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Book, page 150 / 468 her husband upon equal terms. To cunning, the refuge of weakness, she had recourse; and she considered that, though she could no longer outscold, she could still outwit her adversary. She could not have the pleasure and honour of patronizing the spring hat, without ready money to pay for it; her husband, she knew, had always bank-notes in his escritoir; and she argued with herself that it was better to act without his consent than against it. She went and tried, with certain keys of her own, to open Leonard's desk; and open it came. She seized from a parcel of bank-notes as many as she wanted, and paid Mrs. la Mode with three of them for the spring hat. When her husband came home the next day, he did not observe that he had lost any of the notes; and, as he went out of the house again without once coming into the parlour where his wife was sitting, she excused herself to her conscience, for not telling him of the freedom she had taken, by thinking--It will do as well to tell him of it to-morrow: a few notes, out of such a parcel as he has in his desk locked up from me, can't signify; and he'll only bluster and bully when I do tell him of it; so let him find it out when he pleases. The scheme of acting without her husband's consent in all cases, where she was morally certain that if she asked she could not obtain it, Mrs. Ludgate had often pursued with much success. A few days after she had bought the spring hat, she invited Mrs. Pimlico, Mrs. Paget, and all her genteel friends, to tea and cards. Her husband, she knew, would be out of the way, at his club, or at the tavern. Mrs. Pimlico, and Mrs. Paget, and all their genteel friends, did Mrs. Ludgate the honour to wait upon her on the appointed evening, and she had the satisfaction to appear upon this occasion in the new spring hat; while her friend, Mrs. Pimlico, whispered to young Mrs. Paget, "She patronize the new spring hat! What a fool Mrs. la Mode makes of her! A death's head in a wreath of roses! How frightfully ridiculous!" Unconscious that she was an object of ridicule to the whole company, Mrs. Ludgate sat down to cards in unusually good spirits, firmly believing Mrs. la Mode's comfortable assertion, "that the spring hat made her look ten years younger." She was in the midst of a panegyric upon Mrs. la Mode's taste, when Jack, the footboy, came behind her chair, and whispered that three men were below, who desired to speak to her immediately.
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