“It is unbecoming,” Nell said. “Bath miss manners! You wouldn’t behave with so little particularity if Mr. Allandale were here!”

“Dear Jeremy! No, indeed! I should flirt with him instead. But he is not here, and I’ve no notion of being moped and die-away at such an agreeable party, I can tell you. I think we are having a splendid night’s raking, don’t you?”

It was useless to persist; useless too to hope that Letty would not be recognized. At midnight there would be a general unmasking, when disapproving eyes would see that the fast girl in the shimmering domino and the spangled gown was none other than Cardross’s little half-sister. Youth and a naturally volatile disposition led Letty, carried away by excitement, into behaviour that was beyond the line of being pleasing. The evils of her former situation in her aunt’s house were never more clearly shown: she had neither precept nor example to guide her, her aunt being both indolent and shatter-brained, and her cousins over-bold young women with nothing in their heads but finery and dalliance.

Having perceived Lady Chudleigh amongst the gathering of unmasked chaperons, Nell braced herself to meet the inevitable strictures which she did not doubt her husband’s most formidable aunt would feel it her duty to address to her. In the event, however, Lady Chudleigh was surprisingly gracious. She certainly condemned the spangled dress, and was thankful that she had no cause to blush for her own daughter, but she said that she did not blame Nell for Letty’s want of conduct. “It is much to be regretted that Letitia does not take a lesson from you, my dear Helen,” she said majestically. “I shall not deny that I have been used to think that Cardross made a great mistake when he chose to offer for you. I always speak my mind, and I told him at the time that he would do better to ally himself to a female nearer in age to himself. But I must own, and do not hesitate to do so, that I have been agreeably surprised in you. It is a sad pity that Letitia has neither your discretion nor your good taste.”

With these measured words of approval she moved on, which was just as well, since Nell could think of nothing whatsoever to say in reply to them. Her daughter, a rather angular girl, unkindly described by her cousin Felix as an antidote, lingered to exclaim: “Only fancy Mama’s saying that to you! She does not often praise people, I can tell you, Cousin Helen!”

The congratulatory tone in which this was uttered was a little too much for Nell. She said tartly: “I am sure I ought to be very much obliged to her!”

“I knew you must feel it so. Do you know, she said to me yesterday that you were a very pretty-behaved young woman? There!”

“Did she indeed? Well, don’t repeat any more of her compliments, for they might puff me up too much in my own conceit!”

Miss Chudleigh tittered. “That is precisely what Mama said! At least, I mean she said that it was a wonder your head was not turned by all the compliments you receive. But I quite expected her to censure you for permitting Letty to wear such an improper gown. I can’t think how she can do so without blushing. I could not!”

“No, and I must own that I think you would be very unwise to attempt anything in the same style,” instantly retorted the pretty-behaved Lady Cardross. “But Letty, you know, has so perfect a figure that she can carry off anything! For my part, I never saw her in greater beauty!”

“And I hope she told her detestable mother!” Nell said, when later recounting this exchange to Letty.

“Well!” said Letty, giggling. “What a bouncer! When you took one look at my dress, and said you had never seen anything so improper!”

“Yes, but I didn’t say it was not becoming! And in any event it was a great piece of impertinence for Miriam to criticize you. Or for Lady Chudleigh to do so either, for now I come to think of it she is not your aunt, but only Giles’s!”

“Dear Nell!” gurgled Letty.

Nell submitted to an enthusiastic embrace, but said, in rather a conscience-stricken tone: “But I must tell you, Letty, that I agreed with every word they said! It is a shocking dress, and don’t say you didn’t damp your petticoat, for I know you did! Nothing else could have made it cling so! What Cardross must have said, had he seen it—”

“You sound just like a governess!”

“So I do!” Nell said, much struck, and looking quite aghast. “Oh, what an odious girl you are, Letty, to put me to that necessity! You make me feel like a governess!”

“I did not purchase a lace gown for more than three hundred guineas,” said Letty, folding her hands, and gazing piously at the ceiling. “I am not in a quake lest my husband should discover it!”

Quite confounded, poor Nell remained speechless for several moments. She made a gallant recover. “No, you bought a dressing-case for five hundred pounds, didn’t you? And you are not in debt because Cardross sent it back! At least that has not happened to me!”

“I hoped you wouldn’t remember that,” said Letty candidly. “Oh, Nell, it has put a famous notion into my head! Send the gown back to Lavalle! You may say that it is not in the least what you wanted, and doesn’t become you!”

“Well, if that is your famous notion I never heard anything so unscrupulous in my life!” gasped Nell. “Besides, I tore it a little at Carton House that night, and Lavalle would instantly see where Sutton darned it!”

“What a pity! There is nothing for it, then, but to order another dress from the horrid creature,” said Letty, unconsciously echoing Dysart. “That is what my aunt does when her dressmaker duns her. And if you keep on sending it back, saying it does not fit, or that you prefer a floss trimming instead of lace, or some such thing, it won’t be finished until the quarter, and then you may pay for both the gowns! Why, in less than two months it will be quarter-day, and you will find yourself in funds again! I see no difficulty.”

