Nothing now between her and beggary but the remains of the cheque for twenty pounds, sent to her by Mr. Rosenberg.
CHAPTER VI
GAUNT'S TERMS
"Her hand was close to her daughter's heart
And it felt the life-blood's sudden start;
A quick deep breath did the damsel draw
Like the struck fawn in the oakenshaw."—Rossetti.
Virginia, lily-pale in the heat, sat at the window of the tiny parlour dignified by the name of dining-room, adding up accounts. She had given Pansy her lunch, eaten some bread and cheese herself, and left the child to her daily afternoon rest while she applied herself to the discussion of ways and means.
It was Tony's half-holiday, and he would be home, he promised, at five o'clock, to help her carry down the little invalid into the garden to have tea. He was renouncing an hour of his precious cricket to do this. What a darling he was! Virginia's eyes grew misty as she thought of him—how pluckily he went without things that "other chaps" had! How loyally he refrained from piercing her heart with the thought of her own helplessness to supply him with what he wanted!
Now, for the first time, she was alone with the problem created by her mother's improvidence. In all its bare hideousness, the thing confronted her. The rent was due. They had always waited to pay it until the cheque for the quarter's rent at Lissendean came in. Now there was no cheque to be expected. If her mother's errand to-day had failed, she must give notice to quit that very afternoon. Even so, where was this quarter's rent to come from? The balance at the bank was seven pounds six and two-pence.
The furniture must be sold. This, with her mother's pretty things, would pay the landlord. Afterwards—what?
The sweet eyes grew dim with a secret, bewildered kind of pain. Why had Gerald Rosenberg gone away without a word?... Yet, when she asked herself why not, she had no intelligible answer to give. Nothing had passed between himself and her, in words. Only she had been conscious of his unceasing, absorbed attention, given to herself, whenever they had been in company. There had been a tiny secret thread of mutual understanding—or so Virginia had thought. It now appeared that she was mistaken. There had been nothing between them. It was like brushing gossamer from before one's eyes. It had been there, but it was nothing. The first strong light of reason dispersed it. Something that had been very sweet, very poignant, had come to an end. While telling herself that it had all been her own fancy, inwardly she knew it was not so. There had been something. But it was only gossamer—just midsummer madness.