After dinner Bertie cut in at Dollie's table, and as her partner found himself absent, playing badly, losing tricks carelessly.
"I'm really sorry," he apologized, as their opponents went across for sandwiches. "I'll wake up now."
"You're out of sorts," Dollie said kindly. "What is it?"
"Debts," he said wearily. "We're the old proverbial china crock, Mrs Gresham, trying to swim with the brass one. What does it cost a woman to dress, Mrs Gresham?"
"It costs Esmé about fifteen hundred a year," said Dollie, shrewdly. "Claire is ruinous now. Never an evening frock under sixty, and the etceteras at so much an ounce. Then Esmé's furs are all new. She's a bad little lady going to Claire, and Lilie in Paris."
"Fifteen hundred!" Bertie laughed. "No, about three; and it's far more than I can manage."
"Three—grandmothers!" observed Dollie, blandly. "You see Claire's little bill and tell me then. You're very extravagant children. Esmé paid those electric people fifty pounds before you left London, and taxis are just as good."
"Fifty pounds!" Bertie shuffled the cards silently. He had not given Esmé fifty pounds for the garage. He certainly did not pay Claire's bill. His payments had been to big drapers, and to a tailor.
A sudden sickening doubt was assailing him. Was Esmé getting money he did not know of? Was he one among the hundreds of fooled husbands? He flung the thought away, and turned to the game, and played carefully.
But on the way home the thought returned.