"Oh, it is all over? I thought so." "Vera, what indifference! You might be talking of somebody in Mars. Yes, dear, it is quite at an end. They had a desperate quarrel; quite the worst of many frightful rows. There was furniture smashed, I believe--Sèvres and things--and now she has consoled herself." "Really?" "A German Prince. One of the German attachés told me he would marry her if he dared. Well, sweet, I must be trudging. I'm dining out, one of those nice little winter dinners that I love. You must make haste and get quite, quite well." This was what Susie always said to a sick friend, even when the friend was moribund. The "quite, quite" had such a cheering sound. "By the by, Lady O. told me you have had the Princess Hermione?" "Yes, she came to see me two or three times when she was passing through town." "That must have cheered you immensely. She is devoted to you, quite raves about you, I hear, in the highest circles. Get well, dear, and give a party for her when she is next in town." Susie kissed her and patted her hair, and suppressed a shiver at the cold brow that her lips touched. It felt like the brow of death. Yet Vera's eyes were bright, and there was a rosy bloom on the thin cheek. Susan was glad when she had got herself out of the house and was walking fast through the cheerful streets. But she was sincerely attached to her friend. "I shall be fit for nothing this evening," she told herself sadly; but she was at least fit for her part of Chorus, and entertained the little dinner-party with a picturesque description of her fading friend, dying slowly in that house of measureless wealth. "Her income dies with her," she explained, "and though I suppose a few pennies have been saved out of a hundred thousand a year, and my cousin will get all that's left, he will be a pauper in a year or two, I daresay." On this the company speculated upon how much might be left; and all were agreed that there was a good deal of spending in a hundred thousand, while one of the middle-aged men went so far as to make a rough calculation of the Rutherfords' expenditure in those five years of expensive pleasures; but even after reckoning the dances and dinner-giving, the yachts and balloons, the racing stable, and a certain amount of losses on the turf and at cards, they did not bring the annual outlay above eighty thousand, whereupon a dowager looked round with a smile, and said: "You haven't reckoned Mrs. Bellenden." "True. Now you mention her, I take it there would be no surplus." And then that remarkable lady and her German Prince were discussed at full length--dissected rather than discussed; for when a woman is remarkable for her beauty, and has spent three or four fortunes, and is in a fair way of spending another, there is a great deal of amusing talk to be got out of her. CHAPTER XXX