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 extent of it, but had taken for granted that Lady Maulevrier was rich. Would three thousand pounds make a great inroad on that income? Would it be a year's income?--half a year's? Lesbia had no idea. Life at Fellside was carried on in an elegant manner--with considerable luxury in house and garden--a luxury of flowers, a lavish expenditure of labour. Yet the expenditure of Lady Maulevrier's existence, spent always on the same spot, must be as nothing to the money spent in such a life as Lady Kirkbank's, which involved the keeping up of three or four houses, and costly journeys to and fro, and incessant change of attire.