Emma kissed her, and strove hard to hope.

CHAPTER XXXI

With his five hundred pounds lodged in the bank, Mutimer felt ill at ease in the lodgings in Pentonville.  He began to look bout for an abode more suitable to the dignity of his position, and shortly discovered a house in Holloway, the rent twenty-eight pounds, the situation convenient for his purposes.  By way of making some amends to Adela for his less than civil behaviour, he took the house and had it modestly furnished (at the cost of one hundred and ten pounds) before saying anything to her of his plans.  Then, on the pretext of going to search for pleasanter lodgings, he one day took her to Holloway and led her into her own dwelling.  Adela was startled, but did her best to seem grateful.

They returned to Pentonville, settled their accounts, packed their belongings, and by evening were able to sit down to a dinner cooked by their own servant—­under Adela’s supervision.  Mutimer purchased a couple of bottles of claret on the way home, that the first evening might be wholly cheerful.  Of a sudden he had become a new man; the sullenness had passed, and he walked from room to room with much the same air of lofty satisfaction as when he first surveyed the interior of Wanley Manor.  He made a show of reading in the hour before dinner, but could not keep still for more than a few minutes at a time; he wanted to handle the furniture, to survey the prospect from the windows, to walk out into the road and take a general view of the house.  When their meal had begun, and the servant, instructed to wait at table, chanced to be out of the room, he remarked: 

’We’ll begin, of course, to dine at the proper time again.  It’s far better, don’t you think so?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘And, by-the-by, you’ll see that Mary has a cap.’

Adela smiled.

‘Yes, I’ll see she has.’

Mary herself entered.  Some impulse she did not quite understand led Adela to look at the girl in her yet capless condition.  She said something which would require Mary to answer, and found herself wondering at the submissive tone, the repeated ‘Mum.’

‘Yes,’ she mused with herself, ’she is our creature.  We pay her and she must attire herself to suit our ideas of propriety.  She must remember her station.’

‘What is it?’ Mutimer asked, noticing that she bad again smiled.

‘Nothing.’

His pipe lit, his limbs reposing in the easy-chair, Mutimer became expansive.  He requested Adela’s attention whilst he rendered a full account of all the moneys he had laid out, and made a computation of the cost of living on this basis.

‘The start once made,’ he said, ’you see it isn’t a bit dearer than the lodgings.  And the fact is, I couldn’t have done much in that hole.  Now here, I feel able to go to work.  It isn’t in reality spending money on ourselves, though it may look like it.  You see I must have a place where people can call to see me; we’d no room before.’