For some moments he read with an unmoved countenance, but presently his brows knit, and he said: “A two-colour gold snuffbox with grisaille paintings?”

“For Dysart!” she explained apprehensively.

“Oh!” He resumed his study of the incriminating bills. With a sinking heart, she saw him pick up a document headed, in elegant scroll-work, by the name of her favourite dressmaker. He said nothing, however, and she was able to breathe again. But an instant later he read aloud: “Singing-bird, with box embellished turquoise-blue enamelled panels—What the devil—?”

“It was a music-box,” she explained, her voice jumping. “For the children—my sisters!”

“Ah, I see!” he said, laying the bill aside.

Her spirits rose, only to sink again an instant later when the Earl exclaimed: “Good God!” Peeping in great trepidation to see what had provoked this startled ejaculation, she perceived that he was holding another scrolled sheet. “Forty guineas for one hat?” he said incredulously.

“I am afraid it was a little dear,” she owned. “It—it has three very fine ostrich plumes, you see. You—you said you liked it!” she added desperately.

“Your taste is always impeccable, my love. Did I like the other eight hats you have purchased, or haven’t I seen them yet?”

Horrified, she stammered: “N-not eight, Giles, surely?”

He laughed. “Eight! Oh, don’t look so dismayed! I daresay they were all quite necessary. To be sure, forty guineas seems a trifle extortionate, but it is certainly a charming confection, and becomes you delightfully.” She smiled gratefully at him, and he took her chin in his hand, and pinched it. “Yes, very well, ma’am, but that is only the sop that goes before the scold! You’ve been drawing the bustle disgracefully, my dear. You seem not to have the smallest notion of management, and I should doubt whether you have ever kept an account in your life. Now, I am going to settle all these bills of yours and I am also going to place a further hundred pounds to your account. That should—indeed, it must!—keep you in reasonably comfortable circumstances until the quarter.”

She exclaimed: “Oh, thank you! How very kind you are! I will take the greatest care, I promise!”

“I trust you won’t find it necessary to exercise any very stringent economies,” he said, with a touch of irony. “But if you have any more bills laid by, give them to me now! I won’t scold, but I warn you, Nell, it won’t do to keep your money safely in Childe’s while you run up debts all over town! There are to be no bills outstanding at the quarter, so if you are concealing any from me now, make a clean breast of them! If I found that you had deceived me, then, indeed, I should be angry with you, and do much more than scold!”

“What—what would you do, if—if I did happen to owe any money at the quarter?” she asked, looking frightened.

“Give you only enough money for such trifling expenses as must occur from day to day, and arrange that all your bills are sent to me for payment,” he replied.

“Oh, no!” she cried, flushing.

“I assure you I should dislike it as much as you, and feel as much humiliated. But I have seen something of what such reckless spending as you appear to delight in may lead to, and I am determined it shall not happen in my household. Now, think, Nell! Have you given me all your bills?”

The consciousness of having already deceived him, as much as his threat, coupled as it was by a certain look of inflexibility in his face, almost overpowered her. In suppressed agitation, which rendered calm reflection impossible, she said hurriedly: “Yes—oh, yes!”

“Very well. We shan’t speak of this again, then.”

The flurry of her heart subsided; she said in a subdued voice: “Thank you! Indeed, I am very much obliged to you! I did not mean to be such an extravagant wife.”

“Nor I such a tyrannical husband. We could deal better than this, Nell.”

“No, no! I mean, I never thought you so! You are most kind—I beg your pardon for being so troublesome: pray forgive me!”

“Nell!”

His hand was outstretched to her, but she did not take it, only smiling nervously, and saying again: “Thank you! You are very good! Oh, how late it is! M-may I go now?”

His hand fell; he said in quite a different voice: “I am not a schoolmaster! Certainly go, if that is your wish!”

