ondered what they could be. She opened the thickest envelope first.
It was Seraphine's bill--such a bill, page after page on creamy Bath
post, written in an elegant Italian hand by one of Seraphine's young
women.

Lesbia looked at it aghast with horror. The total at the foot of the
first page was appalling, ever so much more than she could have supposed
the whole amount of her indebtedness; but the total went on increasing
at the foot of every page, until at sight of the final figures Lesbia
gave a wild shriek, like a wretched creature who has received a telegram
announcing bitterest loss.

The final total was twelve hundred and ninety-three pounds seventeen and
sixpence!

Thirteen hundred pounds for clothes in eight weeks!

No, the thing was a cheat, a mistake. They had sent her somebody else's
bill. She had not had half these things.

She read the first page, her heart beating violently as she pored over
the figures, her eyes dim and clouded with the trouble of her brain.

Yes, there was her court dress. The description was too minute to be
mistaken; and the court dress, with feathers, and shoes, and gloves, and
fan, came to a hundred and thirty pounds. Then followed innumerable
items. The very simplest of her gowns cost five-and-twenty
pounds--frocks about which Seraphine had talked so carelessly, as if two
or three more or less could make no difference. Bonnets and hats, at
five or seven guineas apiece, swelled the account. Parasols and fans
were of fabulous price, as it seemed to Lesbia; and the shoes and
stockings to match her various gowns occurred again and again between
the more important items, like the refrain of an old ballad. All the
useless and unnessary things which she had ordered, because she thought
them pretty or because she was told they were fashionable, rose up
against her in the figures of the bill, like the record of forgotten
sins at the Day of Judgment.

She sank into a chair, pallid with consternation, and sat with the bill
in her lap, turning the pages listlessly, and staring at the figures.

'It cannot be so much,' she cried to herself. 'It must be added up
wrong;' and then she feebly tried to cast up a column; but arithmetic
not being one of those accomplishments which Lady Maulevrier deemed
necessary to a patrician beauty's success in life, Lesbia's education
had been somewhat neglected upon this point, and she flung the bill from
her in a rage, unable to hold the figures in her b