Part 44 (1/2)

The _Haute Gomme_ was a new club in Piccadilly, which Maulevrier and some of his friends affected.

Lesbia went towards the drawing-room door with her brother, and just as he reached the door she laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder. He turned and stared at her, somewhat surprised, for he and she had never been given to demonstrations of affection.

'Maulevrier, I want you to do me a favour,' she said, in a low voice, blus.h.i.+ng a little, for the thing she was going to ask was a new thing for her to ask, and she had a deep sense of shame in making her demand.

'I--I lost money at Nap last night. Only seventeen pounds. Mr. Smithson and I were partners, and he paid my losses. I want to pay him immediately, and----'

'And you are too hard up to do it. I'll write you a cheque this instant,' said Maulevrier goodnaturedly; but while he was writing the cheque he took occasion to remonstrate with Lesbia on the foolishness of card playing.

'I am obliged to do as Lady Kirkbank does,' she answered feebly. 'If I were to refuse to play it would be a kind of reproach to her.'

'I don't think that would kill Lady Kirkbank,' replied Maulevrier, with a touch of scorn. 'She has had to endure a good many implied reproaches in her day, and they don't seem to have hurt her very much. I wish to heaven my grandmother had chosen any one else in London for your chaperon.'

'I'm afraid Lady Kirkbank's is rather a rowdy set,' answered Lesbia, coolly; 'and I sometimes feel as if I had thrown myself away. We go almost everywhere--at least, there are only just a few houses to which we are not asked. But those few make all the difference. It is so humiliating to feel that one is not in quite the best society. However, Lady Kirkbank is a dear, good old thing, and I am not going to grumble about her.'

'I've made the cheque for five-and-twenty. You can cash it at your milliner's,' said Maulevrier. 'I should not like Smithson to know that you had been obliged to ask me for the money.'

'_Apropos_ to Mr. Smithson, do you know if he is in quite the best society?' asked Lesbia.

'I don't know what you mean by quite the best. A man of Smithson's wealth can generally poke his nose in anywhere, if he knows how to behave himself. But of course there are people with whom money and fine houses have no weight. The Conservatives are all civil to Smithson because he comes down handsomely at General Elections, and is useful to them in other ways. I believe that Smithson's wife, if she were a thorough-bred one, could go into any society she liked, and make her house one of the most popular in London. Perhaps that is what you really wanted to ask.

'No, it wasn't,' answered Lesbia, carelessly; 'I was only talking for the sake of talking. A thousand thanks for the cheque, you best of brothers.'

'It is not worth talking about; but, Lesbia, don't play cards any more.

Believe me, it is not good form.'

'Well, I'll try to keep out of it in future. It is horrid to see one's sovereigns melting away; but there's a delightful excitement in winning.'

'No doubt,' answered Maulevrier, with a remorseful sigh.

He spoke as a reformed plunger, and with many a bitter experience of the race-course and the card-room. Even now, though he had steadied himself wonderfully, he could not get on without a little mild gambling--half-crown pool, whist with half-guinea points--but when he condescended to such small stakes he felt that he had settled down into a respectable middle-aged player, and had a right to rebuke the follies of youth.

Lesbia flew to the piano and sang one of her little German ballads directly Maulevrier was gone. She felt as if a burden had been lifted from her soul, now that she was able to pay Mr. Smithson without waiting to ask Lady Maulevrier for the money. And as she sang she meditated upon Maulevrier's remarks about Smithson. He knew nothing to the man's discredit, except that he had grown rich in a short s.p.a.ce of time.

Surely no man ought to be blamed for that. And he thought that Mr.

Smithson's wife might make her house the most popular in London. Lesbia, in her mind's eye, beheld an imaginary Lady Lesbia Smithson giving dances in that magnificent mansion, entertaining Royal personages. And the doorways would be festooned with roses, as she had seen them the other night at a ball in Grosvenor Square; but the house in Grosvenor Square was a hovel compared with the Smithsonian Palace.

Lesbia was beginning to be a little tired of Lady Kirkbank and her surroundings. Life taken _prestissimo_ is apt to pall, Lesbia sighed as she finished her little song. She was beginning to look upon her existence as a problem which had been given to her to solve, and the solution just it present was all dark.

As she rose from the piano a footman came in with two letters on a salver--bulky letters, such packages as Lesbia had never seen before.

She wondered what they could be. She opened the thickest envelope first.

It was Seraphine's bill--such a bill, page after page on creamy Bath post, written in an elegant Italian hand by one of Seraphine's young women.

Lesbia looked at it aghast with horror. The total at the foot of the first page was appalling, ever so much more than she could have supposed the whole amount of her indebtedness; but the total went on increasing at the foot of every page, until at sight of the final figures Lesbia gave a wild shriek, like a wretched creature who has received a telegram announcing bitterest loss.

The final total was twelve hundred and ninety-three pounds seventeen and sixpence!