how we'll not be so very badly off when, one comes to think of it – not according to the notions people get when they live abroad. Besides, I expect she's a wonderful manager, Madame Facchino, I mean; she's bound to be, living the way she has. The fact is, Fan," he went on confidentially, "if a man is to marry – and I suppose most men are bound to drop into it sooner or later – I am not sure that it isn't about the wisest thing to do – well, the sort of thing I'm doing. Of course looks and money are capital things; but I'm not sure that a cheery little woman who knows what's what, and has never been used to extravagance, isn't about the best sort of a wife for a man in the long-run. It's fagging work always being on your P's and Q's with your wife; making up to her and flattering her, and all that. I expect, too, that a woman that's brought you a fortune, is awfully apt to throw it in your teeth if you chance to fall out. I don't mean that every woman would – you wouldn't of course, Fan, not if you married a costermonger; but I imagine they do as a rule – I'm pretty sure I should if I was a woman. And it must put a fellow in a most deucedly awkward position. For my own part I'd rather have half the money and be master in my own house. Doesn't it strike you so?"
Well, no, it did not exactly strike her so, but she let him talk on and on without interruption. It was not difficult to see what all this effusiveness meant. Having fallen, slipped rather, stumbled from pure inadvertence into this quandary, he was trying to persuade himself that he had done it with his eyes perfectly wide open; that it was a deliberately planned, clearly foreseen intention from the beginning; not very prudent perhaps, liable to be stigmatised as foolish by people who saw no further than the surface, but in reality a thoroughly well thought out decision. Thought out! when ten minutes beforehand he had evidently, from his own account, had no more perception of what was in store for him than the babe unborn!
The strangeness did not seem to her very much less, after her new relative-elect had been to see her, which she duly did upon the very next day. She came in with a rush and a bustle, visibly crackling and rippling all over with elation and satisfaction, her ugly lively little face more like that of an intelligent marmoset than ever a marmoset in this case which had found a nut. She had got on a new dress – a very smart one – and there were other indications that the years of the lean kine were at an end, and an era of prosperity felt to be inaugurated.
Despite her own trouble, Lady Frances could hardly help being amused and half mollified at sight of the other's superabounding and utterly irrepressible satisfaction. Heaven knows, she said to herself, she did not grudge the little woman any of her prospective joys, if only, only they could have been bought at a little, a very little, less costly rate; if any one but Hal, her own Hal, could have been the medium for providing them. She tried to be cordial, but the effort, it must be owned, was a failure. Her trouble was too fresh, too terribly real for concealment. Conversation fell dead; the Colonel, prudent man! kept away; even Madame Facchino's matchless powers were not equal to the strain. When she got up to take her leave, though the words on the other's lips were kindness itself, the trouble legible in her eyes, in her
