"Why, 'tis a pretty pass if you've no more money—"
"Well, it is a pretty pass, and that's just what it is. I didn't count the cost when I made the generous offer to bring you. Oh, we can last a week or so yet, but the sooner something is done, the sooner we shall be easy in our minds. On second thoughts, though, you'd better go to bed and rest. It mightn't be well to flash on the town to-night, looking fagged, and without your hair dressed, and all that. So you go to bed and I'll go around and—call upon a few friends I made when I was here before."
Ned had so improved his attire, by acquisitions in New York, Bristol, and London, that his appearance was now presentable in the haunts of gentlemen. So he went out, leaving her alone. She could no longer postpone meditating upon what was before her.
Now that she viewed it for the first time in definite particulars, its true aspect struck her with a sudden dismay. She was expected to do nothing less than exhibit herself for sale, put herself up at auction for the highest bidder, set out her charms as a bait. And when the bait drew, and the bidders offered, and the buyer awaited—what then? She would never, her pride alone would never let her, degrade herself to a position at the very thought of which she caught her breath with horror. Come what may, the man who purchased her must put the transaction into the form of marriage. True, she was already married, in the view of the law; but, with a woman's eye for essentials, she felt her divorce from Philip already accomplished. The law, she allowed, would have to be satisfied with matters of form: but that was a detail to be observed when the time came; Philip would not oppose obstacles.
So she would let matters take their course, would wait upon occurrences. In very truth, to put herself on view with intent of catching a husband, of obtaining an establishment in life, was no more than young ladies of fashion, of virtue, of piety, did continually, under the skilled direction of the most estimable mothers. In Madge's case, the only difference was, on the one side, the excuse of necessity; on the other side, the encumbrance of her existing marriage. But the latter could be removed, whereas the former would daily increase.
She must, therefore, benefit by Ned's operations as long as they did not threaten to degrade her. By the time they did threaten so, she would have gained some experience of her own, circumstances would have arisen which she could turn to her use. Of actual destitution, never having felt it, she could not conceive; and therefore she did not take account of its possibility in her case.
So, having recovered from her brief panic, she went to bed and slept soundly.
The next morning Ned was in jubilant spirits. His visit the previous night had been to a gaminghouse in Covent Garden, and fortune had showered him with benefactions. He saw the margin of time at their disposal lengthened by several weeks. He bade his sister put herself at her best, drank with her to their success, and went and engaged a hairdresser and a maid. They went that night, in a hackney-coach, to the play at Drury Lane.
The open-mouthed gazing of her new maid, the deftly spoken admiration of her hairdresser, and the mirror upon her dressing-table, had prepared Madge for triumph. Her expectations were not disappointed, but they were almost forgotten. Her pleasure at sight of the restless, chattering crowd; her interest in the performance; her joy in seeing, in fine: supplanted half the consciousness of being seen. But she was, indeed, stared at from all parts of the house; people looked, and nudged one another; and the powdered bucks and beauties in the side-boxes, glancing up, forgot their own looks in examining hers.
Ned was elated beyond measure. He praised her all the way home in the coach, and when they stood at last on the step of their lodging-house, he waited a moment before going in, and looked back toward the Strand, half-thinking that some susceptible and adventurous admirer might have followed their conveyance to the door.