CHAPTER XII.

A LECTURE.

A small, friendly dinner-table, Mr. Grubb and Lady Adela presiding. A thin, sharp-featured, insignificant little man, whose evening clothes looked the worse for wear, and who wore a black watered ribbon across his waistcoat in lieu of a gold chain, sat at Lady Adela's right hand. It was Colonel Hope. To look at him and his attire, you would have said he did not know where to turn for a shilling: yet he was the possessor of great wealth, and had seen hard service in India. Beside Mr. Grubb sat the colonel's wife, Lady Sarah; a tall, portly woman, whose face bore much resemblance to her mother's, Lady Acorn. Grace and Frances Chenevix and Mr. Howard, Mr. Grubb's partner, completed the party: the latter was a staid, stiff gentleman of sixty, with iron-grey hair and whiskers, and a stern face. He and the colonel had known each other in early life, when both had the world to fight for fame or fortune. Each had fought it well, and won; certainly so far as fortune was concerned. The colonel was just home from India, and Mr. Grubb had given the two early friends a speedy opportunity of meeting. One place at table was empty, and the young lady who sat next it, Frances Chenevix, did not look quite pleased at its being so. It was intended for Gerard Hope, who had somehow failed to make his appearance.

Colonel Hope had retired from the army and was come home for good. About a year ago he and Lady Sarah had lost their two sons, lads of seven and eight, from fever. They had no other children, and it was generally supposed the colonel would make his nephew, Gerard, his heir. The colonel and his wife were both tired this evening, having been looking at houses all day. Frances had been with them, but she seemed fresh and bright as a lark. The colonel had bought a pretty little property in Gloucestershire, but Lady Sarah wished for a town house also.

"I think I shall take it, though it is rather small," observed the colonel, talking of one of the houses they had seen. "There'd be room for a friend or two as well as for ourselves: and for Gerard also, if I decide to adopt him. By the way--what is your opinion of that young man, Grubb?"

"As to looks, do you mean, colonel?" smiled Mr. Grubb. "They are good. I don't know much else of him."

"Thought you did," growled the colonel, who was a hot-tempered man, and liked plain answers to his questions.

"I know nothing against him," said Mr. Grubb, emphatically. "I have seen but little of him, but that little I like."

"He is very nice and very good, and quite worthy to be adopted by you and Sarah, colonel," spoke up Lady Frances in her free way. "I'm sure the manner he slaves away in that red-tape office he is chained to, ought to be a gold feather in his cap."

"A gold feather?" repeated the literal colonel, looking at the speaker questioningly. While Mr. Howard, who knew what "slaving away" amounted to in a red-tape office, indulged in a silent laugh.

"Well, ought to tell in his favour, I mean," said Frances, mending her speech.

"I suppose he only does what he is put to do--his daily work," continued the colonel. "That, he cannot shirk: he has nothing to look to but his salary to pay his way. There's no merit in doing one's simple duty."

"I think there is a great deal, when it is such hard work as Gerard's," contended Frances. And this time Mr. Howard laughed outright at the "hard work."

"Perhaps the hard work is keeping him tonight," suggested Mr. Grubb, with just the ghost of a smile.

"No," said Frances, "I think the office closes at four."

"Oh," cried the colonel. "Where is he then? What does he mean by staying away?"

"He is run over, of course," said Frances, "and taken to the nearest hospital. Nothing short of that would have kept him away."

Lady Sarah Hope looked down the table at her sister. "Is Gerard in love with you, Frances?"

"In love with me!" exclaimed the young lady, her face flushing vividly. "What ridiculous fable will you imagine next, Sarah?"

"Is it a fable?" added Lady Sarah, struck with the flush.

"What else should it be?" laughed Frances. "Gerard could not think of falling in love upon nothing a-year. Nothing a-year, and find himself! That has been his case, poor fellow--or something akin to it."

"That may be remedied," remarked Lady Sarah. She had caught up an opinion upon the subject, and she held to it in the future.

As the small line of ladies filed out of the dining-room, Lady Sarah, walking first, turned just outside the door to wait for her sister Adela. Mr. Grubb, who was holding the door open, said something to his wife in an undertone as she passed him. Adela made no answer whatever; except that her lifted face put on a look of scorn, and her lips took a downward curve.

"What did your husband say to you?" asked Lady Sarah, having fancied that she heard her own name--Hope.

