[Pg 7]

And much, it must be granted, is to be allowed to Mrs. Pennibacker as a woman and a mother. A City Gentleman! What a vision; what exhalations rise from the ink that, like magic drops fallen from Circe’s finger tips, create the radiant animal upon the white sheet before us! What a picture to the imagination, the—City Gentleman! Calm, plain, self-assured in the might of his wealth. All the bullion of the Bank of England makes back-ground details; the India-house dawns in the distance; and a hundred pennants from masts in India Docks tremble in the far-off sky.

Great odds these, against the simplicity of woman! The Bank, the India-house, and a hundred ships! Mrs. Pennibacker had huge strength of character; but she succumbed to the unknown power of visionary wealth; to the mysterious attributes of the City Gentleman. No man could less look the part, yet Jericho bowed to the widow, a perfect enchanter.

Again, Jericho was charmed, elevated by the graciousness of the lady. Like an overlooked strawberry, he had remained until in his own modesty he began to think himself hardly worth the gathering. Therefore, when Mrs. Pennibacker vouchsafed to stoop to him, he was astonished at her condescension,[Pg 8] and melted by his own gratitude. For Mrs. Pennibacker was a majestic woman. She had brought back nothing of the softness of the East. She was not—she never had been—an oriental toy for the grown child, man. It would have been hard to couple her with thoughts of love-birds, and antelopes and gazelles. No; she rather took her place with those legendary Indian queens who hide their softness under golden bucklers; whose bows are strung with tiger-gut; and whose feminine arrows, if parrot-feathered, are fanged with mortal steel. In the picture of an ancient panther-hunt, you would have looked to see such a figure as the figure of Mrs. Pennibacker, thrusting a spear with a dread smile of self-approbation in the bowels of the objecting pard.

[Pg 8]

And then, Jericho himself had in this case imagination too: indeed, everybody has, when money is the thought, the theme. The common brain will bubble to a golden wand.

It was whispered, sharply whispered to Jericho, that the widow had many relations, many hopes in India. Immediately, Jericho flung about the lady all the treasures of the East. Immediately she stood in a shower-bath of diamonds; elephants’ teeth lay heaped about her; and rice and cotton grounds, and fields of opium, many thousands of acres of the prodigal east, 

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