She murmured something, in disjointed phrases, about his sister, and Almack’s and fled out of the room. That gesture, coming as it did at the end of a scene during which he had indeed seemed to be more schoolmaster than husband, seemed to her rather the expression of kindness than of any warmer emotion, and, with her nerves already overset, she had not been able to respond to it as, in general, she had forced herself to respond to any advance made by him. That her retreat might offend him she knew; that it could wound him she had no suspicion, having, from the start of her married life, seen in his love-making only a chivalrous determination not to betray to her that although he had bestowed his name on her his heart belonged to another.

As for Cardross, he was left with some rather bitter reflections to bear him company, and the growing suspicion that all the well-wishers who had begged him not to marry Nell had been right after all: no good could come of an alliance with an Irvine. One of his cousins, that Pink of the Ton, Mr. Felix Hethersett, had put the matter to him with brutal frankness. “Nothing to say against the girl, dear old boy, but I don’t like the stable,” had said Mr. Hethersett.

Well, he had not liked the stable either. Nothing had been further from his intention than marriage with an Irvine; and nothing had seemed more improbable than a love-match. It was his duty to marry, but for some years he had enjoyed an agreeable connection with a fashionable lady of easy morals and skilful discretion, and that he should succumb to a pair of blue eyes and a mischievous dimple had been an event quite outside his calculations. But so it had been. He had first seen his Nell in a ballroom, and he had instantly been struck, not so much by her undeniable beauty as by the sweetness in her face, and the innocence of her enquiring gaze. Before he well knew what had happened, his heart was lost, and every prudent consideration thrown to the winds. She sprang from a line of expensive profligates, but he had been ready to swear, looking into her eyes, that she had miraculously escaped the Irvine taint.

She had been less than eighteen when he had married her, fourteen years younger than he, and when he found himself with a shy, elusive bride he handled her very gently, believing that tenderness and forbearance would win for him the loving, vital creature he was so sure lived behind the nervous child.

He had caught glimpses of that creature—or so he thought—but he had never won her; and the fear that he had deceived himself was beginning to grow on him. She was dutiful, even submissive; sometimes an entrancing companion, always a well-mannered one; but although she never repulsed his advances she never courted them, or gave any sign that she could not be perfectly happy out of his company. Once installed in Grosvenor Square she entered with apparent zest into every fashionable amusement, took her young sister-in-law into society, rapidly acquired a court of her own, and was by no means the sort of wife who constantly demanded her husband’s escort. She was extravagant; he had today discovered that, like the rest of her family, she was a gamester; and what affection she had she appeared to lavish on her little sisters, and on her scapegrace of a brother. There had been plenty of people to tell Cardross that Nell had accepted him for the sake of his wealth. He had not believed them, but he was beginning to wonder. In her precipitate retreat from his book-room he saw only a spoilt child’s desire to escape from a disagreeable schoolmaster, and never dreamed that she had fled because her feelings threatened to overcome her.

She made for the shelter of her own apartments, hoping, since she needed a little time in which to compose herself, that she would not find her dresser already there. She did not. She found her sister-in-law instead, blithely engaged in trying on one of those eight—no, nine!—modish hats.

The young Countess’s apartments consisted of a spacious bedchamber, and an adjoining room, known to the household as her dressing-room, but partaking more of the nature of a boudoir. My lord had had both rooms redecorated on the occasion of his marriage, nesting his bride in a tent-bed with rose-silk curtains upheld by Cupids and garlands, and hanging her dressing-room with blue and silver brocade. In this frivolous bower, of which she was frankly envious, the Lady Letitia Merion was parading between various mirrors, very well-pleased with her appearance, but unable to decide on the precise tilt at which the hat should be worn. She hailed her sister-in-law light-heartedly, saying: “Oh, I am glad you are come! I have been waiting for ever! Nell, I do think this is a ravishing hat, only how should one wear it? Like this, or like this?”

“Oh, don’t!” begged Nell involuntarily, unable to bear the sight of what had contributed to her late discomfiture.

“Good gracious, what’s the matter?” demanded Letty.

