Hero blushed, and thanked her, and begged leave to present her cousin. Mrs. Gillingham, who was a good many years senior to any of Mrs Hoby’s party, was extremely gracious and amiable, remained for a short while, chatting easily, and departed only when she had obtained Hero’s promise to waive the formality of the morning call, and to make one of a little card party she was giving on the following evening.
“Do you think I should go, Theresa?” Hero asked doubtfully, when Mrs Gillingham had withdrawn.
“Oh, unquestionably, my dear cousin! Such a distinguished air, and her gown in the first style of elegance! The address too; Curzon Street: it is unexceptionable! She is acquainted with your husband, moreover, and that must make her acceptable to you, I have no doubt!”
“Y-es,” said Hero. “But Sherry told me once that he knows many people he does not wish to present to me.
Mrs Hoby gave a little shriek of laughter. “Oh, my dear, what will you say next, I wonder? Depend upon it, Mrs Gillingham does not come under that category! Why, she must be thirty-five, if she is a day, and very likely more!”
So upon the following evening Hero was set down at a slip of a house in Curzon Street, and made a somewhat shy entrance into a saloon already full of guests. Her hostess came forward at once, and made her welcome in the kindest way, introducing her to one or two complete strangers, and pressing a glass of champagne upon her. Hero was a little surprised to find that she knew no one in the room, and after looking about her for a while she began to feel uneasy, and to fear that perhaps Sherry would not have wished her to have come. When Sir Matthew Brockenhurst arrived, with the Honourable Wilfred Yarford, she wished it more than ever, and had she known how to excuse herself without giving offence to her hostess, or drawing upon herself the particular notice she wished to avoid, she would certainly have done so. She did not know, however, and when the company adjourned to a much larger apartment on the first floor, where card tables were set out, she meekly allowed herself to be shepherded up the stairs with the rest of the guests.
She liked playing cards, and since she had been initiated into the mysteries of faro, rouge et noir, macao, and a number of other games of chance by Sherry himself, she naturally considered that she was well able to hold her own in any company. This proved, however, not to be the case. The stakes, too, were much higher than any she had yet played for, and she was soon put into a little confusion by finding herself without any more money to stake. Mrs Gillingham was kindness itself, smiling at her innocence, and explaining to her how everyone punted on tick until the luck turned for them, and showing her how to write a vowel. Hero remembered hearing Sherry talk of having given vowels, so she knew that this must be the accepted custom, and settled down to win back her losses. She became so absorbed in the game that she scarcely noticed anything beyond the turn of a card; and what with the excitement of the play, the heat of the room, and the champagne which was continually poured into her glass, she began to plunge more and more heavily, arising in the small hours a much greater loser than she had had any very clear idea of. Her vowels appeared, incredibly, to run into four figures, and how she was ever to pay such a sum until her next quarter’s allowance should be paid to her account she had not the lest idea. But here again Mrs Gillingham was most understanding, assuring her that Jack Cranbourne, who had held the bank, would not dream of pressing for payment, and expressing her conviction that another evening’s play would see all the vowels redeemed, and a stream of guineas pouring into her young friend’s lap. Hero, effectually sobered by her losses, had no desire to spend another evening in this house, but she knew that what Mrs Gillingham said was true, because Sherry had said the same. One had only to have courage to ignore one’s losses, and to continue playing, for the luck to change, and set all to rights.
But the second night’s play was even more disastrous than the first; and some warning instinct in Hero told her that a third would be no more successful. Thoroughly frightened, shivering at the thought of the vast sums she had lost, and not knowing which way to turn in her extremity, she spent what was left of the night tossing about in her bed, and racking her brains to find a way out of her difficulties. To present Sherry with the sum of her obligations seemed to her unthinkable, for poor Sherry had his own obligations, and had said only a week earlier that they must really try to practice economy. Hero wept into her pillow with grief to think that she should have added to Sherry’s embarrassments; and thought that her mother-in-law had spoken no less than the truth when she had accused her of having wrecked his life.
He came home from Newmarket that day, to find a heavy-eyed wife, who explained nervously that she had the headache. He said that he had one himself, and had no hesitation in ascribing it to the malignant behaviour of four out of five of the horses he had backed. Hero turned pale, and faltered: “Was your luck so very bad, Sherry?”
“Devilish!” he replied. “If it goes on like this I shall find myself in the hands of some curst cent-per-cent, I can tell you!” He broke the wafer of one of the letters which had been awaiting him, and ejaculated: “Bills! nothing but bills! There’s no end to it! What a damned homecoming for a man!”