The suggestion found no favour with Nell, but since Madame Lavalle had followed up her bill with a polite letter, drawing my lady’s attention to it, and trusting that my lady would find it convenient to defray it within the immediate future, she felt her case to be desperate, and resolved on a course which, disagreeable though it might be, seemed to hold out more promise of success than any scheme Dysart was likely to evolve. She would pay Madame Lavalle a visit, not to bespeak another expensive dress, but to explain with what dignity she could muster that although it was not at all convenient to her to pay the account in the immediate future she would faithfully do so at the end of the following month. That this would dig an uncomfortably large hole in her next quarter’s allowance Nell realized, but decided, with the optimism of youth, that with a little economy she would contrive to scrape through the summer months.

She had been startled to receive Madame’s letter, and shrewd enough to perceive, underlying its smooth civility, a threat; but she was as yet too inexperienced to know that some unusual circumstance must lurk behind it, or that no modiste of high fashion would dream, for the paltry sum of three hundred and thirty guineas, of alienating a patroness of such rich promise as the young Countess of Cardross. But after a very few minutes in Madame Lavalle’s company she learned that the circumstances governing Madame’s action were very unusual indeed. Madame, after a long and lucrative career in Bruton Street, was about to retire from business. She was, in fact, returning to her native land, but this she naturally did not disclose to Lady Cardross, preferring to say with a vagueness at odd variance with her sharp-featured face, with its calculating sloe-eyes and inflexible mouth, that she would henceforward be out of the way of collecting debts. Lady Cardross was certainly an innocente, but even a bride from the schoolroom might wonder how it would be possible for Madame to return to France in time of war. It was possible, if one had money and time to spend on the journey, influential connections to assist one over the obstacles in the path, and, above all, relations well-placed in Paris. From England one might still travel to Denmark, and after that—eh bien, the matter arranged itself!

On the whole Madame had done very well out of her last London Season, but this was now in full swing, her most valued clients had purchased quite as many gowns as they were likely to need, and it was time to close her accounts. She had several bad debts: that went without saying; it was not worth the pain of attempting to recover those losses; but she knew well that although Lady Cardross might be at a temporary standstill her lord was as wealthy a man as might be found, and would certainly pay his wife’s debts. The sense of this she managed to convey to Nell in the most urbane manner conceivable, not an ungenteel word spoken, the sugared smile never deserting her lips.

“Oh, if it is the case that you are retiring from business—!” said Nell, shrugging her shoulders with splendid indifference. “I had not perfectly understood: naturally you will wish to be paid immediately! Rest assured that I will attend to the matter!”

She then sailed away, her head high, and her heart cowering in her little kid shoes. Madame, having curtseyed her off the premises with the greatest deference, rubbed her hands together, and said: “She will contrive, that one!”

That she must somehow contrive, and without Cardross’s knowledge, was by this time a fixed determination in Nell’s mind. Every day that had passed since the first appearance of Madame’s account had added to her dread that he would discover the debt; reason was lost sight of; the debt, and Cardross’s sentiments, if he should be called upon to pay it, assumed grotesque proportions, until it seemed to her as though it might wreck her life. No sobering counsel was at hand to cast a damper on lurid imagination, and give her thoughts a saner direction. Letty, exaggerating her own experiences, recommended her at all costs to settle the matter before Cardross got wind of it; and Dysart, knowing how much his own depredations on her purse were responsible for her present predicament, was apparently prepared to go to extraordinary lengths for the furtherance of this end. But Dysart had shaken her faith in him. Letty might applaud his scheme for her relief: she could not. It seemed to her a shocking thing to have attempted; and the thought of what next his wild humour might prompt him to do put her in a quake of apprehension. There must be no depending on Dysart; and there was no one else to whom she could turn.

Such a reflection as, this was scarcely soothing to nerves already irritated. The conviction that she was friendless, and hunted into the bargain, began to take strong possession of Nell’s mind. She sank into a slough of self-pity, seeing her debt as a sum large enough to have ruined a Nabob, and her husband as a miser with a heart of flint.

It was in this mood that she presently stepped down from her barouche, and it was her coachman who rescued her from it, by desiring to know whether she would be requiring the carriage again that day. The very mention of it dispelled that unjust vision of Cardross. Just because she had once admired a friend’s barouche he had given her one for her very own, and with a pair of horses that took the shine out of every other pair to be seen in town. She had not liked the famous Cardross necklace, an awe-inspiring collection of emeralds and diamonds heavily set in gold, and instead of being offended he had told her to keep it for state occasions, and had given her the most charming pendant to wear in its stead. “For everyday use!” he had said, with the smile that had won her heart in his eyes.

Self-pity turned in an instant to self-blame. From being a tyrannical miser Cardross became the most generous man alive, and quite the most ill-used; and she the embodiment of selfishness, extravagance, and ingratitude. And, if Dysart were to be believed, she had added blindness and stupidity to these vices. It now seemed to her wonderful that Cardross should have remained patient for so long. Perhaps he was regretting the impulse that had made him offer for her; perhaps, even, disgust at her coldness and depravity had already driven him back to Lady Orsett.

A year earlier Nell, instructed by Mama, had steeled herself to accept the fact of Lady Orsett as one of the inescapable crosses a wife must bear with complaisance; but between the girl who had supposed herself to be making a marriage of convenience and the bride who had been brought to realize that hers was a love-match there was a vast difference. Mama would scarcely have recognized her docile, beautifully mannered daughter in the bright-eyed young woman who uttered between clenched teeth: “She shan’t have him!”