Part 63 (1/2)

”If you insist on being so scrupulous----”

Clodagh looked round from the bureau at which she had seated herself.

”How much?” she said laconically.

Lady Frances pretended to knit her brows.

”Well, there was the eight hundred pounds at Nice--and the forty pounds the night of your return to town--the night we played bridge with Val and Deerehurst----”

She looked very quickly at Clodagh.

But Clodagh gave no sign. ”And the fifty pounds a fortnight ago--besides the sixty for Lady Shrawle,” she interrupted.

”Yes--oh yes! Let me see, that makes----”

”Nine hundred and fifty pounds,” Clodagh interjected in a very quiet voice; and picking up a pen, she wrote out the cheque, signing it with her usual bold signature. A moment later she rose, blotted it, and held it out.

As the flimsy slip of paper pa.s.sed from one to the other, the elder woman permitted a gleam of curiosity to show in her eyes.

”A thousand thanks!” she exclaimed. ”And don't think me a wretch if I run away now that I've got it. You know how fidgety my bay mare is.

Well, good-bye! I shall see you at Ranelagh?”

But Clodagh was absently studying her cheque-book.

”I don't think so,” she said. ”Lord Deerehurst offered to take me down, but I shan't go. I--I have some business to attend to.”

Lady Frances laughed; picked up her riding whip, which she had laid aside, and, coming forward, kissed Clodagh.

”Then I expect I shall see you. Deerehurst is much more insistent than any business.” Once again her shrewd glance travelled over Clodagh's face. ”Good-bye! In any case, you'll be at the Ord's for bridge to-night? We can arrange then about going down to Tuffnell.”

”Yes”--Clodagh returned the pressure of her hand--”yes; I suppose I shall go to the Ord's. Yes; I shall--good-bye!”

She walked with her visitor to the door of the bedroom, and stood waiting on the threshold until the hall door had closed. Then, almost mechanically, she turned, walked back to the table, and with a sharp, nervous movement gathered up the heap of papers still lying beside her plate.

As she stood there, in the flood of June suns.h.i.+ne, beside the attractive disarray of the pretty breakfast-table, she was aware of a horrible sense of helplessness, of alarm and impotence. For the papers she held between her hands were bills--a sheaf of bills--all unpaid and all pressing.

As she stood there, a swift review of the past months sped before her mind, carrying something like dismay in its train.

In April she had entered upon the tenancy of her furnished flat, having already borrowed eight hundred pounds from her friend and counsellor, Lady Frances Hope; and under the auspices of this same counsellor, had began her career as a woman of fas.h.i.+on.

In social circles the period and the conditions of mourning become more slender every season. And nowadays, although a widow may not attend dances or large dinner-parties, there are a hundred smaller, more exclusive--and possibly more expensive--forms of entertainment at which she may appear in her own intimate set. Very quiet dinners--very small luncheon parties--even friendly bridge parties--are quite permissible, when it is a tacitly accepted fact that the mourner is, by a natural law, barely entering upon her life--that the one mourned has departed from it by an equally natural dispensation.

Under these conditions Clodagh had begun her London career; and for more than a month she had lived--in the most costly sense of the word.

Her mourning had been the most distinguished that a famous dressmaker could devise; her electric brougham had possessed all the newest improvements; the flowers that filled her room had been supplied by a fas.h.i.+onable florist at an exorbitant cost. In a word, she had behaved like a child who has been given a pocketful of bright new pennies--and believes them to be golden coins.

Once or twice in the course of those extravagant weeks, a pang of misgiving had crossed her soul; but it had only been a pang of the moment.

The phantom of tradesmen's bills is one so easily dismissed from the Irish mind that, unless it materialises very forcibly, it may almost be considered non-existent.