"Matinée Hats and all?" interjected Arthur with brutal levity, haughtily ignored but not unnoted.
"'Separate staterooms'—now I shall know what a stateroom is like—'artistically furnished and decorated, warmed, lighted by electricity, and each provided with a dressing-room with hot and cold water.' Now, Herbert, isn't it wonderful? And besides all that, just listen: 'Perfect meals are served, and the sleeping accommodation is magnificent.' Now, I should be quite content with the artistic stateroom and the separate dressing-room, shouldn't you? H'm—h'm—h'm. 'And you arrive, not fatigued, but refreshed, at Nice at 10.32 a.m., so that'—h'm—h'm—h'm—'you may be taking your déjeuner'—h'm—h'm—'bathed in sunlight,' etc., 'in about twenty-four hours after leaving the fogs of London.' Bathed in sunlight," she sighed with luxurious rapture.
"Why have we never done this thing before?" asked Herbert. "Far from being expensive, the journey appears positively to enrich you. Still, I advise you to take some soap and a towel, and a few odd louis and a handful of francs. But, my poor child, observe this little item, 'Supplemental charges' for the sleeping-cars."
"What? Five pounds practically! Then I'll just not have a sleeping-car at all, but tuck myself up in the artistically furnished, warmed, and lighted stateroom for the night."
"Alas! I regret to say that the staterooms and sleeping-rooms are one and indivisible."
"Then," said Ermengarde, with deep and indignant conviction, "it's a shame and a swindle. And I'll go by a Rapide, and make myself up in a corner with cushions. Providing I face the engine and have a corner seat, I can always sleep in a train."
A cumulative family veto promptly negatived this mad resolve, and Ermengarde's sum total for the single journey leapt up accordingly, till, what with booking fees, registrations, insurances, tips, and those supplemental charges that bristle all over Continental time-tables, it doubled her original estimate, and she began to think that, if hotel expenses bounded up in the same proportion, it might be the more prudent course to stay at home.
But the very word home came with a shock that showed the impossibility of that course. She must forget certain things, and grow accustomed to certain daily deepening pangs, and steep her thoughts in other atmospheres, and so take breath and strength for the newer, darker aspects of life confronting her. Especially she must forget the experience of a certain dark and dreadful night. On that occasion she had dined at her father's house, and growing weary of the musical evening that followed, and eschewing the delights of bridge in a dim and distant room clandestinely devoted to that pastime, had cabbed quietly home at eleven and let herself in with a latchkey.
The house was silent; the servants evidently had gone to bed; a candle and matches under a still burning gas-bracket awaited her; but the light under the study door showed that the master of the house had come home, presumably to the heavy evening's work that had been his excuse for not dining at Onslow Gardens. Thinking to just let him know she was in, without interrupting his work, she stepped softly to the study, and as softly opened the door and looked in.
The room was partly in shadow, lighted by fire-gleams. Over the writing-table was a shaded lamp, in the interrupted light of which she saw the slender, bowed figure of a woman sitting, with her face hidden by her hands. Beside her, and bending slightly over her, stood Arthur, his face in shadow, his hand on her shoulder, which quivered with restrained sobs; he was speaking in a low, earnest voice words inaudible at the door at the other end of the room.