“Of course he doesn’t,” said Lady Amelia.  Then the two ladies put their heads together for another five minutes, and the carpet was chosen—­subject to that question of the discount.  “And now about the rug,” said Lady Amelia.  But here Crosbie rebelled, and insisted that he must leave them and go to his office.  “You can’t want me about the rug,” he said.  “Well, perhaps not,” said Lady Amelia.  But it was manifest that Alexandrina did not approve of being thus left by her male attendant.

The same thing happened in Oxford Street with reference to the chairs and sofas, and Crosbie began to wish that he were settled, even though he should have to dress himself in the closet below the kitchen-stairs.  He was learning to hate the whole household in St. John’s Wood, and almost all that belonged to it.  He was introduced there to little family economies of which hitherto he had known nothing, and which were disgusting to him, and the necessity for which was especially explained to him.  It was to men placed as he was about to place himself that these economies were so vitally essential—­to men who with limited means had to maintain a decorous outward face towards the fashionable world.  Ample supplies of butchers’ meat and unlimited washing-bills might be very well upon fifteen hundred a year to those who went out but seldom, and who could use the first cab that came to hand when they did go out.  But there were certain things that Lady Alexandrina must do, and therefore the strictest household economy became necessary.  Would Lily Dale have required the use of a carriage, got up to look as though it were private, at the expense of her husband’s beefsteaks and clean shirts?  That question and others of that nature were asked by Crosbie within his own mind, not unfrequently.

But, nevertheless, he tried to love Alexandrina, or rather to persuade himself that he loved her.  If he could only get her away from the de Courcy faction, and especially from the Gazebee branch of it, he would break her of all that.  He would teach her to sit triumphantly in a street cab, and to cater for her table with a plentiful hand.  Teach her!—­at some age over thirty; and with such careful training as she had already received!  Did he intend to forbid her ever again to see her relations, ever to go to St. John’s Wood, or to correspond with the countess and Lady Margaretta?  Teach her, indeed!  Had he yet to learn that he could not wash a blackamoor white? that he could not have done so even had he himself been well adapted for the attempt, whereas he was in truth nearly as ill adapted as a man might be?  But who could pity him?  Lily, whom he might have had in his bosom, would have been no blackamoor.