'It's the cosiest room in town,' said Colonel Delville, whereupon Mrs. Mostyn, while counters were being distributed, explained to the company on scientific principles why the room was comfortable, expatiating upon the effect of yellow and brown upon the retina, and some curious facts relating to the optic machinery of water-fleas, as lately discovered by a great naturalist.
Unfortunately for science, the game had now begun, and the players were curiously indifferent as to the visual organs of water-fleas.
The game went on merrily till the pearly lights of dawn began to creep through the chinks of Lady Kirkbank's yellow curtain. Everybody seemed gay, yet everybody could not be winning. Fortune had not smiled upon Lesbia's cards, or on those of her partner. The Smithson and Haselden firm had come to grief. Lesbia's little ivory purse had been emptied of its three or four half-sovereigns, and Mr. Smithson had been capitalising a losing concern for the last two hours. And the play had been fast and furious, although nominally for small stakes.
'I am afraid to think of how much I must owe you,' said Lesbia, when Mr. Smithson bade her good night.
'Oh, nothing worth speaking of—sixteen or seventeen pounds, at most.'
Lesbia felt cold and creepy, and hardly knew whether it was the chill of new-born day, or the sense of owing money to Horace Smithson. Those three or four half-sovereigns to-night were the end of her last remittance from Lady Maulevrier. She had had a great many remittances from that generous grandmother; and the money had all gone, somehow. It was gone, and yet she had paid for hardly anything. She had accounts with all Lady Kirkbank's tradesmen. The money had melted away—it had oozed out of her pockets—at cards, on the race-course, in reckless gifts to servants and people, at fancy fairs, for trifles bought here and there by the way-side, as it were, for the sake of buying. If she had been suddenly asked for an account of her stewardship she could not have told what she had done with half of the money. And now she must ask for twenty pounds more, and immediately, to pay Mr. Smithson.
She went up to her room in the clear early light, and stood like a statue, with fixed thoughtful eyes, while Kibble took off her finery, the pretty pale yellow gown which set off her dark brown hair, her violet eyes. For the first time in her life she felt the keen pang of anxiety about money matters—the necessity to think of ways and means. She had no idea how much money she had received from her grandmother since she had begun her career in Scotland last autumn. The cheques had been sent her as she asked for them; sometimes even before she asked for them; and she had kept no account. She thought her grandmother was so rich that expenditure could not matter. She supposed that she was drawing upon an inexhaustible supply. And now Lady Kirkbank had told her that Lady Maulevrier was not rich, as the world reckons nowadays. The savings of a dowager countess even in forty years of seclusion could be but a small fund to draw upon for the expenses of life at high pressure.
'The sums people spend nowadays are positively appalling,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'A man with five or six thousand a year is an absolute pauper. I'm sure our existence is only genteel beggary, and yet we spend over ten thousand.'
Enlightened thus by the lips of the worldly-wise, Lesbia thought ruefully of the bills which her grandmother would have to pay for her at the end of the season, bills of the amount whereof she could not even make an approximate guess. Seraphine's charges had never been discussed in her hearing—but Lady Kirkbank had admitted that the creature was dear.