"You are touching an invite to a dinner-party—a gentleman's dinner-party at the Challice's on Friday week," he says, laughing.
"Would you like it answered? I'll answer it for you. You can not go, Tom, for I've written to Aunt Jo to come next week; and the chances are ten to one she'll arrive on that very day, and it would look very bad if you were absent, wouldn't it? You were always such a favorite of hers, you know."
"I won't be absent then. I'm not sorry for the excuse; those aldermanic feasts are becoming rather too much for my digestion of late. I'm afraid I'm getting old, Addie, and feeble—"
"Old and feeble!" she retorts. "I never saw a stronger-looking man than you; you have a grasp of iron. Taunt me with being like Hebe indeed! You are a mixture of Vulcan and Samson."
"Samson's days were short on earth; you may be a widow before you are thirty, Addie."
She looks at him with startled eyes; but his face is careless and unconscious. She moves away hurriedly.
"I may be a widow before I am thirty! The very words they used a year ago; and I—I—actually laughed—yes, I remember, I laughed. What a wretch I was! And now—now I can not bear to hear them, even in jest, not even in jest, my dear, my dear!"
It is a week after the theatricals. An unusual spell of quiet and peace has followed the excitement and racket of the preceding month, for Robert and the "Royal Nutshire" have left the soil for their annual month's picnicking in the Long Valley, and Miss Wynyard, not able to bear the reaction of dullness, has taken flight likewise, and is enjoying herself in town, while Pauline, in deserted Nutsgrove, pores greedily over the accounts of her gay doings, and valiantly determines that her sister shall have a comfortable pied-à-terre in the neighborhood of Eaton Square or Park Lane next season.
Meanwhile Addie is working briskly at clearing the study-table. The waste-paper bag is filling rapidly with the fluent literature of professional beggary, when suddenly a long sheet of paper bearing Madame Armine's address on the top, closely covered with scratchy French writing, drops in dismay from her hands. It is Miss Lefroy's account for goods supplied from the sixteenth of January to the first of May, and three figures represent the total. Poor Addie stares at them stupidly, rubs her eyes, even goes to the window for a moment to take breath and clear the cobwebs from her brain; but when she comes back they confront her still. One hundred and eighty-four pounds! Pounds—not pence, not shillings even, but pounds, sterling pounds!