“Yes, but I do not know how it may be managed, dearest,” said Lady Bellingham, looking very much distressed. “You have no idea what a charge this house is upon me! And now here is—” She broke off, as she encountered a warning glance from her niece, and said hurriedly: “But that we shall say nothing about! We will talk of it later, Kit.”
“But you are living in such famous style here!” he said, looking about him critically. “I never saw anything to equal it. It must have cost a fortune to furnish this house!”
“Well, that is just it,” replied his aunt. “It did cost a fortune, not that it is paid for yet, because no one could possibly pay such bills as the wretched people are for ever dunning me with, but the thing is that everyone wants to run upon tick nowadays, and the times are so bad I declare it is a rarity to see a rouleau of as much as twenty guineas! And the E.O. table does not answer as well as we had hoped, besides being not quite the style of thing I like to have in my house.”
“An E.O. table!” he repeated, in astonished accents. “My dear ma’am, you do not have that here, surely?”
“Why not?” asked his sister, in rather a hard voice. “This is a gaming-house, Kit.”
He stirred uneasily in his chair, and began to talk about private parties.
“Oh, we send out cards of invitation, but we turn no one away from our door who has a few guineas to risk at the tables!” Deborah said.
It was evident that he could not like this, but as he stood a little in awe of his sister he did not say much until she had left the room. He turned then to Lady Bellingham, and desired her to tell him what could have possessed her to change the character of her evening-parties.
It had been agreed between Deborah and Lady Bellingham that nothing should be told Kit about the mortgage on the house, or Mr Ravenscar’s threats to foreclose, but her ladyship divulged the rest of the story, not omitting the scandalous bill for green peas, or the inclusion in the household of Phoebe Laxton. Kit was quite bewildered, and had the greatest difficulty in unravelling the story. His sense of propriety, offended at the outset by the discovery that his aunt’s select card-parties had sadly deteriorated, was still more severely tried by the knowledge that an attempt had been made to bribe his sister into relinquishing her claims to Lord Mablethorpe’s title and fortune; but he said, in a fair-minded way, that if she had been allowed for the past year to preside over the saloons of what had become no better than a common gaming-house, he was not at all surprised, and could not blame Mablethorpe’s relations for misliking the connexion.
Lady Bellingham wept, and never thought of telling him that his own expensive habits had had much to do in making it necessary for her to turn her home into a gaming-house. She said that it was all very unlucky, but indeed she had not known where to turn for money to pay the tradesmen. As for Deb, if only she could be brought to marry Mablethorpe, there would be no harm done, but, on the contrary, a great deal of good. “For she met him at the faro-table, you know, Kit, and even if he is a little young for her, it would be a splendid match!”