She went over to him and laid her hand tremulously on his shoulder, and looked down at him with piteous, pleading eyes. No Circassian slave, afraid of bowstring and sack, could have entreated her master's clemency with deeper self-abasement.
Even Conrad Winstanley's hard nature was touched by the piteousness of her look and tone. He took the hand gently and raised it to his lips.
"I don't mean to be cruel, Pamela," he said. "I only want you to face the truth, and to understand your future position. It is your own money you are squandering, and you have a right to waste it, if it pleases you to do so. But it is a little hard for a man who has laboured and schemed for a given result, suddenly to find himself out in his calculations by so much as thirteen hundred and sixty-four pounds. Let us say no more about it, my dear. Here is the bill, and it must be paid. We have only to consider the items, and see if the prices are reasonable."
And then the Captain, with bent brow and serious aspect, began to read the lengthy record of an English lady's folly. Most of the items he passed over in silence, or with only a sigh, keeping his wife by his side, looking over his shoulder.
"Point out anything that is wrong," he said; but as yet Mrs. Winstanley had found no error in the bill.
Sometimes there came an item which moved the Captain to speech. "A dinner-dress, pain brûlé brocade, mixed poult de soie, manteau de cour, lined ivory satin, trimmed with hand-worked embroidery of wild flowers on Brussels net, sixty-three pounds."
"What in the name of all that's reasonable is pain brûlé?" asked the Captain impatiently.
"It's the colour, Conrad. One of those delicate tertiaries that have been so much worn lately."
"Sixty guineas for a dinner-dress! That's rather stiff. Do you know that a suit of dress-clothes costs me nine pounds, and lasts almost as many years?"
"My dear Conrad, for a man it is so different. No one looks at your clothes. That dress was for Lady Ellangowan's dinner. You made me very happy that night, for you told me I was the best-dressed woman in the room."