The bed was covered with dress goods and the airy nothings that enhance a girl’s beauty.  The husband understood their meaning too well, and he muttered something like an oath.  At last he said, in a hard tone, “Well, after buying all this frippery, how much money have you left?”

“Oh, Martin,” sobbed his wife, “don’t speak to me in that tone.  Indeed I did not know we were in real danger.  You seemed in such good spirits last evening, and Mr. Arnold showed so much feeling for Millie, that my heart has been as light as a feather all day.  I wouldn’t have bought these things if I had only known—­if I had realized it all.”

Mr. Jocelyn now uttered an unmistakable anathema on his folly.

“The money you had this morning is gone, then?”

“Yes.”

“How much has been charged?”

“Don’t ask me.”

He was so angry—­with himself more than his wife—­and so cast down that he could not trust himself to speak again.  With a gesture, more expressive than any words, he turned on his heel and left the room and the house.  For hours he walked the streets in the wretched turmoil of a sensitive, yet weak nature.  He was not one who could calmly meet an emergency and manfully do his best, suffering patiently meanwhile the ills that could not be averted.  He could lead a cavalry charge into any kind of danger, but he could not stand still under fire.  The temptation to repeat his folly of the previous evening was very strong, but it had cost him so dearly that he swore a great oath that at least he would not touch liquor again; but he could not refrain from lifting himself in some degree out of his deep dejection, by a recourse to the stimulant upon which he had so long been dependent.  At last, jaded and sober indeed, he returned to a home whose very beauty and comfort now became the chief means of his torture.

In the meantime Mildred and her mother sat by the pretty fabrics that had the bright hues of their morning hopes, and they looked at each other with tears and dismay.  If the silk and lawn should turn into crape, it would seem so in accordance with their feelings as scarcely to excite surprise.  Each queried vainly, “What now will be the future?” The golden prospect of the day had become dark and chaotic, and in strong reaction a vague sense of impending disaster so oppressed them that they scarcely spoke.  Deep in Mildred’s heart, however, born of woman’s trust, was the sustaining hope that her friend, Vinton Arnold, would be true to her whatever might happen.  Poor Mrs. Jocelyn’s best hope was, that the financial storm would blow over without fulfilling their fears.  She had often known her father to be half desperate, and then there was patched up some kind of arrangement which enabled them to go on again in their old way.  Still, even with her unbusiness-like habits of thought and meagre knowledge of the world, she could not see how they could maintain themselves if her husband’s income should suddenly cease, and he be unable to find a like position.