“Monday! Why, to-day is Friday! You must mean Monday week.”
“Indeed I do not. How she will manage I cannot tell, except that when people have more wealth than they know what to do with, they can do what they please. Her villa at Richmond, too, is just the place for a fête champétre; and the novel shortness of the invitation, and being the day before a drawing-room, will crowd her rooms, depend upon it. It is something unusually exciting, the very bustle of the thing.”
“But I thought it was not to be until—”
“Until Herbert Gresham returned. Nor will it. He arrives to-morrow night, or some time on Sunday, quite suddenly, not having been expected for several weeks yet. What with his foreign honours, his promised baronetcy, and last, not least, his distinguished appearance, he will be sought and fêted by all the money-loving mammas and husband-seeking daughters for the remainder of the season.”
“The worst of its being a fête champétre is, that we must have complete new dresses,” rejoined Laura. “And how to coax papa for the necessary help, I know not; my last quarter was all gone before I received it, and my debts actually frighten me. But what is to be done? go I must.”
“And then the shortness of the notice!” continued Mary; “really Lady Gresham might have given us more time. Who can decide what to wear, or even what colour, in three days?”
“Come, Lucy, decide! But of course you will go!” exclaimed Charlotte, impatiently. “It will be your first appearance in public this season, and so you can have nothing to think about in the way of expense. Nothing but the trouble of seeing about a new dress.”
“Which will prevent my going, much as I might wish it,” replied Miss Neville, very quietly, though the faint tinge rising to her cheek, and the quiver of the lip, might have betrayed some degree of internal emotion.
“Prevent your going! What can you possibly mean?” exclaimed her guests together.
“That as it is now six o’clock on Friday, and you tell me Lady Gresham’s fête is three o’clock on Monday, I have not sufficient time to procure all I want (for having been so long in mourning, I have literally nothing that will do), without breaking a resolution, and sacrificing a principle, which I do not feel at all inclined to do.”