Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

it. She had never felt less like making the attempt than on the present occasion; but she had sought in vain for any other means of escape from an intolerable situation.

      Mrs. Peniston examined her critically. “You’re a bad colour, Lily: this incessant rushing about is beginning to tell on you,” she said.

      Miss Bart saw an opening. “I don’t think it’s that, Aunt Julia; I’ve had worries,” she replied.

      “Ah,” said Mrs. Peniston, shutting her lips with the snap of a purse closing against a beggar.

      “I’m sorry to bother you with them,” Lily continued, “but I really believe my faintness last night was brought on partly by anxious thoughts——”

      “I should have said Carry Fisher’s cook was enough to account for it. She has a woman who was with Maria Melson in 1891—the spring of the year we went to Aix—and I remember dining there two days before we sailed, and feeling sure the coppers hadn’t been scoured.”

      “I don’t think I ate much; I can’t eat or sleep.” Lily paused, and then said abruptly: “The fact is, Aunt Julia, I owe some money.”

      Mrs. Peniston’s face clouded perceptibly, but did not express the astonishment her niece had expected. She was silent, and Lily was forced to continue: “I have been foolish——”

      “No doubt you have: extremely foolish,” Mrs. Peniston interposed. “I fail to see how any one with your income, and no expenses—not to mention the handsome presents I’ve always given you——”

      “Oh, you’ve been most generous, Aunt Julia; I shall never forget your kindness. But perhaps you don’t quite realize the expense a girl is put to nowadays——”

      “I don’t realize that you are put to any expense except for your clothes and your railway fares. I expect you to be handsomely dressed; but I paid Celeste’s bill for you last October.”

      Lily hesitated: her aunt’s implacable memory had never been more inconvenient. “You were as kind as possible; but I have had to get a few things since——”

      “What kind of things? Clothes? How much have you spent? Let me see the bill—I daresay the woman is swindling you.”

      “Oh, no, I think not: clothes have grown so frightfully expensive; and one needs so many different kinds, with country visits, and golf and skating, and Aiken and Tuxedo——”

      “Let me see the bill,” Mrs. Peniston repeated.

      Lily hesitated again. In the first place, Mme. Celeste had not yet sent in her account, and secondly, the amount it represented was only a fraction of the sum that Lily needed.

      “She hasn’t sent in the bill for my winter things, but I know it’s large; and there are one or two other things; I’ve been careless and imprudent—I’m frightened to think of what I owe——”

      She raised the troubled loveliness of her face to Mrs. Peniston, vainly hoping that a sight so moving to the other sex might not be without effect upon her own. But the effect produced was that of making Mrs. Peniston shrink back apprehensively.

      “Really, Lily, you are old enough to manage your own affairs, and after frightening me to death by your performance of last night you might at least choose a better time to worry me with such matters.” Mrs. Peniston glanced at the clock, and swallowed a tablet of digitalis. “If you owe Celeste another thousand, she may send me her account,” she added, as though to end the discussion at any cost.

      “I am very sorry, Aunt Julia; I hate to trouble you at such a time; but I have really no choice—I ought to have spoken sooner—I owe a great deal more than a thousand dollars.”

      “A great deal more? Do you owe two? She must have robbed you!”

      “I told you it was not only Celeste. I—there are other bills—more pressing—that must be settled.”

      “What on earth have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone off your head,” said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. “But if you have run into debt, you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your monthly income till your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here until next spring, instead of racing about all over the country, you will have no expenses at all, and surely in four or five months you can settle the rest of your bills if I pay the dress-maker now.”

      Lily was again silent. She knew she could not hope to extract even a thousand dollars from Mrs. Peniston on the mere plea of paying Celeste’s bill: Mrs. Peniston would expect to go over the dress-maker’s account, and would make out the cheque to her and not to Lily. And yet the money must be obtained before the day was over!

      “The debts I speak of are—different—not like tradesmen’s bills,” she began confusedly; but Mrs. Peniston’s look made her almost afraid to continue. Could it be that her aunt suspected anything? The idea precipitated Lily’s avowal.

      “The fact is, I’ve played cards a good deal—bridge; the women all do it; girls too—it’s expected. Sometimes I’ve won—won a good deal—but lately I’ve been unlucky—and of course such debts can’t be paid off gradually——”

      She paused: Mrs. Peniston’s face seemed to be petrifying as she listened.

      “Cards—you’ve played cards for money? It’s true, then: when I was told so I wouldn’t believe it. I won’t ask if the other horrors I was told were true too; I’ve heard enough for the state of my nerves. When I think of the example you’ve had in this house! But I suppose it’s your foreign bringing-up—no one knew where your mother picked up her friends. And her Sundays were a scandal—that I know.” Mrs. Peniston wheeled round suddenly. “You play cards on Sunday?”

      Lily flushed with the recollection of certain rainy Sundays at Bellomont and with the Dorsets.

      “You’re hard on me, Aunt Julia: I have never really cared for cards, but a girl hates to be thought priggish and superior, and one drifts into doing what the others do. I’ve had a dreadful lesson, and if you’ll help me out this time I promise you——”

      Mrs. Peniston raised her hand warningly. “You needn’t make any promises: it’s unnecessary. When I offered you a home I didn’t undertake to pay your gambling debts.”

      “Aunt Julia! You don’t mean that you won’t help me?”

      “I shall certainly not do anything to give the impression that I countenance your behaviour. If you really owe your dress-maker, I will settle with her—beyond that I recognize no obligation to assume your debts.”

      Lily had risen, and stood pale and quivering before her aunt. Pride stormed in her, but humiliation forced the cry from her lips: “Aunt Julia, I shall be disgraced—I——” But she could go no farther. If her aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts, in what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?

      “I consider that you are disgraced, Lily: disgraced by your conduct far more than by its results. You say your friends have persuaded you to play cards with them; well, they may as well learn a lesson too. They can probably afford to lose a little money—and at any rate, I am not going to waste any of mine in paying them. And now I must ask you to leave me—this scene has been extremely painful, and I have my own health to consider. Draw down the blinds, please; and tell Jennings I will see no one this afternoon but Grace Stepney.”

      Lily went up to her own room and bolted the door. She was trembling with fear and anger—the rush of the furies’ wings was in her ears. She walked up and down the room with blind irregular steps. The last door of escape was closed—she felt herself shut in with her dishonour——

      Suddenly her wild pacing brought her before the clock on the chimney-piece. Its hands stood at half-past three, and she remembered that Selden was to come to her at four. She had meant to put him off with a word—but now her heart leaped at the thought