The servant opened the door and announced a visitor--'Mr. Hilary.'
Mutimer seemed struck with a thought as he heard the name.
'The very man!' he exclaimed below his breath, with a glance at
Adela. 'Just run off and let us have this room. My luck won't desert
me, see if it does!'
CHAPTER XXXII
Mr. Willis Rodman scarcely relished the process which deprived him
of his town house and of the greater part of his means, but his
exasperation happily did not seek vent for itself in cruelty to his
wife. It might very well have done so, would all but certainly, had
not Alice appealed to his sense of humour by her zeal in espousing
his cause against her brother. That he could turn her round his
finger was an old experience, but to see her spring so actively to
arms on his behalf, when he was conscious that she had every excuse
for detesting him, and even abandoning him, struck him as a highly
comical instance of his power over women, a power on which he had
always prided himself. He could not even explain it as self-interest
in her; numberless things proved the contrary. Alice was still his
slave, though he had not given himself the slightest trouble to
preserve even her respect. He had shown himself to her freely as he
was, jocosely cynical on everything that women prize, brutal when he
chose to give way to his temper, faithless on principle, selfish to
the core; perhaps the secret of the fascination he exercised over
her was his very ingenuousness, his boldness in defying fortune, his
clever grasp of circumstances.
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