"What do they mean?" she asks aloud. "It must—it must be a stupendous mistake. How could any girl wear or order one hundred and eighty-four pounds' worth of clothes in less than six months? Impossible! She has been remarkably well-dressed of late, I have noticed, and—and I remember Lady Crawford telling me that she is considered one of the best got-up girls in Nutshire. Her last ball-dress was very handsome; but—but, all the same, this bill is simply incredible. It's a mistake—of course it's a mistake! It's an account of some large family—the Douglases or the Hawksbys probably—and they have got hers; that's it, of course. I'll just run my eyes down the items to make sure. How hard they are to make out! Let me see—let me see. Costume of white satin merveilleuse, and gauze and flounces of Cluny lace, sixteenth of January—forty-five pounds. That sounds like the dress she got for the Arkwrights'—satin gauze and Cluny lace; but—but forty-five pounds! I thought it would be ten at the outside. To be sure, I never ordered a dress for myself, so—so I don't know; but forty-five pounds! It's awful, awful!"
With head down-bent she goes slowly and laboriously through each item; when she reaches the total, her face is crimson with shame and bewilderment. She pushes the document from her, walks feverishly up and down the room, then takes up the account again.
"Sortie du bal of silver plush trimmed in blue fox-fur—twenty-eight pounds ten shillings. That can't—can't mean that simple little dolman she wore going to the theatricals the other night? Impossible! I'll go and ask her about this at once."
She rushes off, scared and excited, calling her sister's name loudly. No answer comes to her in the house. She passes out, the ominous document trembling in her hands.
"Here I am, under the ash in the tennis-ground! What's the matter? What has happened? Any one hurt?"
"No," pants Addie, "no; it's a bill of yours, an awful bill, from Armine—since last January. I can't make it out; it must be wrong. I got such a shock when I saw the total."
She parts the drooping boughs of the ash, and finds herself confronted by her sister, crimson with confusion and anger, and Sir Arthur Saunderson, caressing his tawny mustache, an amused smile stealing over his insolent dissipated face.
"Oh, is that you, Sir Arthur?" she exclaims, with scant courtesy, knowing that her husband has a strong personal objection to that gentleman. "I did not know you were here."
"Came half-hour 'go. Pleasure a-finding Miss Lefroy in the grounds; did not go the house," he answers languidly. "Lovely aft'noon, ain't it?"
"Lovely," she answers shortly, sitting down beside Pauline, with an irritated gesture that says as plainly as words could say, "You're in the way, sir; your departure would be acceptable."