"That's it. You must see about your dresses at once. Good ones will cost about ten pounds to hire, and that ought to include some decent paste."
"We sha'n't have to pay for our tickets."
"Good. Four guineas saved. Dresses? Say twenty pounds for the eight of us. Supper with fizz another ten quid. Four salmon-colored taxis with tips, ten pounds."
"How much?" Jenny exclaimed. "Ten pounds just to take us to Covent Garden Ball and back?"
"Ah, but I've a plan. These salmon-colored taxis are going to be the chef d'œuvre as well as the hors d'œuvre of the entertainment. Hush, it's a secret. Let me see, our tickets—four guineas—forty-four pounds four shillings. Well, say fifty quid to include all tips and breakfast."
"Well, I think it's too much," Jenny declared.
"Not too much for an evening that shall be famous over all evenings—an evening that you, my Jenny, will remember when you're an ancient old woman—an evening that we'll talk over for the rest of our lives."
While Maurice was speaking, the shadow of a gigantic doubt passed over Jenny's mind. She endured one of those moments when only the profound uselessness of everything has any power to impress the reason. She suffered a complete loss of faith and hope. The moment was one of those black abysses before which the mind is aghast at effort and conceives annihilation. In the Middle Ages such an experience would have been ascribed to the direct and personal influence of Satan.
"What's the matter?" Maurice asked. "You look as if you didn't believe me."
But, while the question was still on his lips, the shadow passed, and Jenny laughed.