During her words, her companion had sat silent—speculative and suspicious. To her worldly mind, Clodagh's grand manner—Clodagh's extraordinary behaviour—indicated but one possibility. She had found means of augmenting her income!
Any knowledge of the false pride, the empty magnificence that will, metaphorically speaking, fling its last coin to a beggar, while passing on to penury, had never come within her experience. It needs the environments of such places as Orristown to bring them to maturity. She looked now at her companion, and her eyes narrowed in a sudden, triumphant satisfaction. Something that she had anticipated had come to pass! At the imagined discovery, she gave a quick laugh.
"If you insist on being so scrupulous——"
Clodagh looked round from the bureau at which she had seated herself.
"How much?" she said laconically.
Lady Frances pretended to knit her brows.
"Well, there was the eight hundred pounds at Nice—and the forty pounds the night of your return to town—the night we played bridge with Val and Deerehurst——"
She looked very quickly at Clodagh.
But Clodagh gave no sign. "And the fifty pounds a fortnight ago—besides the sixty for Lady Shrawle," she interrupted.
"Yes—oh yes! Let me see, that makes——"