Part 21 (2/2)

”Why? Who is it from?”

”That insatiable Madame Faustine. It will be the bill for my black tea-gown and the blue silk blouse that you admired so much, Philip, dear. Now you may have this letter, and pay it yourself if you are awfully good,” laughing merrily. ”I will give you the number of sovereigns in kisses.”

She looked so pretty as she handed it to him that he tore it open leniently, but no bill fell out.

The letter ran thus:

MADAME,--I am writing to ask you a personal favour, with regard to Mrs.

Mounteagle, who kindly introduced me to you. I was prevented mentioning it to you to-day by the presence of my a.s.sistant. Could you induce Mrs. Mounteagle to remit me a portion, at least, of her long-outstanding account? She has not been lately to our establishment, and I cannot get my letters answered. I thought perhaps you might use your influence, and oblige very greatly.

Yours respectfully, LOUISE FAUSTINE.

”A thousand devils!” cried Philip, crus.h.i.+ng the letter in his hand.

”She lied to me--_you_ lied to me!”

CHAPTER XI.

IF WE ONLY KNOW! IF WE ONLY KNOW!

Eleanor's face is seared with weeping.

For the last three days Philip has hardly spoken to her.

She has stayed indoors and avoided Giddy, but now a message comes from the widow commenting on her non-appearance.

She pulls forward a sheet of paper, bites the end of her quill, and cries great drops of tears on the blotting-book. In a straggling hand she addresses an envelope to Mrs. Mounteagle, placing therein that unlucky letter from Madame Faustine.

In as few words as possible she relates the scene on paper to her friend.

”I am disheartened, dispirited, diseverythinged,” she writes in conclusion. ”As d.i.c.k in 'The Light that Failed' says; 'I am down and done for--broken--let me alone!'”

”Poor little wretch!” thinks Giddy, reading the sorrowful epistle. ”I must tell Carol. He shall see this forlorn-looking scrawl.” She sighs at the thought of some people's folly. ”No sooner met, but they looked,” she quotes to herself, _apropos_ of Eleanor and Mr. Quinton.

”No sooner looked, but they loved; no sooner loved, but they sighed.

Ah! me, it's natural, very plain!”

Eleanor is not going out this afternoon, though the air is mild, the sun s.h.i.+nes, and all the world smiles.

She has more than one call to return, which should have been done to-day, yet she sits alone in her pretty boudoir, neither reading, working, nor writing.

Her expression renders her face even more beautiful than usual in the subdued light. For a ray of winter suns.h.i.+ne, heralding the spring, has quite dazzled Eleanor's eyes, till she draws the blind, and settles in a cosy corner at the side of the fender.

In her hand is a letter, brief, yet to its owner teeming with news, so significant the simple wording seems:

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