"I don't know--or care. As if I should listen to anything he might say!" contemptuously added Lady Adela.

Lady Sarah stared. "Why, child, what do you mean? He is your husband."

"To my cost."

"What do you mean? What does she mean?" continued Lady Sarah, appealing to the other two sisters, for Adela had not deemed it necessary to lower her voice. They did not answer. Grace took up an album, her face wearing a sad look of pain; Frances walked into the other drawing-room.

"I insist upon knowing what you mean, in saying that Mr. Grubb is your husband to _your cost_," cried Lady Sarah, returning to the charge. She was so much older than Adela--looking, in fact, old enough to be her mother, for India's sun and the loss of her children had greatly aged her--that she took her to task at will. Lady Sarah, like her mother, had always displayed somewhat of a propensity for setting the world to rights.

"It is to my cost," spoke Adela, defiantly. "That I should be _his_ wife, obliged to stand as such before the world, a man of _his_ name, a tradesman!" And the emphatic scorn, the stress of aversion laid on the "his," no pen could adequately express. "I never hear myself announced, 'Lady Adela Grubb,' but I shiver; I never see it in the _Morning Post_, amongst the lists at an entertainment, or perhaps at Court, but I fling the paper from me. As I should like to fling _him_."

"Bless my heart and mind, what's in a name?" demanded Lady Sarah, having listened as one astounded.

"Grubb! Grubb!" hissed Adela, from between her dainty lips. "There is a great deal in that name, at any rate, Sarah. I hate it. It is to me as a nightmare. And I hate him for forcing me to bear it."

"Forcing you to bear it! Why, you are his wife."

"I am--to my shame. But he had no right to make me his wife: to ask me to be his wife. Why could he not have fixed upon any one else? Grace, there, for instance. She would not have minded the name or the trade. She'd have got used to it--and to him."

Lady Sarah Hope nodded her head four or five times in succession. "A pretty frame of mind you are cherishing, Adela! Leave off such evil speaking--and thinking. Your husband is a true gentleman, a man that the world may be proud of; he can hold his own as such anywhere. As to the house in Leadenhall Street, it is of world-wide fame--the idea of your calling him a 'tradesman!'--Let me speak! Where can you find a man with so noble a presence, so refined and sweet a countenance? And I feel sure that he is as good and true and generous in himself as he is distinguished in reputation and person."

"All the same, I scorn him. I hate him for having chosen me. And it is the pleasure of my life to let him see that I do," concluded Adela, in sheer defiance, as she tossed her pretty head.

"Cease, Adela, cease!" interposed Grace, coming forward, her hands lifted imploringly. "You little know the wickedness of what you are saying; or the evil you may be laying up for yourself in the days to come. This is not your true nature; you are only forcing it upon yourself to gratify a resentment you have persistently taken up. How often have I prayed to you to be your own true self!

"Pray for it yourself, child," enjoined Lady Sarah, laying her hand with a firm grasp upon Adela's shoulder. "Pray upon your bended knees to Heaven, to snatch and shield you from Satan. Most assuredly he has got into you."

"What has got into me?" asked Adela, with languid indifference, not having caught the words.

"The devil," angrily amended Lady Sarah.

That infant of Lady Adela's, little George, did not live. Just for a month or two, just long enough for her to get passionately attached to him, to use every means to make him strong, he lingered. Then there came three days of illness, and the little soul fled from the feeble frame. No other child had been born, and Lady Adela seemed to be left with no end or aim in life, except that of cherishing resentment against Mr. Grubb. She took it up more fiercely than ever, and she let him feel it to his heart's core. The still, small voice of conscience, warning her that this was a forced and unnatural state of mind, could not always be deadened. The very fact of its pricking her caused her to resent the pricks, and to nourish her ill-omened temper the more persistently. Francis Grubb's life was not one of fair skies and rose-leaves.

"I should like to shake it out of her--and I wonder he does not do it," ran the thoughts of Frances Chenevix, as she opened the piano in the next room and began to play a dashing march.

Very especially just now was the Lady Adela Grubb resenting things in general. Captain Stanley--who had set up a flirtation with her when she was but a slip of a girl, and with whom it had pleased her to fancy herself in love after he sailed for India, though that was pure fancy and not fact--had taken no notice of her now that he was home again, beyond that demanded by the ordinary usages of society; and at this Lady Adela felt mortified--slighted. He had not as much as said to her, "So we are both married, you and I; we cannot sit in corners any more to talk in whispers:" on the contrary, he spent his time talking with newer beauties, Selina Dalrymple for one. It was quite the behaviour of a bear, decided Adela; and she was resenting it by showing temper to the world.

