But Hyde knew well the importance of Katherine’s fortune.  It enabled him to face his relatives and friends on a very much better footing than he had anticipated.  He was quite aware, too, that the simple fact was all that society needed.  He expected to hear in a few days that the five thousand pounds had become fifty thousand pounds; for he knew that rumour, when on the boast, would magnify any kind of gossip, favourable or unfavourable.  So he was no longer averse to meeting his former companions:  even to them, a rich wife would excuse matrimony.  And, besides, Hyde was one of those men who regard money in the bank as a kind of good conscience:  he really felt morally five thousand pounds the better.  Full of hope and happiness, he would have gone at a pace to suit his mood; but English roads at that date were left very much to nature and to weather, and the Norfolk clay in springtime was so deep and heavy that it was not until the third day after leaving that he was able to report for duty.

His first social visit was paid to his maternal grandmother, the dowager Lady Capel.  She was not a nice old woman; in fact, she was a very spiteful, ill-hearted, ill-tempered old woman, and Hyde had always had a certain fear of her.  When he landed in London with his wife, Lady Capel had fortunately been at Bath; and he had then escaped the duty of presenting Katherine to her.  But she was now at her mansion in Berkeley Square, and her claims upon his attention could not be postponed; and, as she had neither eyes nor ears in the evenings for any thing but loo or whist, Hyde knew that a conciliatory visit would have to be made in the early part of the day.

He found her in the most careless dishabille, wigless and unpainted, and rolled up comfortably in an old wadded morning-gown that had seen years of snuffy service.  But she had out-lived her vanity.  Hyde had chosen the very hour in which she had nothing whatever to amuse her, and he was a very welcome interruption.  And, upon the whole, she liked her grandson.  She had paid his gambling-debts twice, she had taken the greatest interest in his various duels, and sided passionately with him in one abortive love-affair.

“Dick is no milksop,” she would say approvingly, when told of any of his escapades; “faith, he has my spirit exactly!  I have a great deal more temper than any one would believe me capable of”—­which was not the truth, for there were few people who really knew her ladyship who ever felt inclined to doubt her capabilities in that direction.

So she heard the rattle of Hyde’s sword, and the clatter of his feet on the polished stairs, with a good deal of satisfaction.  “I have him here, and I shall do my best to keep him here,” she thought.  “Why should a proper young fellow like Dick bury himself alive in the fens for a Dutchwoman?  In short, she has had enough, and too much, of him.  His grandmother has a prior claim, I hope, and then Arabella Suffolk will help me.  I foresee mischief and amusement.—­Well, Dick, you rascal, so you have had to leave America!  I expected it.  Oh, sir, I have heard all about you from Adelaide!  You are not to be trusted, either among men or women.  And pray where is the wife you made such a fracas about?  Is she in London with you?”