“We had to have that,” said Lady Bellingham, comforted. “But when it comes to eighty pounds for liveries which are the most hideous colour imaginable, and not in the least what I wanted, we have reached the outside of enough!”
Miss Grantham looked up with an awed expression in her eyes. “Aunt, do we really pay four hundred pounds for a box at the opera?”
“I daresay. It is all of a piece! I am sure we have not used it above three times the whole season.”
“We must give it up,” said Miss Grantham firmly.
“Now, Deb, do pray be sensible! When poor dear Sir Edward was alive, we always had our box at the opera. Everyone did so!”
“But Sir Edward has been dead these dozen years, aunt,” Miss Grantham pointed out.
Lady Bellingham dabbed at her eyes with a fragile handkerchief. “Alas, I am a defenceless widow, whom everyone delights to impose upon! But I will not give up my box at the opera!”
There did not seem to be anything more to be said about this. Miss Grantham had made another, and still more shocking discovery. “Oh, aunt!” she said, raising distressed eyes from the sheaf of bills. “Ten ells of green Italian taffeta! That was for that dress which I threw, away, because it did not become me!”
“Well, what else is one to do with dresses which don’t become one?” asked her aunt reasonably.
“I might at least have worn it! Instead of that, we bought all that satin—the Rash Tears one, I mean—and had it made up.”