This family were engaged—while the broad sunshine was gladdening the poor and the respectable, promenading in the park, into which the windows of the mansion looked—in discussing the conduct of the only son of the house of Grahame, who, instead of having obtained at college a “double first” for the honour of the family, had forwarded home a packet of tradesmen’s accounts, the gross total of which considerably exceeded the handsome allowance placed to his credit by his father. Mr. Grahame spoke with considerable dissatisfaction of the course his son must have pursued to have plunged thus largely into debt; and, though it was in accordance with his wish that his son had for his college companions and intimate acquaintances, the Duke of St. Allborne, the young Earl of Carlton, and the experienced Lord Suedmuch, yet he thought that even their intimacy, at the price his son had paid for it, or rather that which he was called upon to pay, much too dear, and he expressed himself on the subject with an emphasis which his pride rendered unusual.
Mrs. Grahame turned upon him a sidelong glance with her half-closed eyes, and, said coldly and contemptuously—
“He is a Grahame! The members of that race are not used to measure their wants, their pleasures, or even their caprices, by miserable considerations of economy. I said to Malcolm, when we parted—‘Remember, always, that you are a Grahame. If those with whom you associate act as though their wealth ran a stream whose source is inexhaustible, let your expenditure be no less illimitable than theirs, even to represent, in wealth, a river whose’”——
“Confluence is a sea of dissipation and of debt,” sharply exclaimed Mr. Grahame, taking a pinch of snuff out of a gold, diamond-studded snuff-box.
“Mr. Grahame, your sense of the dignity of your position is becoming impaired,” responded the stately lady, wholly closing her eyes.
“No, madam,” he returned, “pardon me, I simply, object to unnecessary and preposterous extravagance.”
An expression of ineffable disdain passed over the lady’s features.
“Claver’se Grahame,” she remarked, in a frigid tone, “have you, at a moment, become poor?”
The face of Mr. Grahame instantly changed to a brilliant scarlet hue, then to a purple, finally it became livid. Globules of cold perspiration gathered thickly upon his brow. He thrust his chair back a few paces, and there was something of an affrighted expression in his eyes as he gazed upon hen. Her eyelids were yet close down over her pale gray eyes as he wiped the deathly damp from his brow.
Helen Grahame turned her bright dark eyes upon him with a scornful look. In her estimation, the concentration of meanness of soul was to place a limit upon lavish expenditure. She did not utter a word, but she tried to balance in her own mind which of the two occasioned her father the most terror—her mother’s cold displeasure or Malcolm’s extravagance.