Frances Chenevix dashed through the march. Its last bars were dying into silence, when she thought she heard footsteps on the stairs. Going to the door, she saw Gerard Hope.

"Well, and what account have you to give of yourself?" began Frances, as he took her hand.

"I was at a water-party at Richmond," breathlessly answered Gerard, who had been having a race with time.

"Well, I'm sure! And here have I been vowing to them that nothing could have kept you but being run over in the streets; and Colonel Hope thinks you are detained over the red-tape duties. You might have come for once, Gerard."

"I couldn't possibly, Frances; I couldn't land; and then I had to dress. The tide kept us out. It has vexed me above a bit, I can tell you."

"You look vexed," she retorted, regarding his laughing countenance.

"I am vexed; but it is of no use to weep over it. You know I want to stand well with my uncle. I suppose you have finished dinner?"

"Ages ago."

"Where are the rest of you ladies?"

"In the next room, quarrelling. Lady Sarah is treating Adela to a bit of her mind--and she deserves it. Now, Gerard, behave yourself. What do you want to come so close to me for?"

For Mr. Gerard Hope was squeezing himself beside her on a small ottoman, meant for only one portly personage. He did more than that: he stole his arm round her waist.

"I believe Uncle Hope wants to adopt me," cried Gerard. "Won't it be jolly. No more scratch, scratch, scratch away with a pen all the blessed day."

"I called it 'slavery' to them just now," interrupted Frances.

"Good girl! No more getting up by candle-light in winter, and trudging off through the frost and through the thaw without breakfast, which you have not had time to take! It will be a change--if he does it. I'm not sure of it yet."

"You don't deserve it, Gerard."

"No! Why don't I? I'd try and be a good nephew to him--as dutiful as the good boy in the spelling-book. I say, Frances, has he been asking about me?--getting references as to character?"

"Yes, he has," was the perhaps unexpected answer. "Just as if you were a footman. Mr. Grubb said he did not know much of you; but what he did know he liked. Hark! They are coming out of the dining-room. And if you want any dinner, you had better go there and ring for it."

"Perhaps there's none left for me."

Frances laughed. "I heard Mr. Grubb whisper to his wife that if Gerard Hope came he was to go into the dining-room."

Gerard rose, went out, and met the gentlemen. Frances stayed where she was, and fell into a reverie. Did Gerard really love her? At times she thought so, at others she thought not.

The days wore onwards in their rapid flight. Time does not stand still even for those favoured ones who are plunged, for the first time, into the allurements of a London season: as was Selina Dalrymple.

One bright morning, when the sun was shining brilliantly and the skies were blue and the streets warm and dusty, she sat in the breakfast-room with her husband. The late meal was over, and Selina, a hot colour in her cheeks, was drumming her pretty foot on the floor, and not looking the essence of good-humour. She wore a richly embroidered white dress with pink ribbons. Mr. Dalrymple's eyes had rarely rested on a fairer woman, and his heart knew it too well.

"Selina, I asked you last night whether you intended to go to Lady Burnham's breakfast, at that rural villa of theirs. Of course, if you go, I will accompany you, otherwise I have some business I should like to attend to on Thursday."

"I can't go," answered Selina. "I have nothing to wear."

"Nothing to wear!"

"Nothing on earth."

"How can you say so?"

"I did think of ordering a suitable toilette for it, and was at Damereau's about it yesterday. But, after what you said last night----"

"My dear, what do you mean? what did I say? Only that you seemed, to me, never to appear in the same gown whether at home or out; and I begged you to remember that our income was limited."

"You said I changed my dresses four times a-day, Oscar."

"Well. Don't you?"

"But every one else does; Some change them five times. You would not like me to come down in the morning and go up to bed at night in the same dress, would you?"

"I suppose not. It's of no use asking me about dress, Selina. I scarcely know one gown from another. But it does strike me that you have a most extraordinary number of new things. Go out or come in when I will, there's sure to be the milliner's porter and basket at the door."

"Would you have me look an object?"

"You never do look an object."

"Of course I don't. I guard against it. I'd give the world to go to this fête at the Burnhams'. Every soul will be there, but me."

