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There is nothing pleasanter than all this, although a man when so treated does feel himself to look like a calf at the altar, ready for the knife, with blue ribbons round his horns and neck. Crosbie felt that he was such a calf, and the more calf-like, in that he had not as yet dared to ask a question about his wife's fortune.
By-the-by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing." But Mr Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind.
Yet, he thought, she might have refrained from saying so to him. "She chooses to scorn me now," he said to himself; "but the time may come when she will wish that she had scorned him." That Crosbie was wicked, bad, and selfish, he believed most fully. He felt sure that the man would ill-use her and make her wretched.
Crosbie himself had wished to go to one of the new Pimlico squares down near Vauxhall Bridge and the river, actuated chiefly by consideration of the enormous distance lying between that locality and the northern region in which Lady Amelia lived; but to this Lady Alexandrina had objected strongly.
So they separated; and Crosbie went away with Lily into the field where they had first learned to know each other in those haymaking days. She did not say much till they were well away from the house; but answered what words he chose to speak, not knowing very well of what he spoke. But when she considered that they had reached the proper spot, she began very abruptly.
Since she had seen Mr Crosbie she was altogether out of love with the prospect of matrimony. She was in the room when Mr Pratt was announced, and she at once recognised him as the man who had been with Crosbie. And when, some minutes afterwards, Siph Dunn came into the room, she could see that in their greeting allusion was made to the scene in the Park.
But as he had never before been able to speak of his love, so was he then unable not to speak of it. He had spoken, and of course had been simply rebuked. Since that day Crosbie had ceased to be an angel of light, and he, John Eames, had spoken often. But he had spoken in vain, and now he would speak once again.
"I know, Butterwell, that I've no right to ask for it. I feel that. Of course I should pay you what interest you please." "Money's about seven now," said Butterwell. "I've not the slightest objection to seven per cent.," said Crosbie. "But that's on security," said Butterwell. "You can name your own terms," said Crosbie.
Crosbie, who was a man of tact, who understood the world and had been dealing with women for many years, no doubt understood all this as well as we do. But he had come to entertain a notion that he was an injured man, that he was giving very much more than was to be given to him, and that therefore he was entitled to take liberties which might not fairly be within the reach of another lover.
I want you to lend me five hundred pounds." Mr Butterwell, when he heard the words, dropped the paper which he was reading from his hand, and stared at Crosbie over his spectacles. "Five hundred pounds," he said. "Dear me, Crosbie; that's a large sum of money." "Yes, it is, a very large sum. Half that is what I want at once; but I shall want the other half in a month."
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