orries," 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