Nothing like it had ever happened to her before.
Her desire to annihilate that clerk with the suave ambassadorial look, and the Dauphin, and all therein and all appertaining thereunto, was mounting toward explosion, when Matilda clutched her arm.
"It's awful, ma'am,—but let's go," she whispered. "What else can we do?"
Yes, what else could they do? Mrs. De Peyster's wrath was still at demolitory pressure, but she saw the sense in that question. The next moment the two figures, duplicates of somberness, one magnificently upright, the other shrinking, were re-passing over the muting rugs, through the corridor of noble marble, by the lackeys between whose common palms and the hands of patrician guests was the antiseptic intermediary of white thread gloves.
"Perhaps it's just as well, ma'am," Matilda began tremulously as soon as they were in the street, before Mrs. De Peyster's black storm could burst. "How much would that suite have been?"
"Perhaps fifty dollars a day."
"I only just now thought about it—but—but please, ma'am, did you happen to bring your purse?"
"My purse!" Mrs. De Peyster stopped short. "Matilda!"—in a voice chilled with dismay—"I never thought of my purse until this moment! There wasn't time! I haven't a cent!"
"And after paying for the cab, ma'am, I have only a little over fifteen dollars."
"Matilda!"