"What a question from you to me!" says he reproachfully.
""Call, and I follow; I follow, _though_ I die!""
"You"re too silly for anything," returns she most ungratefully, turning her back upon him.
""Twas ever thus,"" says Mr. Gower, who seems to be in a poetical mood. "Yet what have I done?"
"Oh, nothing--nothing!" cries t.i.ta petulantly. "It is only the day!
Surely it would depress anyone!"
Her eyes wandered down the room, and are now fixed upon the curtains that hide the window where Mrs. Bethune and her husband are conversing.
"Anyone but _me!"_ says Mr. Gower, with an exalted air. "I was up early this morning to----"
"Up early! I like that! When _were_ you up?" asks Mrs. Chichester, between whom and Randal there is always a living feud. "Why, you can"t get up even on Sundays, I hear, to be in time for service!"
"What it is to be clever!" says Mr. Gower, looking at her with enthusiastic admiration. "One hears _so much"_--pause--"that isn"t true!"
"That"s a mere put off," says she. "When were you up this morning?
Come now--honour bright!"
"At shriek of day," says Gower with dignity. "Were _you_ ever up at that time?"
"Never!" says Mrs. Chichester, laughing.
She has evidently that best of all things--a sense of humour; she gives in.
"Well, I was. I wish I hadn"t been," says Mr. Gower. "When I opened my window the rain beat upon me so hard that I felt it was a sort of second edition kind of thing when I took my bath later on."
"I"m so sorry the weather is turning out so horrid," says t.i.ta.
"I don"t see why you should ever be sorry about anything," says Tom Hescott, in his slow, musical voice.
"Don"t you?" She turns to him in a little quick way--a way that brings her back to that hateful window down below there. "You are right," she laughs gaily. It seems as if she had really cast that window and its occupants behind her for ever. "Well, I _won"t_ be.
By-the-by, I told you all that we are to go to a dance at Lady Warbeck"s on Thursday week? Thursday!--yes. Thursday week."
"I remember! How delightful!" cries Mrs. Chichester.
"Lady Warbeck! I know her," says Gower; "she has a son!"
"Yes--a son."
"Oh, _do_ go on! Lady Rylton, do tell us about him," says Mrs.
Chichester, who is ever in search of fresh fields and pastures new.
CHAPTER XVII.
HOW t.i.tA SUGGESTS A GAME OF BLIND MAN"S BUFF, AND WHAT COMES OF IT.
"Well, I hardly can," says t.i.ta, struggling with her memory. "He seems a big man, with--_airs_, you know, and--and----"
"Trousers!" puts in Mr. Gower. "I a.s.sure you," looking confidently around him, "the checks on his trousers are so loud, that one can hear him _rattle_ as he walks."
"Oh! is that the Mr. Warbeck?" says Minnie. "I know; I met him in town last July."
"You met a hero of romance, then," says Gower. "That is, a thing out of the common."
"I know him too," says Mrs. Chichester, who has been thinking. "A big man, a sort of giant?"
"A horrid man!" says t.i.ta.
Mrs. Chichester looks at her as if amused.
"Why horrid?" asks she.
"Oh, I don"t know," says t.i.ta, shrugging her shoulders. "I didn"t like him, anyway."
"I"m sure I"m not surprised," says Tom Hescott.
He takes a step closer to t.i.ta, as if to protect her. It seems hideous to him that she should have to discuss--that she should even have known him.
"Well, neither am I," says Mrs. Chichester. "He _is _horrid, and as ugly as the----" She had the grace to stop here, and change her sentence. "As ugly can be."
It is a lame conclusion, but she is consoled for it by the fact that some of her audience understand what the natural end of that sentence would have been.
"And what manners!" says she. "After all," with a pretty little shake of her head, "what can you expect of a man with hair as red as a carrot?"
"Decency, at all events," says Tom Hescott coldly.
"Oh! That--last of all," says Mrs. Chichester.
"Lady Warbeck is a very charming old lady," says Margaret Knollys, breaking into the conversation with a view to changing it.
"Yes," says Mrs. Chichester. She laughs mischievously. "And such a delightful contrast to her son! She is so good."
"She"s funny, isn"t she?" says t.i.ta, throwing back her lovely little head, and laughing as if at some late remembrance.
"No; good--_good!"_ insists Mrs. Chichester. "Captain Marryatt, were you with me when she called that day in town? No? Oh! _well,"_ with a little glance meant for him alone--a glance that restores him at once to good humour, and his position as her slave once more--"you ought to have been."
"What did she say, then?" asks Minnie Hescott.
"Nothing to signify, really. But as a contrast to her son, she is perhaps, as Lady Rylton has just said, "funny." It was about a book--a book we are all reading nowadays; and she said she couldn"t recommend it to me, as it _bordered_ on impropriety! I was so enchanted."
"I know the book you mean," says Mrs. Bethune, who has just sauntered up to them in her slow, graceful fashion.