On July the first she was to receive her half-yearly allowance; and towards July the first she looked with an almost superstitious confidence. A thousand pounds! It was sufficient to settle a planetful of debts; and if any remained as satellites to the planet, well--there was the first of January. But now her confidence had been rudely shaken. In a sudden moment of pride--of bravado--she had signed away almost the whole of the anticipated half-yearly income. She stood possessed of fifty pounds, with which to dress, to eat, to exist from July to January; and in her hands was the sheaf of unpaid bills! There is no race of people that undertakes liabilities so lightly, and that is so overwhelmed when retribution falls upon it, as the Irish race. As Clodagh gradually faced her position, panic seized upon her. For weeks she had lived upon the credit that the London tradesman gives to customers who come provided with good references; and now suddenly she had realised--first by the arrival of certain bills couched in a new and imperative strain; later by Lady Frances Hope's unexpected demand for her money--that English credit is not the lax, indefinite credit of such places as Muskeere and Carrigmore: that it is a credit demanding--insisting upon--timely payment. And where was she to turn--where look--for the necessary funds? In a dazed way she thought of David Barnard, who had returned a month previously from a holiday in Spain; but her pride made her shrink sensitively from the thought of the suave indulgence with which he would listen to her confession of folly. Once the thought of recalling Lady Frances Hope, and explaining the position to her, sped through her mind; but she dismissed it as swiftly as it came. In restless perturbation she turned and walked across the room, pausing once more beside the bureau, which stood in a recess between the windows. Where could she turn, where look, for the money that would tide over her difficulties? In her mental distraction, she laid aside the bills she was still holding, and aimlessly picked up a half-dozen opened letters that lay awaiting answers. A couple of invitations to lunch; an invitation to play bridge; the offer of a box at the opera; Laurence Asshlin's monthly report from Orristown; Nance's last letter from America. With a vague preoccupation she raised the last of these and looked at it. How free and unhampered Nance seemed in her inexperience of life! She looked unseeingly at the closely written lines, her mind in a harassed way contrasting her own and her sister's fate. Then quite suddenly she dropped the letter and lifted her head. A thought had struck her. As a flash of lightning might rend a night sky, an inspiration had illuminated the darkness of her mind. The thousand pounds which was to be Nance's property when she came of age, or upon her engagement, still lay to her own credit--in her own name--in the bank with which Milbanke had done business.