Hartley to sit down. No?" she continued; "then you may go, Mr.
Hartley. I trust you may remember all that you have heard in this
room; it may be useful to you."
Harry at once made his escape from the drawing-room; and as he ran
upstairs he could hear the General's voice upraised in declamation,
and the thin tones of Lady Vandeleur planting icy repartees at
every opening. How cordially he admired the wife! How skilfully
she could evade an awkward question! with what secure effrontery
she repeated her instructions under the very guns of the enemy! and
on the other hand, how he detested the husband!
There had been nothing unfamiliar in the morning's events, for he
was continually in the habit of serving Lady Vandeleur on secret
missions, principally connected with millinery. There was a
skeleton in the house, as he well knew. The bottomless
extravagance and the unknown liabilities of the wife had long since
swallowed her own fortune, and threatened day by day to engulph
that of the husband. Once or twice in every year exposure and ruin
seemed imminent, and Harry kept trotting round to all sorts of
furnishers' shops, telling small fibs, and paying small advances on
the gross amount, until another term was tided over, and the lady
and her faithful secretary breathed again. For Harry, in a double
capacity, was heart and soul upon that side of the war: not only
did he adore Lady Vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband, but
he naturally sympathised with the love of finery, and his own
single extravagance was at the tailor's.
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