And she sighed a little conventional sigh, while spreading her feather fan, though a large crystal screen was placed between her and the brilliant fire that burned in a grate of steel polished like silver.
'But matters have come to a crisis with us; through me, I fear,' she added.
'Through you, aunt?'
'Yes, unfortunately.'
'How—in what way?'
'Did you not see how I turned my back upon that minx, Miss Chevenix, at the Charity Bazaar last week; cut her dead indeed, and this is the result!' exclaimed Lady Julia, tossing from her contemptuously a letter she had recently received.
'What result?' asked Emily Wilmot, too languid to open the missive in question.
'Her father will wait for the interest on the mortgages no longer, and we are ruined! Even this house of Wilmothurst may have to pass to him, and we shall have to go—to go—'
'Where, aunt?' asked Emily, becoming roused now, her light blue eyes dilated with wonder, and her nose seeming more retroussé than ever.
'God alone knows where; to some obscure watering-place probably. If this insolent fellow, who certainly has not been paid for some years, would only wait till Jerry returns from the Gold Coast, and some arrangements could be made,' continued Lady Julia, in her plaintive and bleating kind of voice. 'House, lands, and all will go to Chevenix, and only a few acres will be left us. We are beggars,' she continued, with angry querulousness, but without altering a line of her smooth, handsome, and passionless face. 'We have nothing of our own—all will become his.'