he newest
improvements; the flowers that filled her room had been supplied by a
fashionable florist at an exorbitant cost. In a word, she had behaved
like a child who has been given a pocketful of bright new pennies--and
believes them to be golden coins.

Once or twice in the course of those extravagant weeks, a pang of
misgiving had crossed her soul; but it had only been a pang of the
moment.

The phantom of tradesmen's bills is one so easily dismissed from the
Irish mind that, unless it materialises very forcibly, it may almost be
considered non-existent.

On July the first she was to receive her half-yearly allowance; and
towards July the first she looked with an almost superstitious
confidence. A thousand pounds! It was sufficient to settle a planetful
of debts; and if any remained as satellites to the planet, well--there
was the first of January.

But now her confidence had been rudely shaken. In a sudden moment of
pride--of bravado--she had signed away almost the whole of the
anticipated half-yearly income. She stood possessed of fifty pounds,
with which to dress, to eat, to exist from July to January; and in her
hands was the sheaf of unpaid bills!

There is no race of people that undertakes liabilities so lightly, and
that is so overwhelmed when retribution falls upon it, as the Irish
race. As Clodagh gradually faced her position, panic seized upon her.
For weeks she had lived upon the credit that the London tradesman gives
to customers who come provided with good references; and now suddenly
she had realised--first by the arrival of certain bills couched in a
new and imperative strain; later by Lady Frances Hope's unexpected
demand for her money--that English credit is not the lax, indefinite
credit of such places as Muskeere and Carrigmore: that it is a credit
demanding--insisting upon--timely payment.

And where was she to turn--where look--for the necessary funds?

In a dazed way she thought of David Barnard, who had returned a month
previously from a holiday in Spain; but her pride made her shrink
sensitively from the thought of the suave indulgence with which he
would listen to her confession of folly. Once the thought of recalling
Lady Frances Hope, and explaining the position to her, sped through her
mind; but she dismissed it as swiftly as it came. In restless
perturbation she turned and walked across the room, pausing once more
beside the bureau, which stood in a recess between the windows.