The Marriage of William Ashe. Mrs. Humphry Ward
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said Kitty, furtively applying her lace handkerchief to her tears; "but"—her voice dropped—"when one's unhappy—very unhappy—things like that—things like Heaven—hurt! Oh, what a fool I am!" And she sat straightly up, looking round her.
There was a pause; then Ashe said, in another voice:
"Look here, you know this won't do. I thought we were to be cousins."
"Well?" said Kitty, indifferently, not looking at him.
"And I understood that I was to be taken into respectable cousinly counsel?"
"Well?" said Kitty again, crumbling her bread. "I can't do it here, can I?"
Ashe laughed.
"Well, anyhow, we're going to sample the garden to-morrow morning, aren't we?"
"I suppose so," said Kitty. Then, after a moment, she looked at her right-hand neighbor, the young politician to whom as yet she had scarcely vouchsafed a word.
"What's his name?" she asked, under her breath. Ashe repeated it.
"Perhaps I ought to talk to him?"
"Of course you ought," said Ashe, with smiling decision, and turning to the lady whom he had brought in he left her free.
When the ladies rose, Lady Grosville led the way to the large drawing-room, a room which, like the library, had some character, and a thin elegance of style, not, however, warmed and harmonized by the delightful presence of books. The walls, blue and white in color, were panelled in stucco relief. A few family portraits, stiff handlings of stiff people, were placed each in the exact centre of its respective panel. There were a few cases of china and a few polished tables. A crimson Brussels carpet, chosen by Lady Grosville for its "cheerfulness," covered the floor, and there was a large white sheepskin rug before the fireplace. A few hyacinths in pots, and the bright fire supplied the only gay and living notes—before the ladies arrived.
Still, for an English eye, the room had a certain cold charm, was moreover full of history. It hardly deserved at any rate the shiver with which Kitty Bristol looked round it.
But she had little time to dwell upon the room and its meanings, for Lady Grosville approached her with a manner which still showed signs of the catastrophe before dinner.
"Kitty, I think you don't know Miss Lyster yet—Mary Lyster—she wants to be introduced to you."
Mary advanced smiling; Kitty held out a limp hand, and they exchanged a few words standing in the centre of the floor, while the other guests found seats.
"What a charming contrast!" said Lady Edith Manley in Lady Grosville's ear. She nodded smiling towards the standing pair—struck by the fine straight lines of Mary's satin dress, the roundness of her fine figure, the oval of her head and face, and then by the little, vibrating, tempestuous creature beside her, so distinguished, in spite of the billowing flounces and ribbons, so direct and significant, amid all the elaboration.
"Kitty is ridiculously overdressed," said Lady Grosville. "I hope we shall soon change that. My girls are going to take her to their woman."
Lady Edith put up her eye-glass slowly and looked at the two Grosville girls; then back at Kitty.
Meanwhile a few perfunctory questions and answers were passing between Miss Lyster and her companion. Mary's aspect as she talked was extremely amiable; one might have called it indulgent, perhaps even by an adjective that implied a yet further shade of delicate superiority. Kitty met it by the same "grand manner" that Ashe had several times observed in her, a manner caught perhaps from some French model, and caricatured in the taking. Her eyes meanwhile took note of Mary's face and dress, and while she listened her small teeth tormented her under-lip, as though she restrained impatience. All at once in the midst of some information that Miss Lyster was lucidly giving, Kitty made an impetuous turn. She had caught some words on the farther side of the room; and she looked hard, eagerly, at the speaker.
"Who is that?" she inquired.
Mary Lyster, with a sharp sense of interruption, replied that she believed the lady in question was the Grosville's French governess. But in the very midst of her sentence Kitty deserted her, left her standing in the centre of the drawing-room, while the deserter fled across it, and sinking down beside the astonished mademoiselle took the Frenchwoman's hand by assault and held it in both her own.
"Vous parlez Français?—vous êtes Française? Ah! ça me fait tant de bien! Voyons! voyons!—causons un peu!"
And bending forward, she broke into a cataract of French, all the elements of her strange, small beauty rushing, as it were, into flame and movement at the swift sound and cadence of the words, like a dancer kindled by music. The occasion was of the slightest; the Frenchwoman might well show a natural bewilderment. But into the slight occasion the girl threw an animation, a passion, that glorified it. It was like the leap of a wild rain-stream on the mountains, that pours into the first channel which presents itself.
"What beautiful French!" said Lady Edith, softly, to Mary Lyster, who had found a seat beside her.
Mary Lyster smiled.
"She has been at school, of course, in a French convent." Somehow the tone implied that the explanation disposed of all merit in the performance.
"I am afraid these French convent schools are not at all what they should be," said Lady Grosville.
And rising to a pyramidal height, her ample moiré dress swelling behind her, her gray head magnificently crowned by its lace cap and black velvet bandeau, she swept across the room to where the Dean's wife, Mrs. Winston, sat in fascinated silence observing Lady Kitty. The silence and the attention annoyed her hostess. The first thing to be done with girls of this type, it seemed to Lady Grosville, was to prove to them that they would not be allowed to monopolize society.
There are natural monopolies, however, and they are not easy to deal with.
As soon as the gentlemen returned, Mr. Rankine, whom she had treated so badly at dinner, the young agent of the estate, the clergyman of the parish, the Austrian attaché, the cabinet minister, and the Dean, all showed a strong inclination to that side of the room which seemed to be held in force by Lady Kitty. The Dean especially was not to be gainsaid. He placed himself in the seat shyly vacated by the French governess, and crossed his thin, stockinged legs with the air of one who means to take his ease. There was even a certain curious resemblance between him and Kitty, as was noticed from a distance by Ashe. The Dean, who was very much a man of the world, and came of an historic family, was, in his masculine degree, planned on the same miniature scale and with the same fine finish as the girl of eighteen. And he carried his knee-breeches, his apron, and his exquisite white head with a natural charm and energy akin to hers—mellowed though it were by time, and dignified by office. He began eagerly to talk to her of Paris. His father had been ambassador for a time under Louis Philippe, and he had boyish memories of the great house in the Faubourg St. Honoré, and of the Orleanist ministers and men of letters. And lo! Kitty met him at once, in a glow and sparkle that enchanted the old man. Moreover, it appeared that this much-beflounced young lady could talk; that she had heard of the famous names and the great affairs to which the Dean made allusion; that she possessed indeed a native and surprising interest in matter of the sort; and a manner, above all, with the old, alternately soft and daring, calculated, as Lady Grosville would no doubt have put it, merely to make fools of them.
In her cousins' house, it seemed, she had talked with old people, survivors of the Orleanist and Bourbon régimes—even of the Empire; had sat at their feet, a small, excited hero-worshipper; and had then rushed blindly into the memoirs and books that concerned them. So, in this French world the child had found time for other things than hunting, and the flattery of her cousin Henri? Ashe was supposed to be devoting himself to the Dean's wife; but both he and she listened most of the time to the sallies and the laughter of the circle where Kitty presided.
"My dear young lady," cried the delighted Dean, "I never find anybody who can talk of these things—it is really astonishing. Ah, now, we English know