“No, you must not. I shall write to Monsieur Launay myself and tell him. I cannot afford these expenses, the demands for money are dreadful. I am always spending. Go away, Preen.”
“Yes, my lady,” said the little maid, and she “made a face” as she left the room.
“The preparations for your marriage will be more than I can afford.”
“Oh, mamma, must that go on?” cried Maude.
“Now, now, now, Maude, no more of that, please. I will not have it. Silence. The expenses will be terrible, and I shall be very glad when it is over, and so will you be, and I must say I am pleased to find you are coming more to your senses. Oh, that odious wretch. Go away, do!”
Her ladyship crossed to the window and shut it down with a crash, deadening the sound of Luigi’s minstrelsy as she returned to her daughter’s side.
“Really the expenses of our establishment are maddening. I have had the wine merchant’s bill in this morning, and it is outrageous. The man must be a swindler. Case after case of dry champagne charged for that I cannot remember having. But I must see into it at once; and, yes: I am quite satisfied there is no need for you to go to the hairdresser’s any more.”
Her ladyship gave a quick glance round the room—a glance that took in everything, the furniture, the davenport at which her daughter wrote, the books she had been reading, even to the tiny cobweb left by a careless housemaid in one corner, and then in a very dissatisfied frame of mind she descended to write to Mr Launay, leaving her daughter looking speechless with misery, and gazing wildly at the closed window.
“Shall I finish your hair, ma’am?” said a voice which made her start, for she had not heard the door opened.
“If you like, Dolly,” said Maude despairingly; and with a curiously furtive glance at her mistress, caused by her wonder what her ladyship had said, the girl went on with her interrupted work till she had done; and then when certain hooks had been persuaded to enter certain eyes, and as many buttons to pass through their button-holes, as she could obtain no further orders, Dolly left the room, and Maude walked to the window, opened it, and sat down with her elbow on the sill to listen to the distant strains of music which came from the top end of the place near Park Crescent, and as she listened the tears stole down her cheeks, for the fiat must be obeyed. There would be no more pleasant visits to the coiffeur’s—those little trips which relieved the monotony of her life so deliciously, and made her better able to bear the coming of Sir Grantley Wilters.