Phantom Fortune, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [free e novels .txt] 📗

his nose in anywhere, if he knows how to behave himself. But of course there are people with whom money and fine houses have no weight. The Conservatives are all civil to Smithson because he comes down handsomely at General Elections, and is useful to them in other ways. I believe that Smithson's wife, if she were a thorough-bred one, could go into any society she liked, and make her house one of the most popular in London. Perhaps that is what you really wanted to ask.

'No, it wasn't,' answered Lesbia, carelessly; 'I was only talking for the sake of talking. A thousand thanks for the cheque, you best of brothers.'

'It is not worth talking about; but, Lesbia, don't play cards any more. Believe me, it is not good form.'

'Well, I'll try to keep out of it in future. It is horrid to see one's sovereigns melting away; but there's a delightful excitement in winning.'

'No doubt,' answered Maulevrier, with a remorseful sigh.

He spoke as a reformed plunger, and with many a bitter experience of the race-course and the card-room. Even now, though he had steadied himself wonderfully, he could not get on without a little mild gambling--half-crown pool, whist with half-guinea points--but when he condescended to such small stakes he felt that he had settled down into a respectable middle-aged player, and had a right to rebuke the follies of youth.

Lesbia flew to the piano and sang one of her little German ballads directly Maulevrier was gone. She felt as if a burden had been lifted from her soul, now that she was able to pay Mr. Smithson without waiting to ask Lady Maulevrier for the money. And as she sang she meditated upon Maulevrier's remarks about Smithson. He knew nothing to the man's discredit, except that he had grown rich in a short space of time. Surely no man ought to be blamed for that. And he thought that Mr. Smithson's wife might make her house the most popular in London. Lesbia, in her mind's eye, beheld an imaginary Lady Lesbia Smithson giving dances in that magnificent mansion, entertaining Royal personages. And the doorways would be festooned with roses, as she had seen them the other night at a ball in Grosvenor Square; but the house in Grosvenor Square was a hovel compared with the Smithsonian Palace.

Lesbia was beginning to be a little tired of Lady Kirkbank and her surroundings. Life taken _prestissimo_ is apt to pall, Lesbia sighed as she finished her little song. She was beginning to look upon her existence as a problem which had been given to her to solve, and the solution just it present was all dark.

As she rose from the piano a footman came in with two letters on a salver--bulky letters, such packages as Lesbia had never seen before. She wondered what they could be. She opened the thickest envelope first. It was Seraphine's bill--such a bill, page after page on creamy Bath post, written in an elegant Italian hand by one of Seraphine's young women.

Lesbia looked at it aghast with horror. The total at the foot of the first page was appalling, ever so much more than she could have supposed the whole amount of her indebtedness; but the total went on increasing at the foot of every page, until at sight of the final figures Lesbia gave a wild shriek, like a wretched creature who has received a telegram announcing bitterest loss.

The final total was twelve hundred and ninety-three pounds seventeen and sixpence!

Thirteen hundred pounds for clothes in eight weeks!

No, the thing was a cheat, a mistake. They had sent her somebody else's bill. She had not had half these things.

She read the first page, her heart beating violently as she pored over the figures, her eyes dim and clouded with the trouble of her brain.

Yes, there was her court dress. The description was too minute to be mistaken; and the court dress, with feathers, and shoes, and gloves, and fan, came to a hundred and thirty pounds. Then followed innumerable items. The very simplest of her gowns cost five-and-twenty pounds--frocks about which Seraphine had talked so carelessly, as if two or three more or less could make no difference. Bonnets and hats, at five or seven guineas apiece, swelled the account. Parasols and fans were of fabulous price, as it seemed to Lesbia; and the shoes and stockings to match her various gowns occurred again and again between the more important items, like the refrain of an old ballad. All the useless and unnessary things which she had ordered, because she thought them pretty or because she was told they were fashionable, rose up against her in the figures of the bill, like the record of forgotten sins at the Day of Judgment.

She sank into a chair, pallid with consternation, and sat with the bill in her lap, turning the pages listlessly, and staring at the figures.

'It cannot be so much,' she cried to herself. 'It must be added up wrong;' and then she feebly tried to cast up a column; but arithmetic not being one of those accomplishments which Lady Maulevrier deemed necessary to a patrician beauty's success in life, Lesbia's education had been somewhat neglected upon this point, and she flung the bill from her in a rage, unable to hold the figures in her brain.

She opened the second envelope, her jeweller's account. At the very first item she gave another scream, fainter than the first, for her mind was getting hardened against such shocks.

'To re-setting a suite of amethysts, with forty-four finest Brazilian brilliants, three hundred and fifteen pounds.'

