In a character such as Mutimer’s there will almost certainly be found a disposition to cruelty, for strong instincts of domination, even of the nobler kind, only wait for circumstances to develop crude tyranny—­the cruder, of course, in proportion to the lack of native or acquired refinement which distinguishes the man.  We had a hint of such things in Mutimer’s progressive feeling with regard to Emma Vine.  The possibility of his becoming a tyrannous husband could not be doubted by any one who viewed him closely.

There needed only the occasion, and this at length presented itself in the form of jealousy.  Of all possible incentives it was the one most calamitous, for it came just when a slow and secret growth of passion was making demand for room and air.  Mutimer had for some time been at a loss to understand his own sensations; he knew that his wife was becoming more and more a necessity to him, and that too when the progress of time would have led him to expect the very opposite.  He knew it during her absence at Exmouth, more still now that she was away in London.  It was with reluctance that he let her leave home, only his satisfaction in her intimacy with the Westlakes and his hopes for Alice induced him to acquiesce in her departure.  Yet he could show nothing of this.  A lack of self-confidence, a strange shyness, embarrassed him as often as he would give play to his feelings.  They were intensified by suppression, and goaded him to constant restlessness.  When at most a day or two remained before Adela’s return, he could no longer resist the desire to surprise her in London.

Not only did he find her in the company of the man whom he had formerly feared as a rival, but her behaviour seemed to him distinctly to betray consternation at his arrival.  She was colourless, agitated, could not speak.  From that moment his love was of the quality which in its manifestations is often indistinguishable from hatred.  He resolved to keep her under his eye, to enforce to the uttermost his marital authority, to make her pay bitterly for the freedom she had stolen.  His exasperated egoism flew at once to the extreme of suspicion; he was ready to accuse her of completed perfidy.  Mrs. Westlake became his enemy; the profound distrust of culture, which was inseparable from his mental narrowness, however ambition might lead him to disguise it, seized upon the occasion to declare itself; that woman was capable of conniving at his dishonour, even of plotting it.  He would not allow Adela to remain in the house a minute longer than he could help.  Even the casual absence of Mr. Westlake became a suspicious circumstance; Eldon of course chose the time for his visit.