Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. “You’re a bad colour, Lily: this incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,” she said.
Miss Bart saw an opening. “I don’t think it’s that, Aunt Julia; I’ve had worries,” she replied.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse closing against a beggar.
“I’m sorry to bother you with them,” Lily continued, “but I really believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious thoughts—”
“I should have said Carry Fisher’s cook was enough to account for it. She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891—the spring of the year we went to Aix—and I remember dining there two days before we sailed, and feeling SURE the coppers hadn’t been scoured.”
“I don’t think I ate much; I can’t eat or sleep.” Lily paused, and then said abruptly: “The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money.”
Mrs. Peniston’s face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was forced to continue: “I have been foolish——”
“No doubt you have: extremely foolish,” Mrs. Peniston interposed. “I fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses—not to mention the handsome presents I’ve always given you——”
“Oh, you’ve been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget your kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a girl is put to nowadays——”
“I don’t realize that YOU are put to any expense except for your clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely dressed; but I paid Celeste’s bill for you last October.”