er's death, to
her own immersion in business, to the "strangeness" of her new life and
the necessity of "finding her feet" before doing much. These
references--rather pathetic and almost apologetic--Octon would receive
with a frown of impatience--sometimes even of incredulity; but he did
not make them an occasion of quarrel. He continued to come constantly to
the Priory--certainly three or four times a week. There is no doubt that
he was, in his way, very much in love with Jenny. It was an overbearing
sort of way--but it had two great merits: it was resolute and it was
disinterested. He was quite clear that he wanted her; it was quite clear
that he did not care about her money, though he might envy her power.
And if he tried to dominate her, he had to submit to constant proofs of
her domination also. She could, and did, make him furiously angry; he
was often undisguisedly impatient of her coynesses and her hesitations:
but he could not leave her nor the hopes he had of her. And she, on her
side, could not--at least did not--send him away. For that matter she
never liked sending anybody away--not even Powers; it seemed to make her
kingdom less by one--a change in quite the wrong direction. Octon would
have been a great loss, for he had, without doubt, a strong, and an
increasingly strong, attraction for her. She liked at least to play at
being subjugated by his masculine force; she did, in fact, to a great
extent approve and admire his semi-barbaric way (for her often mitigated
by a humor which he kept for the people he liked) of speaking of and
dealing with women. Down in her heart she thought that attitude rather
the right thing in a man, and liked to think of it as a power before
which she might yield. At the theater she was always delighted when the
rebellious maiden or the charming spitfire of a wife, at last, in the
third act, hailed the hero as her "master." So far she was primitive
amidst all her subtlety. But to Jenny's mind it was by no means the
third act yet; even the plot of the play was not laid out so far ahead
as that. If this masterful, quick, assertive way of wooing were proper
to man, woman had her weapons; she had her natural weapons, she had the
weapons a civilized state of society gave her, and she had those which
casual chance might add to her arsenal. Under the last of these three
categories fell the project of the Driver Institute, to be established
at Mr. Octon's present residence, Hatcham Ford.