"What, then?"
"Well, we ought to decide at once who we are going to ask for the rest of the shooting. The preserves are splendid, and it seems quite a sin to let them go to waste. Of course I know a lot of men I could ask, but there should be a few women, too, for you."
"Why for me? I like men a great deal better," says t.i.ta audaciously.
"Well, you shouldn"t! And, besides, you have some friends of your won to be asked."
"Your friends will do very well."
"Nonsense!" with a touch of impatience. "It is you and _your_ friends who are first to be considered; afterwards we can think of mine."
"I have no friends," says t.i.ta carelessly.
"You have your uncle, at all events; he might like----"
"Oh, don"t be an a.s.s," says Lady Rylton.
She delivers this excellent advice with a prompt.i.tude and vigour that does her honour. Rylton stares at her for a moment, and then gives way to amus.e.m.e.nt.
"I shan"t be if I can help it," says he; "but there are often so many difficulties in the way." He hesitates as if uncertain, and then goes on. "By the way, t.i.ta, you shouldn"t give yourself the habit of saying things like that."
"Like what?"
"Well, telling a fellow not to be an a.s.s, you know. It doesn"t matter to me, of course, but I heard you say something like that to old Lady Warbeck yesterday, and she seemed quite startled."
"Did she? Do her good!" says t.i.ta, making a charming little face at him. "Nothing like electricity nowadays. It"ll quite set her up again. Add _years_ to her life."
"Still, she wouldn"t like it, perhaps."
"Having years added to her life?"
"No; your slang."
"She likes _me_, any way," says t.i.ta nonchalantly, "so it doesn"t matter about the slang. The last word she mumbled at me through her old false teeth was that she hoped I"d come over and see her every Tuesday that I had at my command (I"m not going to have _many_), because I reminded her of some granddaughter who was now in heaven, or at the Antipodes--it"s all the same."
She pauses to catch a fly--dexterously, and with amazing swiftness, in the palm of her hand--that has been buzzing aimlessly against the window-pane. Having looked at it between her fingers, she flings it into the warm air outside.
"So you see," continues she triumphantly, "it"s a good thing to startle people. They fall in love with you at once."
Here, as if some gay little thought has occurred to her, she lowers her head and looks at her dainty finger-nails, then up at Rylton from under half-closed lids.
"What a good thing I didn"t try to startle _you!"_ says she. _"You_ might have fallen in love with me, too."
She waits for a second as it were, just time enough to let her see the nervous movement of his brows, and then--she laughs.
"I"ve escaped that bore," says she, nodding her head. She throws herself into a big chair. "And now, as the parsons say, "to continue"; you were advising me to ask----"
"Your uncle."
All the brightness has died out of Rylton"s voice; he looks dull, uninterested. That small remark of hers--what memories it has awakened! And yet--_would_ he go back?
"Chut! What a suggestion!" says t.i.ta, shrugging her shoulders.
"Don"t you know that my one thought is to enjoy myself?"
"A great one," says he, smiling strangely.
She cares for nothing, he tells himself: _nothing!_ He has married a mere b.u.t.terfly; yet how pretty the b.u.t.terfly is, lying back there in that huge armchair, her picturesque little figure flung carelessly into artistic curves, her soft, velvety head rubbing itself restlessly amongst the amber cushions. The cushions had been in one of the drawing-rooms, but she had declared he was frightfully uncomfortable in his horrid old den, and has insisted on making him a handsome present of them. She seems to him the very incarnation of exquisite idleness, the idleness that knows no thought.
"Very good," says he at last. "If you refuse to make up a list of _your_ friends, help me to make up a list of mine. You know you said you would like to fill the house."
"Ye--es," says she, as if meditating.
"Of course, if you don"t want any people here----"
"But I do. I do really. I _hate_ being alone!" cries she, springing into sudden life and leaning forward with her hands clasped on her knees.
"How few rings you have!" says he suddenly.
CHAPTER XV.
HOW t.i.tA TELLS OF TWO STRANGE DREAMS, AND OF HOW THEY MOVED HER. AND HOW MAURICE SETS HIS SOUL ON ASKING A GUEST TO OAKDEAN; AND HOW HE GAINS HIS DESIRE.
"Not one, except this," touching her engagement ring. "That you have given me."
"You don"t care for them, then?"
"Yes I do. I love them, but there was n.o.body to give them to me.
I was very young, you see, when poor daddy died."
She stops; her mouth takes a mournful curve; the large gray eyes look with a sort of intensity through the windows to something--_something_ beyond--but something that Rylton cannot see.
After all, _is_ she so trivial? She cares, at all events, for the memory of that dead father. Rylton regards her with interest.
_ "He_ would have given me rings," she says.
It is so childish, so absurd, that Rylton wonders why he doesn"t want to laugh. But the little sad face, with the gray eyes filled with tears, checks any mirth he might have felt. A sudden longing to give her another ring, when next he goes to town, fills his heart.
"Well! what about our guests?"
Her tone startles him. He looks up. All the tears, the grief are gone; she is the gay, laughing t.i.ta that he _thinks_ he knows.
"Well, what?" His tone is a little cold. She _is_ superficial, certainly. "If you decline to ask your friends----"
"I don"t decline. It is only that I _have_ no friends," declares she.