"And why not you, if your heart is so set upon It? I think all such affairs a stupid bore: but that's nothing."

"Would you wish me to go there in a petticoat?"

"No; I suppose not. I tell you I am no judge of a lady's things. I don't think I should know a petticoat from a gown. Those are gowns, are they not, hanging in rows round the walls in the room above, and covered up with sheets and table-cloths."

"Sheets and table-cloths! Oscar!"

"My dear, they look like it."

"Well--if they are gowns--there's not one I can wear."

"They are all recently new," said Mr. Dalrymple. "What's the matter with them?"

"There's not one I can wear," persisted his wife.

"But why?"

"Why!" repeated Mrs. Dalrymple, in quite a contemptuous tone, for she had no patience with ignorance. "You ought to know why!"

"My dear, I really don't. If you wish me to know, you must tell me."

"_I have worn them all once_," was the angry answer. "And some twice, and some three times. And one---- Oscar," she broke off, "you remember that lovely one; a sky blue, shot with white; a robe à disposition?"

"What is à disposition?"

"Oh--a silk, flounced, and the flounces have some designs upon them, embossed, or raised, sometimes of a different colour. That dress I have worn five times. I really have, Oscar; five times!

"I wear my coats fifty times five."

"The idea of my being seen at Lady Burnham's in a dress I have worn before! No; I'd rather go in a petticoat, of the two evils, and hide my head for ever after."

Mr. Dalrymple was puzzled. "Why could you not be seen, there or anywhere else, in a dress you have worn before?"

"Because no one else is."

"Then what becomes of all the new gowns?" inquired the wondering man.

"For goodness' sake, do not keep on calling them 'gowns.'"

"Dresses, then. What becomes of them?"

"Oh--they do for the country. Some few, by dint of retrimming, can be made to look new for town. You don't understand ladies' dresses, Oscar."

"I have said I do not."

"Neither ought you," added Selina, crossly. "We do not worry ourselves to interfere between you and your tailors, or pry into the shape and make of your waistcoats and buttons and things, and we do not expect to have it done by us."

"Selina, let your grievance come to an end. I do not like to hear this tone of reproach."

"Then you must retract what you said last night. It was as if you wanted me never to have a new dress again."

"Nay, Selina, I only reminded you how small our income is. You must not overlook that."

"Don't be foolish, Oscar. Do you fear I am going to ruin you? What's the cost of a few dresses? I _must_ have one for Lady Burnham's fête."

"My dear, have what you like, in reason," he said, in the innocence of his unconscious heart: "you are the best judge. Of course I can trust you."

The words were as the sweetest music in her ear. She sprang up, dancing to a scrap of a song.

"You dear, good Oscar I knew you were never going to be an old griffin. I think I must have that lovely green-and-white gauze. It was the most magnificent dress. I was divided between that and a cream-coloured damask. I'll have the gauze. And gauze dresses cost nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Next to nothing."

Selina flew upstairs. She pulled aside the "sheets and table-cloths," and glanced underneath. It was a goodly stock of robes; but yet not all the stock: for the lace, and muslin, and flimsy gauze, and delicate white, and delicate pearl, and delicate pink, and delicate other shades, were reposing in drawers, out of sight, between folds of tissue paper. Barège and balzarine: satin, plain and figured; velvet; silk, plain, damask, flowered, shot, corded, and of all the colours of the rainbow. Beautiful dresses; and yet--new, and rich, and elegant as they were, Selina Dalrymple could not go to the fête without a new one!

Away she went to Madame Damereau's. Astonishing that renowned artiste by the early hour of her visit.

"I want a thousand things," began Selina, in the blitheness of her heart. "Have you sold the green-and-white gauze dress?"

No, was madame's answer, she had kept it on purpose for Madame Dalreemp. Milady Ac-corn had come in yesterday afternoon late, and wanted it, but she had told milady that it was sold.

Selina took it all in. The fact was, madame had tried to persuade Milady Ac-corn into buying it, but milady was proof against the price. She had wanted it for Frances. It was only seventeen guineas, and that included the fringe and trimmings. Selina had told her husband that gauze dresses cost nothing!

"I want it for the breakfast on Thursday," cried Selina. "What mantle can I wear?"

A momentous question. They ran over in memory the mantles, scarfs, fichus, possessed by Mrs. Dalrymple, and came to the conclusion that not one of them would "go with" the gauze dress.