“Nothing, nothing! I have the headache a little, that is all!” She saw that Letty was staring at her, and tried to smile. “Pray don’t be concerned! It is only—I only—” She could not go on, her voice being totally suspended by the tears she was unable to control.

“Nell!” Letty flung off the ravishing hat, and ran across the room to put her arms round her sister. “Oh, pray don’t cry! Has something dreadful happened?”

“No, no! That is—I have been so wickedly extravagant!”

“Is that all? I collect Giles has been giving you a scold. Don’t regard it; he will come about? Was he very angry?”

“Oh, no, but very much displeased, and indeed it was unpardonable of me!” Nell said, drying her eyes. “But that was not the worst! I was obliged—” She broke off, flushing, and added in a hurried tone: “I can’t tell you! I shouldn’t have said that—pray don’t regard it! I have been sadly heedless, but I shall hope to go on better now. Did you wish to speak to me particularly?”

“Oh, no! Only to ask you if I may wear your zephyr scarf this evening, if you shouldn’t be needing it yourself—but if you are in a fit of the dismals I won’t tease you,” said Letty handsomely.

“Oh, yes, do wear it! In fact, you may have it for your own, for I am sure I can never bear to wear it again!” said Nell tragically.

“Never bear—Nell, don’t be such a goose! Why, you went into transports when they showed it to you, and it cost you thirty guineas!”

“I know it did, and he saw the bill for it, and never spoke one word of censure, which makes me feel ready to sink!”

“For my part,” said Letty candidly, “I should be excessively thankful for it! May I have it indeed? Thank you! It will be just the thing to wear with my French muslin. I had meant to try if I could persuade Giles to purchase one like it for me.”

“Oh, no, do not!” exclaimed Nell, aghast.

“No, I shouldn’t think of doing so now that he has taken one of his pets,” agreed Letty. “I’m sure I never knew anyone so odious about being in debt! What shall you wear tonight? You haven’t forgotten that Felix Hethersett is to escort us to Almack’s, have you?”

Nell sighed: “I wish we need not go!”

“Well, there’s not the least occasion for you to go if you don’t choose,” said Letty obligingly. “You may send a note round to Felix’s lodging, and as for me, I daresay my aunt Thorne will be very willing to take me with her and my cousin.”

This airy speech had the effect of diverting Nell’s mind from her own iniquities. Upon his marriage, the Earl had removed his young ward from the care of her maternal aunt, and had taken her to live in his own house. Mrs. Thorne was a good-natured woman, but he could not like the tone of her mind, or feel that she had either the desire or the power to control his flighty half-sister. He had been startled to discover how casual was the surveillance under which Letty had grown up, how improper many of the ideas she had imbibed; and he was still more startled when she disclosed to him that young as she was she had already formed what she assured him was an undying attachment. Jeremy Allandale was a perfectly respectable young man, but although well-connected he could not be thought an eligible husband for the Lady Letty Merion. He was employed at the Foreign Office, and although his prospects were thought to be good his present circumstances were straitened. His widowed mother was far from affluent, and he had several young brothers and sisters for whose education he considered himself to be largely responsible. The Earl thought this fortunate, for although the young man conducted himself with the strictest propriety he was plainly infatuated with Letty, and no dependence whatsoever (in her brother’s opinion) could be placed on her discretion. Could she but gain control of her fortune she was capable of persuading her lover to elope with her. In the event, he was wholly unable to support her, so that that contingency seemed unlikely. Mr. Allandale received little encouragement to visit in Grosvenor Square, but, whether from wisdom or from a dislike of enacting the tyrant, the Earl had never forbidden his sister to hold ordinary social intercourse with him. She would incur no censure by standing up for two dances with Mr. Allandale; but Nell was well aware that under the careless chaperonage of her aunt she would not stop at that. She guessed from Letty’s ready acquiescence in her own desire to remain at home that evening that Mr. Allandale would be at Almack’s, and she at once shook off her megrims, and said that of course she would take Letty there.