Then followed the trifles she had bought at different visits to the shop--casual purchases, bought on the impulse of the moment. These swelled the account to a little over eight hundred pounds. Lesbia sat like a statue, numbed by despair, appalled at the idea of owing over two thousand pounds.


CHAPTER XXX.


'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES.'

Lady Lesbia ate no luncheon that day. She went to her own room and had a cup of tea to steady her nerves, and sent to ask Lady Kirkbank to go to her as soon as she had finished luncheon. Lady Kirkbank's luncheon was a serious business, a substantial leisurely meal with which she fortified herself for the day's work. It enabled her to endure all the fatigues of visits and park, and to be airily indifferent to the charms of dinner; for Lady Kirkbank was not one of those matrons who with advanced years take to _gourmandise_ as a kind of fine art. She gave good dinners, because she knew people would not come to Arlington Street to eat bad ones; but she was not a person who lived only to dine. At luncheon she gave her healthy appetite full scope, and ate like a ploughman.

She found Lesbia in her white muslin dressing-gown, with cheeks as pale as the gown she wore. She was sitting in an easy chair, with a low tea-table at her side, and the two bills were in the tray among the tea-things.

'Have you any idea how much I owe Seraphine and Cabochon?' she asked, looking up despairingly at Lady Kirkbank.

'What, have they sent in their bills already?'

'Already! I wish they had sent them before. I should have known how deeply I was getting into debt.'

'Are they very heavy?'

'They are dreadful! I owe over two thousand pounds. How can I tell Lady Maulevrier that? Two thousand one hundred pounds! It is awful.'

'There are women in London who would think very little of owing twice as much,' said Lady Kirkbank, in a comforting tone, though the fact, seriously considered, could hardly afford comfort. 'Your grandmother said you were to have _carte blanche_. She may think that you have been just a little extravagant; but she can hardly be angry with you for having taken her at her word. Two thousand pounds! Yes, it certainly is rather stiff.'

'Seraphine is a cheat!' exclaimed Lesbia, angrily. 'Her prices are positively exorbitant!'

'My dear child, you must not say that. Seraphine is positively moderate in comparison with the new people.'

'And Mr. Cabochon, too. The idea of his charging me three hundred guineas for re-setting those stupid old amethysts.'

'My dear, you _would_ have diamonds mixed with them,' said Lady Kirkbank, reproachfully.

Lesbia turned away her head with an impatient sigh. She remembered perfectly that it was Lady Kirkbank who had persuaded her to order the diamond setting; but there was no use in talking about it now. The thing was done. She was two thousand pounds in debt--two thousand pounds to these two people only--and there were ever so many shops at which she had accounts--glovers, bootmakers, habit-makers, the tailor who made her Newmarket coats and cloth gowns, the stationer who supplied her with note-paper of every variety, monogrammed, floral; sporting, illuminated with this or that device, the follies of the passing hour, hatched by penniless Invention in a garret, pandering to the vanities of the idle.

'I must write to my grandmother by this afternoon's post,' said Lesbia, with a heavy sigh.

'Impossible. We have to be at the Ranelagh by four o'clock. Smithson and some other men are to meet us there. I have promised to drive Mrs. Mostyn down. You had better begin to dress.'

'But I ought to write to-day. I had better ask for this money at once, and have done with it. Two thousand pounds! I feel as if I were a thief. You say my grandmother is not a rich woman?'

'Not rich as the world goes nowadays. Nobody is rich now, except your commercial magnates, like Smithson. Great peers, unless their money is in London ground-rents, are great paupers. To own land is to be destitute. I don't suppose two thousand pounds will break your grandmother's bank; but of course it is a large sum to ask for at the end of two months; especially as she sent you a good deal of money while we were at Cannes. If you were engaged--about to make a really good match--you could ask for the money as a matter of course; but as it is, although you have been tremendously admired, from a practical point of view you are a failure.'

A failure. It was a hard word, but Lesbia felt it was true. She, the reigning beauty, the cynosure of every eye, had made no conquest worth talking about, except Mr. Smithson.

'Don't tell your grandmother anything about the bills for a week or two,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly. 'The creatures can wait for their money. Give yourself time to think.'

'I will,' answered Lesbia, dolefully.

'And now make haste, and get ready for the Ranelagh. My love, your eyes are dreadfully heavy. You _must_ use a little belladonna. I'll send Rilboche to you.'

And for the first time in her life, Lesbia, too depressed to argue the point, consented to have her eyes doctored by Rilboche.

She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz in a balcony with Mr. Smithson, a balcony banked round with hot-house flowers which were beginning to droop a little in the chilly morning air, just as beauty drooped under the searching eye of day.

Lesbia put the bills in her desk, and gave herself time to think, as Lady Kirkbank advised her. But the thinking progress resulted