John Ingerfield | Page 5

perhaps, a couple of
hundred added. If by the end of next month you have not introduced me
to a lady fit to be, and willing to be, Mrs. John Ingerfield, I shall
decline to renew it."
John Ingerfield refills his own glass and hospitably pushes the bottle
towards his guest--who, however, contrary to his custom, takes no
notice of it, but stares hard at his shoe-buckles.
"Are you serious?" he says at length.
"Quite serious," is the answer. "I want to marry. My wife must be a
lady by birth and education. She must be of good family--of family
sufficiently good, indeed, to compensate for the refinery. She must be
young and beautiful and charming. I am purely a business man. I want
a woman capable of conducting the social department of my life. I
know of no such lady myself. I appeal to you, because you, I know, are
intimate with the class among whom she must be sought."
"There may be some difficulty in persuading a lady of the required
qualifications to accept the situation," says Cathcart, with a touch of
malice.
"I want you to find one who will," says John Ingerfield.
Early in the evening Will Cathcart takes leave of his host, and departs
thoughtful and anxious; and John Ingerfield strolls contemplatively up
and down his wharf, for the smell of oil and tallow has grown to be
very sweet to him, and it is pleasant to watch the moonbeams shining
on the piled-up casks.
Six weeks go by. On the first day of the seventh John takes Will
Cathcart's acceptance from its place in the large safe, and lays it in the
smaller box beside his desk, devoted to more pressing and immediate
business. Two days later Cathcart picks his way across the slimy yard,
passes through the counting-house, and enters his friend's inner
sanctum, closing the door behind him.

He wears a jubilant air, and slaps the grave John on the back. "I've got
her, Jack," he cries. "It's been hard work, I can tell you: sounding
suspicious old dowagers, bribing confidential servants, fishing for
information among friends of the family. By Jove, I shall be able to
join the Duke's staff as spy-in-chief to His Majesty's entire forces after
this!"
"What is she like?" asks John, without stopping his writing.
"Like! My dear Jack, you'll fall over head and ears in love with her the
moment you see her. A little cold, perhaps, but that will just suit you."
"Good family?" asks John, signing and folding the letter he has
finished.
"So good that I was afraid at first it would be useless thinking of her.
But she's a sensible girl, no confounded nonsense about her, and the
family are poor as church mice. In fact--well, to tell the truth, we have
become most excellent friends, and she told me herself frankly that she
meant to marry a rich man, and didn't much care whom."
"That sounds hopeful," remarks the would-be bridegroom, with his
peculiar dry smile: "when shall I have the pleasure of seeing her?"
"I want you to come with me to-night to the Garden," replies the other;
"she will be in Lady Heatherington's box, and I will introduce you."
So that evening John Ingerfield goes to Covent Garden Theatre, with
the blood running a trifle quicker in his veins, but not much, than
would be the case were he going to the docks to purchase
tallow--examines, covertly, the proposed article from the opposite side
of the house, and approves her--is introduced to her, and, on closer
inspection, approves her still more--receives an invitation to
visit--visits frequently, and each time is more satisfied of the rarity,
serviceableness, and quality of the article.
If all John Ingerfield requires for a wife is a beautiful social machine,
surely here he has found his ideal. Anne Singleton, only daughter of

that persistently unfortunate but most charming of baronets, Sir Harry
Singleton (more charming, it is rumoured, outside his family circle than
within it), is a stately graceful, high-bred woman. Her portrait, by
Reynolds, still to be seen above the carved wainscoting of one of the
old City halls, shows a wonderfully handsome and clever face, but at
the same time a wonderfully cold and heartless one. It is the face of a
woman half weary of, half sneering at the world. One reads in old
family letters, whereof the ink is now very faded and the paper very
yellow, long criticisms of this portrait. The writers complain that if the
picture is at all like her she must have greatly changed since her
girlhood, for they remember her then as having a laughing and
winsome expression.
They say--they who knew her in after-life--that this earlier face came
back to her in the end, so that