"You've never got any money," said she, speaking almost with passion.

"How can I help it? I can't make money. If I had a couple of hundred
pounds, so that I could take her, I believe that she would go with
me. It should not be my fault if she did not. It would have been all
right if she had come to Monkshade."

"I've got no money for you, Burgo. I have not five pounds belonging
to me."

"But you've got--?"

"What?" said Lady Monk, interrupting him sharply.

"Would Cosmo lend it me?" said he, hesitating to go on with that
suggestion which he had been about to make. The Cosmo of whom he
spoke was not his uncle, but his cousin. No eloquence could have
induced his uncle, Sir Cosmo, to lend him another shilling. But the
son of the house was a man rich with his own wealth, and Burgo had
not taxed him for some years.

"I do not know," said Lady Monk. "I never see him. Probably not."

"It is hard," said Burgo. "Fancy that a man should be ruined for two
hundred pounds, just at such a moment of his life as this!" He was
a man bold by nature, and he did make his proposition. "You have
jewels, aunt;--could you not raise it for me? I would redeem them
with the very first money that I got."

Lady Monk rose in a passion when the suggestion was first made,
but before the interview was over she had promised that she would
endeavour to do something in the way of raising money for him yet,
once again. He was her favourite nephew, and the same almost to
her as a child of her own. With one of her own children indeed she
had quarrelled, and of the other, a married daughter, she rarely
saw much. Such love as she had to give she gave to Burgo, and she
promised him the money though she knew that she must raise it by some
villanous falsehood to her husband.

On the same morning Lady Glencora went to Queen Anne Street with the
purpose of inducing Alice to go to Lady Monk's party; but Alice would
not accede to the proposition, though Lady Glencora pressed it with
all her eloquence. "I don't know her," said Alice.

"My dear," said Lady Glencora, "that's absurd. Half the people there
won't know her."

"But they know her set, or know her friends,--or, at any rate, will
meet their own friends at her house. I should only bother you, and
should not in the least gratify myself."

"The fact is, everybody will go who can, and I should have no sort
of trouble in getting a card for you. Indeed I should simply write a
note and say I meant to