"I'm only thinking, darling, what fortunes the upholsterers must make," said George, his hands penthouse over his eyes.
Letty pouted and flushed. The next minute she came to sit on the edge of his chair. She was dressed—rather overdressed, perhaps—in a pale blue dress whereof the inventive ruffles and laces pleased her own critical mind extremely. George, well accustomed by now to the items in his mother's bills, felt uncomfortably, as he looked at the elegance beside him, that it was a question of guineas—many guineas. Then he hated himself for not simply admiring her—his pretty little bride—in her new finery. What was wrong with him? This beastly money had put everything awry!
Letty guessed shrewdly at what was the matter. She bit her lip, and looked ready to cry.
"Well, it is hard," she said, in a low, emphatic voice, "that we can't please ourselves in a few trifles of this sort—when one thinks why!"
George took her hand, and kissed it affectionately.
"Darling, only just for a little—till I get out of this brute's clutches. There are such pretty, cheap things nowadays—aren't there?"
"Oh! if you want to have a South Kensington drawing-room," said Letty, indignantly, "with four-penny muslin curtains and art pots, you can do that for nothing. But I'd rather go back to horsehair and a mahogany table in the middle at once!"
"You needn't wear 'greenery-yallery' gowns, you know." said George, laughing; "that's the one unpardonable thing. Though, if you did wear them, you'd become them."
And he held her at arm's length that he might properly admire her new dress.
Letty, however, was not to be flattered out of her lawful dues in the matter of curtains—that Lady Tressady's debts might be paid the sooner. She threw herself into a long wrestle with George, half angry, half plaintive, and in the end she wrung out of him much more considerable matters than the brocades originally in dispute. Then George went down to his study, pricked in his conscience, and vaguely sore with Letty. Why? Women in his eyes were made for silken gauds and trinkets: it was the price that men were bound to pay them for their society. He had watched the same sort of process that had now been applied to himself many times already in one or more of the Anglo-Indian households with which he had grown familiar, and had been philosophically amused by it. But the little comedy, transferred to his own hearth, seemed somehow to have lost humour and point.