From that time Fan was compelled to fare delicately, and each day in place of the simple quickly-eaten and soon-forgotten chop, there came to her table a soup with some new flavour, a bit of fish—salmon cutlets, or a couple of smelts, or dainty whitebait with lemon and brown bread-and-butter, or a red mullet in its white wrapper—and exquisitely-tasting little made dishes, and various sweets of unknown names. Nor was there wanting bright colour to relieve the monotony of white napery and please the eye—wine, white and red, in small cut-glass decanters, and rose and amber-coloured wineglasses, and rich-hued fruits and flowers. Of all the delicacies provided for her she tasted, yet never altogether free from the painful thought that while she was thus faring sumptuously, many of her fellow-creatures were going about the streets hungry, even as she had once gone about wishing for a penny to buy a roll. Still, Mrs. Fay was happy now, and that was one advantage gained, although her lodger was paying dearly for it with somebody's money.
But here she drew the line, being quite determined not to spend any money on dress until Mr. Travers should come to her to relieve her doubts, and yet she knew very well that to be leading this easy idle life she was very poorly dressed. Many an hour she spent sitting in the shade in Hyde Park, watching the perpetual stream of fashionable people, on foot and in carriages—she the only unfashionable one there, the only one who exchanged greetings and pleasant words with no friend or acquaintance. What then did it matter how meanly she dressed? she said to herself every day, determined not to spend that mysterious money. Then one day a great temptation—a new thought—assailed her, and she fell. She was passing Marshall and Snelgrove's, about twelve o'clock in the morning, when the broad pavement is most thronged with shopping ladies and idlers of both sexes, when out of the door there came a majestic-looking elderly lady, followed by two young ladies, her daughters, all very richly dressed. Seeing Fan, the first put out her hand and advanced smilingly to her.
“My dear Miss Featherstonehaugh,” she exclaimed, “how strange that we should meet here!”
“Oh, mamma, it is not Miss Featherstonehaugh!” broke in one of the young ladies; and after surveying Fan from top to toe with a slightly supercilious smile, she added, “How could you make such a mistake!”
“I beg your pardon,” said the old lady loftily, as if Fan had done her some injury, and also surveying the girl, apparently surprised at herself for mistaking this badly-dressed young woman for one of her own friends.
Fan, arrested in her walk, had been standing motionless before them, and her eyes, instinctively following the direction of the lady's glance, travelled down her dress to her feet, where one of her walking-boots, old and cracked, was projecting from her skirt. She reddened with shame and confusion, and walked hurriedly on. What would her brother's feeling have been, she asked herself, if he had met her accidentally there and had noticed those shabby boots? and with all that money, which she had been told to use freely, in her purse! A fashionable shoe-shop caught her eye at that moment, and without a moment's hesitation she went in and purchased a pair of the most expensive walking-shoes she could get, and a second light pretty pair to wear in the house. That was only the first of a series of purchases made that day. At one establishment she ordered a walking-dress to be made, a soft blue-grey, with cream-coloured satin vest; and at yet another a hat to match. And many other things were added, included a sunshade of a kind she admired very much, covered with cream-coloured lace. With a recklessness which was in strange contrast to her previous mood, she got rid of every shilling of her money in a few hours, and then went boldly to the bank. Then her courage forsook her, and her face burned hotly, and her hand shook while she wrote out a second cheque for twenty-five pounds. Not without fear and trembling did she present it at the cashier's desk; but the clerk said not a word, nor did he look at her with a stern, shocked expression as if reproaching her for such awful extravagance. On the contrary he smiled pleasantly, remarking that it was a warm day (which Fan knew), and then bowed, and said “Good-day” politely.
The feeling of guilt as of having robbed the bank with which she left Stratford Place happily wore off in time; and when the grey dress was finished, and she found herself arrayed becomingly, the result made her happy for a season. She surveyed her reflection in the tall pier-glass in her bedroom with strange interest—or not strange, perhaps—and thought with a little feeling of triumph that the grand lady and her daughters would not feel disgusted at their dimness of vision if they once more mistook her for their friend “Miss Featherstonehaugh.”
“Even Constance would perhaps think me good enough for a friend now,” she said, a little bitterly; and then remembering that she had no friend to show herself to, she felt strongly inclined to sit down and cry.
“Oh, how foolish I have been to spend so much on myself, when it doesn't matter in the least what I wear—until Arthur comes back!”
And Arthur was not coming back just now, for only after all her finery had been bought, on that very day she had received a letter from him dated from Southampton, telling her that he had joined a friend who was about to start for Norway in his yacht, and that he would be absent not less than two months. This was a sore disappointment, but a note from Mr. Travers accompanied Eden's letter, sent in the first place to Lincoln's Inn, which gave her something to expect and think about. The lawyer wrote to say that he would call to see her at twelve o'clock on the following morning.