The Marriage of William Ashe. Mrs. Humphry Ward
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once, Ashe, looking round to see if Darrell could be dislodged, caught the chatterer silent, and found himself all at once invaded by a slight thrill, or shock.
What did the girl's expression mean?—what was she thinking of? She was looking intently at the crowded room, and it seemed to Ashe that Darrell's talk, though his lips moved quickly, was not reaching her at all. The dark brows were drawn together, and beneath them the eyes looked sorely out. The delicate lips were slightly, piteously open, and the whole girlish form in its young beauty appeared, as he watched, to shrink together. Suddenly the girl's look, so wide and searching, caught that of Ashe; and he moved impulsively forward.
"Present me, please, to Lady Kitty," he said, catching Warington's arm.
"Poor child!" said a low voice in his ear.
Ashe turned and saw Louis Harman. The tone, however—allusive, intimate, patronizing—in which Harman had spoken, annoyed him, and he passed on without taking any notice.
"Lady Kitty," said Warington, "Mr. Ashe wishes to be presented to you. He is an old friend of your mother's. Congratulate him—he has just got into Parliament."
Lady Kitty drew herself up, and all trace of the look which Ashe had observed disappeared. She bowed, not carelessly as she had bowed to Darrell, but with a kind of exaggerated stateliness, not less girlish.
"I never congratulate anybody," she said, shaking her head, "till I know them."
Ashe opened his eyes a little.
"How long must I wait?" he said, smiling, as he drew a chair beside her.
"That depends. Are you difficult to know?" She looked up at him audaciously, and he on his side could not take his eyes from her, so singular was the small, sparkling face. The hair and skin were very fair, like her mother's, the eyes dark and full of fire, the neck most daintily white and slender, the figure undeveloped, the feet and hands extremely small. But what arrested him was, so to speak, the embodied contradiction of the personality—as between the wild intelligence of the eyes and the extreme youth, almost childishness, of the rest.
He asked her if she had ever known any one confess to being easy, to know.
"Well, I'm easy to know," she said, carelessly, leaning back; "but, then, I'm not worth knowing."
"Is one allowed to find out?"
"Oh yes—of course! Do you know—when you were over there, I willed that you should come and talk to me, and you came. Only," she sat up with animation, and began to tick off her sentences on her fingers—"Don't ask me how long I've been in town. Don't ask where I was in Paris. Don't inquire whether I like balls! You see, I warn you at once"—she looked up frankly—"that we mayn't lose time."
"Well, then, I don't see how I'm ever to find out," said Ashe, stoutly.
"Whether I'm worth knowing?" She considered, then bent forward eagerly. "Look here! I'll just tell you everything in a lump, and then that'll do—won't it? Listen. I'm just eighteen. I was sent to the Soeurs Blanches when I was thirteen—the year papa died. I didn't like papa—I'm very sorry, but I didn't! However, that's by-the-way. In all those years I have only seen maman once—she doesn't like children. But my aunt Grosville has some French relations—very, very 'comme il faut,' you understand—and I used to go and stay with them for the holidays. Tell me!—did you ever hunt in France?"
"Never," said Ashe, startled and amused by the sudden glance of enthusiasm that lit up the face and expressed itself in the clasped hands.
"Oh! it's such heaven," she said, lifting her shoulders with an extravagant gesture—"such heaven! First there are the old dresses—the men look such darlings!—and then the horns, and the old ways they have—si noble!—si distingué!—not like your stupid English hunting. And then the dogs! Ah! the dogs"—the shoulders went higher still; "do you know my cousin Henri actually gave me a puppy of the great breed—the breed, you know—the Dogs of St. Hubert. Or at least he would if maman would have let me bring it over. And she wouldn't! Just think of that! When there are thousands of people in France who'd give the eyes out of their head for one. I cried all one night—Allons!—faut pas y penser!"—she shook back the hair from her eyes with an impatient gesture. "My cousins have got a château, you know, in the Seine-et-Oise. They've promised to ask me next year—when the Grand-Duke Paul comes—if I'll promise to behave. You see, I'm not a bit like French girls—I had so many affairs!"
Her eyes flashed with laughter.
Ashe laughed too.
"Are you going to tell me about them also?"
She drew herself up.
"No! I play fair, always—ask anybody! Oh, I do want to go back to France so badly!" Once more she was all appeal and childishness. "Anyway, I won't stay in England! I have made up my mind to that!"
"How long has it taken?"
"A fortnight," she said, slowly—"just a fortnight."
"That hardly seems time enough—does it?" said Ashe. "Give us a little longer."
"No—I—I hate you!" said Lady Kitty, with a strange drop in her voice. Her little fingers began to drum on the table near her, and to Ashe's intense astonishment he saw her eyes fill with tears.
Suddenly a movement towards the other room set in around them. Madame d'Estrées could be heard giving directions. A space was made in the large drawing-room—a little table appeared in it, and a footman placed thereon a glass of water.
Lady Kitty looked up.
"Oh, that detestable man!" she said, drawing back. "No—I can't, I can't bear it. Come with me!" and beckoning to Ashe she fled with precipitation into the farther part of the inner drawing-room, out of her mother's sight. Ashe followed her, and she dropped panting and elate into a chair.
Meanwhile the outer room gathered to hear the recitation of some vers de société, fondly believed by their author to be of a very pretty and Praedian make. They certainly amused the company, who laughed and clapped as each neat personality emerged. Lady Kitty passed the time either in a running commentary on the reciter, which occasionally convulsed her companion, or else in holding her small hands over her ears.
When it was over, she drew a long breath.
"How maman can! Oh! how bête you English are to applaud such a man! You have only one poet, haven't you—one living poet? Ah! I shouldn't have laughed if it had been he!"
"I suppose you mean Geoffrey Cliffe?" said Ashe, amused. "Nobody abroad seems ever to have heard of any one else."
"Well, of course, I just long to know him! Every one says he is so dangerous!—he makes all the women fall in love with him. That's delicious! He shouldn't make me! Do you know him?"
"I knew him at Eton. We were 'swished' together," said Ashe.
She inquired what the phrase might mean, and when informed, flushed hotly, denouncing the English school system as quite unfit for gentlemen and men of honor. Her French cousins would sooner die than suffer such a thing. Then in the midst of her tirade she suddenly paused, and fixing Ashe with her brilliant eyes, she asked him a surprising question, in a changed and steady voice:
"Is Lady Tranmore not well?"
Ashe was fairly startled.
"Thank you, I left her quite well. Have you—"
"Did maman ask her to come to-night?"
It was Ashe's turn to redden.
"I don't know. But—we are in mourning, you see, for my brother."
Her face changed and softened instantly.
"Are you? I'm so sorry. I—I always say something stupid. Then—Lady Tranmore used to come to maman's parties—before—"
She