Chapter 13

One morning Gertrude got a letter from her father:

"My Dear Gerty: I have just received a bill for L110 from Madame
Smith for your dresses. May I ask you how long this sort of thing
is to go on? I need not tell you that I have not the means to
support you in such extravagance. I am, as you know, always
anxious that you should go about in a style worthy of your
position, but unless you can manage without calling on me to pay
away hundreds of pounds every season to Madame Smith, you had
better give up society and stay at home. I positively cannot
afford it. As far as I can see, going into society has not done
you much good. I had to raise L500 last month on Franklands; and
it is too bad if I must raise more to pay your dressmaker. You
might at least employ some civil person, or one whose charges are
moderate. Madame Smith tells me that she will not wait any
longer, and charges L50 for a single dress. I hope you fully
understand that there must be an end to this.

"I hear from your mother that young Erskine is with you at
Brandon's. I do not think much of him. He is not well off, nor
likely to get on, as he has taken to poetry and so forth. I am
told also that a man named Trefusis visits at the Beeches a good
deal now. He must be a fool, for he contested the last Birmingham
election, and came out at the foot of the poll with thirty-two
votes through calling himself a Social Democrat or some such
foreign rubbish, instead of saying out like a man that he was a
Radical. I suppose the name stuck in his throat, for his mother
was one of the Howards of Breconcastle; so he has good blood in
him, though his father was nobody. I wish he had your bills to
pay; he could buy and sell me ten times over, after all my
twenty-five years' service.

"As I am thinking of getting something done to the house, I had
rather you did not come back this month, if you can possibly hold
on at Brandon's. Remember me to him, and give our kind regards to
his wife. I should be obliged if you would gather some hemlock
leaves and send them to me. I want them for my ointment; the
stuff the chemists sell is no good. Your mother's eyes are bad
again; and your brother Berkeley has been gambling, and seems to
think I ought to pay his debts for him. I am greatly worried over
it all, and I hope that, until you have settled yourself, you
will be more reasonable, and not run these everlasting bills upon
me. You are enjoying yourself out of reach of all the
unpleasantness; but it bears hardly upon

"Your affectionate father, "C.B. LINDSAY."

A faint sketch of the lines Time intended to engrave on
Gertrude's brow appeared there as she read the letter; but she
hastened to give the admiral's kind regards to her