that Capt’n Davy’s fortune changed hands.
Davy’s savings had been invested in two securities—the Liverpool Dock Trust and Dumbell’s Manx Bank. His property in the former he made over by help of the advocates, and with vast show of secrecy, to the name of Jenny Crow; and she, on her part, by help of other advocates, and with yet more real secrecy, transferred it to the name of Mrs. Quiggin.
The remains of his possessions in the latter he lost to Lovibond, who gambled with him constantly, beginning with a sovereign, which Mrs. Quiggin had lent him for the purpose, and going on by a process of doubling until the stakes were prodigious. Every night he discharged his debt by check on Dumbell’s, and every morning Lovibond repaid it into the same bank to the account of his wife. Thus, within a week, unknown to either of the two persons chiefly concerned, the money which had been the immediate cause of strife between them passed from the offender to the offended, from the strong to the weak.
That was the more material of the changes that had come to pass, and the more spiritual were of still greater consequence.
Lovibond and Jenny met constantly. They made various excursions through the island—to the Tynwald Hill, to Peel Castle, to Castle Rushen, the Chasms, and the Calf. Of course they persuaded each other that these trips were taken solely in the interests of their friends. It was necessary to meet; it was desirable to do so where they would be unobserved; what else was left to them but to steal away together on these little jaunts and journeys?
Then their talk was of love and estrangement and reconciliation, and how easy to quarrel, and how hard to come together again. Capt’n Davy and Mrs. Quiggin provided all their illustrations to these interesting themes, for naturally they never spoke of themselves.
“It’s astonishing what geese some people can be,” said Jenny.