Only one
course lay open to a woman of spirit. . . .
For a year she did indeed live like a woman of spirit, and it was at
Nolan's bedside that Marayne was first moved to admiration. She was
plucky. All men love a plucky woman.
Sir Godfrey Marayne smelt a good deal of antiseptic soap, but he
talked in a way that amused her, and he trusted as well as adored
her. She did what she liked with his money, her own money, and her
son's trust money, and she did very well. From the earliest
Benham's visits were to a gracious presence amidst wealthy
surroundings. The transit from the moral blamelessness of Seagate
had an entirely misleading effect of ascent.
Their earlier encounters became rather misty in his memory; they
occurred at various hotels in Seagate. Afterwards he would go,
first taken by a governess, and later going alone, to Charing Cross,
where he would be met, in earlier times by a maid and afterwards by
a deferential manservant who called him "Sir," and conveyed,
sometimes in a hansom cab and later in a smart brougham, by
Trafalgar Square, Lower Regent Street, Piccadilly, and streets of
increasing wealth and sublimity to Sir Godfrey's house in Desborough
Street.
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