“Forgot?”
Lower sank her golden head; she swallowed again.
“Under the hatches yet again, Nell?”
She nodded guiltily, her colour deepening.
His expression was inscrutable, and for a moment he said nothing. His gaze seemed to consider her, but what thoughts were running in his head it would have been impossible to have guessed. “I appear to make you a very inadequate allowance,” he observed.
The knowledge that the allowance he made her was a very handsome one caused her to cast an imploring glance up at him and to stammer: “Oh, no, no!”
“Then why are you in debt?”
“I have bought things which perhaps I should not,” she said desperately. “This—this gown, for instance! Indeed, I am sorry. I won’t do so any more!”
“May I see your paid bills?”
This was said more gently still, but it effectively drove the flush from her cheeks. They became as white as they had before been red. To be sure, she had any number of receipted bills, but none knew better than she that their total, staggering though it might seem to the daughter of an impoverished peer, did not account for half of that handsome allowance which was paid quarterly to her bankers. At any moment now my lord would ask the question she dreaded, and dared not answer truthfully.
It came. “Three months ago, Nell,” said the Earl, in a measured tone, “I forbade you most straitly to pay any more of your brother’s debts. You gave me your word that you would not. Have you done so?”
She shook her head. It was dreadful to lie to him, but what else was to be done when he looked so stern, and had shown himself so unsympathetic to poor Dysart? It was true that Dysart’s recurring difficulties were all due to his shocking luck; and it seemed that Cardross couldn’t understand how unjust it was to blame Dysart for his inability to abandon gaming and racing. That Fatal Tendency, said Mama, with resignation, ran in the family: Grandpapa had died under a cloud of debt; and Papa, with the hopeful intention of restoring the fortunes of his house, had still more heavily mortgaged his estates.