"I have a lace mantle," said madame--"ah! but it is recherché!--a real Brussels. If there is one robe in my house that it ought to go with, it is that green-and-white."

She brought it forward and exhibited it upon the dress. Very beautiful; of that there was no doubt. It was probably a beautiful price also.

"Twenty-five guineas."

"Oh my goodness--twenty-five guineas!" cried Selina. "But I'll take it. A breakfast fête does not come every day."

For a wonder--_for_ a wonder--Selina, having exhibited her white lace bonnet with the emeralds only twice, came to the conclusion that that "would do." Not that she hesitated at buying another, but that it was so suitable to the green-and-white dress.

"And now for---- Oh, stop; I think I must have a new parasol. My point-lace one is soiled, and I caught it in my bracelet the other day and tore it a little. You had a beautiful point-lace parasol here yesterday. Let me see it."

"The one you wore looking at yesterday will not do," cried madame. "It is lined with blue: Madame Dalreemp knows that blue can never go with the green dress. I have one parasol--ah, but it is a beauty!--a point-lace, lined with white. I will get it. It does surpass the other."

It did surpass the other, and in price also. Selina chose it. It was twenty guineas.

"My husband thought I could have worn one of my old dresses," observed Selina, as she turned over some gloves; "he says I have a great many. But one can only appear in a perfectly fresh toilette at a magnificent gathering such as this is to be." And madame fully assented.

Mrs. Dalrymple went to the breakfast, and she and her attire were lovely amidst the lovely, exciting no end of admiration. Very gratifying to her heart, then topsy-turvy with vanity. And so it went on to the end of the season, and her pleasurable course was never checked.

When they were preparing to return to the Grange, and her maid was driven wild with perplexity as to the stowing away of so extensive a wardrobe, and conjecturing that the carriage down of it would alone come to "something," it occurred to Selina, as she sat watching, that the original cost would also come to "something." Some hundreds, she feared, now she came to see the whole collection in a mass.

"Of course I shall not let Oscar see the bill," she soliloquized. "I'll get it from madame before I leave: and then there'll be no fear of its coming to him at the Grange."

Mrs. Dalrymple asked for the bill; and madame, under protest that there was no hurry in the world, promised to send it in.

Selina was alone, sitting in the drawing-room by twilight, when the account was delivered to her; it was enclosed in a large thick envelope, with an imposing red seal. She opened it somewhat eagerly. "What makes it such a bulk?" she thought. "Oh, I see; she has detailed the things."

Holding it close to the window, she looked at the bottom of the page, and saw ninety-four pounds.

"Ninety-four pounds!" ejaculated Selina. "What does madame mean? It must be much more than that."

She lighted the little taper on her writing-table; and then found she had been looking at one item only--the Venice point-lace for the decoration of a dress. So she turned the page and looked at the foot of the next.

"Antique robe, lace trimmings, and sapphire buttons, one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Tush!" impatiently exclaimed Selina.

With a rapid movement she turned the account over to the end, and gazed at the sum total; gazed at it, stared at it, and recoiled from it. Three thousand and odd pounds, odd shillings, and no pence! What the odd pounds were, whether one, or whether nine hundred ninety-nine, she did not catch in that moment of terror; the first grand sum of three thousand absorbed her eyes and her faculties. And there floated over her a confused consciousness of other bills to come in: one from the jeweller's, one for shawls, one for expensively trimmed linen. There was one shawl, real India--but she dared not think of that. "Oscar will say I have been mad," she groaned.

No doubt he would.

At that moment she heard his step, coming in from the dining-room, and turned sick. She crushed the bill in her right hand and thrust it down the neck of her dress. Then she blew out the taper, and turned, with a burning brow and shrinking frame, to the window again, and stood there, apparently looking out. Selina had never attempted to sum up what she had bought. At odd moments she had feared it might come to something like a thousand pounds.

Oscar came up and put his arm around her, asking whether it was not time to have the lights.

"Yes. Presently."

"What in the world have you got here?" cried he. "A ball?"

She pushed the "ball" higher up, and murmured something about "some paper."

"My dear, what is the matter with you here? You are trembling."

"The night-air, I suppose. It is rather chilly."

Yet the night was hot. Mr. Dalrymple immediately began to close the window. He was a minute or two over it, for one of the cords was stiff and did not go well. When he turned round again, his wife had left the room.

"Selina does not seem very well," thought Oscar.