“Yes, that is Vivien singing,” replied her brother.
“I am very fond of music; shall we rejoin the company?”
They went down, and, seeking the fair Vivien’s side, Ralph Meredith spent a most delightful evening, the memory of which clung to him for many a week afterward.
The next morning he left London for a three-months’ tour through Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent.
Mrs. Richards sat in her handsome boudoir one morning a few weeks later, reading a newspaper.
Something had evidently gone wrong with her, for her face was overcast, an angry red glowed in her cheeks, and her eyes gleamed with a sullen fire.
The reason for this was the flat refusal, on the part of Mr. Richards, to accede to her immoderate demand for five hundred dollars, to purchase for herself and Josephine new dresses for the coming winter, and she had just returned to her room after the stormy interview.
“I cannot let you have a dollar,” he had said, with a gravity almost amounting to sternness, “for I haven’t it to spare.”
“Not a dollar, George!” she retorted, with a scornful laugh. “Who ever heard of anything so absurd?”