With a rapid movement she turned the account over to the end, and gazed at the sum total; gazed at it, stared at it, and recoiled from it. Three thousand and odd pounds, odd shillings, and no pence! What the odd pounds were, whether one, or whether nine hundred ninety-nine, she did not catch in that moment of terror; the first grand sum of three thousand absorbed her eyes and her faculties. And there floated over her a confused consciousness of other bills to come in: one from the jeweller's, one for shawls, one for expensively trimmed linen. There was one shawl, real India—but she dared not think of that. "Oscar will say I have been mad," she groaned.
No doubt he would.
At that moment she heard his step, coming in from the dining-room, and turned sick. She crushed the bill in her right hand and thrust it down the neck of her dress. Then she blew out the taper, and turned, with a burning brow and shrinking frame, to the window again, and stood there, apparently looking out. Selina had never attempted to sum up what she had bought. At odd moments she had feared it might come to something like a thousand pounds.
Oscar came up and put his arm around her, asking whether it was not time to have the lights.
"Yes. Presently."
"What in the world have you got here?" cried he. "A ball?"
She pushed the "ball" higher up, and murmured something about "some paper."
"My dear, what is the matter with you here? You are trembling."
"The night-air, I suppose. It is rather chilly."
Yet the night was hot. Mr. Dalrymple immediately began to close the window. He was a minute or two over it, for one of the cords was stiff and did not go well. When he turned round again, his wife had left the room.