owered the big yellow sunshade, so as to hide
herself altogether from the starers.

'How silly!' she exclaimed. 'It is all the fault of those horrid
photographers: they vulgarise everything and everybody. I will never be
photographed again.'

'Oh yes, you will, and in that frock. It's the prettiest thing I've seen
for a long time. Why do you hide yourself from those poor wretches, who
keep rowing backwards and forwards in an obviously aimless way, just to
get a peep at you _en passant_? What happiness for us who live near you,
and can gaze when we will, without all those absurd manoeuvres. There
goes the signal--and now for a hard-fought race.'

Lesbia pretended to be interested in the racing--she pretended to be
gay, but her heart was as heavy as lead. The burden of debt, which had
been growing ever since Seraphine sent in her bill, was weighing her
down to the dust.

She owed three thousand pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe
so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount
to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases,
ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was
an indebtedness of close upon three thousand pounds.

Three thousand pounds! The sum was continually sounding in her ears like
the cry of a screech owl. The very ripple of the river flowing so
peacefully under the blue summer sky seemed to repeat the words. Three
thousand pounds! 'Is it much?' she wondered, having no standard of
comparison. 'Is it very much more than my grandmother will expect me to
have spent in the time? Will it trouble her to have to pay those bills?
Will she be very angry?'

These were questions which Lesbia kept asking herself, in every pause of
her frivolous existence; in such a pause as this, for instance, while
the people round her were standing breathless, open-mouthed, gazing
after the boats. She did not care a straw for the boats, who won, or who
lost the race. It was all a hollow mockery. Indeed it seemed just now
that the only real thing in life was those accursed bills, which would
have to be paid somehow.

She had told Lady Maulevrier nothing about them as yet. She had allowed
herself to be advised by Lady Kirkbank, and she had taken time to think.
But thought had given her no help. The days were gliding onward, and
Lady Maulevrier would have to be told.

She meditated perplexedly about her grandmother's income. She had never
heard the ex