After luncheon, when Grace Stepney’s prying eyes had been removed, Lily asked for a word with her aunt. The two ladies went upstairs to the sitting-room, where Mrs. Peniston seated herself in her black satin arm-chair tufted with yellow buttons, beside a bead-work table bearing a bronze box with a miniature of Beatrice Cenci in the lid. Lily felt for these objects the same distaste which the prisoner may entertain for the fittings of the court-room. It was here that her aunt received her rare confidences, and the pink-eyed smirk of the turbaned Beatrice was associated in her mind with the gradual fading of the smile from Mrs. Peniston’s lips. That lady’s dread of a scene gave her an inexorableness which the greatest strength of character could not have produced, since it was independent of all considerations of right or wrong; and knowing this, Lily seldom ventured to assail 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.