"Well, Kitty, how"s the bruised one?" said Ashe, as he sank into a chair beside Mrs. Alcot.
"Doing finely," said Kitty. "I shall send him home to-night."
"Meanwhile, have you put him up in my dressing-room? I only ask for information."
"There wasn"t another corner," said Kitty.
"There!" Ashe appealed to G.o.ds and men. "How do you expect me to dress for dinner?"
"Oh, now, William, don"t be tiresome!" said Kitty, impatiently. "He was bruised black and blue"--("Serve him right for getting in the way,"
grumbled Lord Grosville)--"and nurse and I have done him up in arnica."
She came to stand by Ashe, talking in an undertone and as fast as possible. The little Dean, who never could help watching her, thought her more beautiful--and wilder--than ever. Her eyes--it was hardly enough to say they shone--they glittered--in her delicate face; her gestures were more extravagant than he remembered them; her movements restlessness itself.
Ashe listened with patience--then said:
"I can"t help it, Kitty--you really must have him removed."
"Impossible!" she said, her cheek flaming.
"I"ll go and talk to Wilson; he"ll manage it," said Ashe, getting up.
Kitty pursued him, arguing incessantly.
He lounged along, turning every now and then to look at her, smiling and demurring, his hat on the back of his head.
"You see the difference," said Mrs. Alcot, in Darrell"s ear. "Last year Kitty would have got her way. This year she won"t."
Darrell shrugged his shoulders.
"These domesticities should be kept out of sight, don"t you think?"
Madeleine Alcot looked at him curiously.
"Did you have a pleasant walk?" she said.
Darrell made a little face.
"The great man was condescending."
Madeleine Alcot"s face was still interrogative.
"A touch of the _folie des grandeurs?_"
"Well, who escapes it?" said Darrell, bitterly.
Most of the party had dispersed. Only Lady Tranmore and Margaret French were on the lawn. Margaret was writing some household notes for Kitty; Lady Tranmore sat in meditation, with a book before her which she was not reading. Miss French glanced at her from time to time. Ashe"s mother was beginning to show the weight of years far more plainly than she had yet done. In these last three years the face had perceptibly altered; so had the hair. The long strain of nursing, and that pathetic change which makes of the husband who has been a woman"s pride and shelter her half-conscious dependent, had, no doubt, left deep marks upon a beauty which had so long resisted time. And yet Margaret French believed it was rather with her son than with her husband that the constant and wearing anxiety of Lady Tranmore"s life should be connected. All the ambition, the pride of race and history which had been disappointed in her husband had poured themselves into her devotion to her son. She lived now for his happiness and success. And both were constantly threatened by the personality and the presence of Kitty.
Such, at least, as Margaret French well knew, was the inmost persuasion--fast becoming a fanaticism--of Ashe"s mother. William might, indeed, for the moment have triumphed over the consequences of Kitty"s bygone behavior. But the reckless, untamed character was there still at his side, preparing Heaven knew what pitfalls and catastrophes. Lady Tranmore lived in fear. And under the outward sweetness and dignity of her manner was there not developing something worse than fear--that hatred which is one of the strange births of love?
If so, was it just? There were many moments when Margaret would have indignantly denied it.
It was true, indeed, that Kitty"s eccentricity seemed to develop with every month that pa.s.sed. The preceding winter had been marked, first by a mad folly of table-turning--involving the pursuit of a particular medium whose proceedings had ultimately landed him in the dock; then by a headlong pa.s.sion for hunting, accompanied by a series of new flirtations, each more unseemly than its predecessor, as it seemed to Lady Tranmore. Afterwards--during the general election--a political phase! Kitty had most unfortunately discovered that she could speak in public, and had fallen in love with the sound of her own voice. In Ashe"s own contest, her sallies and indiscretions had already begun to do mischief when Lady Tranmore had succeeded in enticing her to London by the bait of a French _clairvoyante_, with whom Kitty nightly tempted the G.o.ds who keep watch over the secrets of fate--till William"s poll had been declared.
All this was deplorably true. And yet no one could say that Kitty in this checkered year had done her husband much harm. Ashe was no longer her blind slave; and his career had carried him to heights with which even his mother might have been satisfied. Sometimes Margaret was inclined to think that Kitty had now less influence with him and his mother more than was the just due of each. She--the younger woman--felt the tragedy of Ashe"s new and growing emanc.i.p.ation. Secretly--often--she sided with Kitty!
"Margaret!"
The voice was Kitty"s. She came running out, her pale-pink skirts flying round her. "Have you seen the babe?"
Margaret replied that he and his nurse were just in sight.
Kitty fled over the lawn to meet the child"s perambulator. She lifted him out, and carried him in her arms towards Margaret and Lady Tranmore.
"Isn"t it piteous?" said Margaret, under her breath, as the mother and child approached. Lady Tranmore gave her a sad, a.s.senting look.
For during the last six months the child had shown signs of brain mischief--a curious apathy, broken now and then by fits of temper. The doctors were not encouraging. And Kitty varied between the most pa.s.sionate attempts to rouse the child"s failing intelligence and days--even weeks--when she could hardly bring herself to see him at all.
She brought him now to a seat beside Lady Tranmore. She had been trying to make him take notice of a new toy. But the child looked at her with blank and gla.s.sy eyes, and the toy fell from his hand.
"He hardly knows me," said Kitty, in a low voice of misery, as she clasped her hands round the baby of three, and looked into his face, as though she would drag from it some sign of mind and recognition.
But the blue eyes betrayed no glimmer of response, till suddenly, with a gesture as of infinite fatigue, the child threw itself back against her, laying its fair head upon her breast with a long sigh.
Kitty gave a sob, and bent over him, kissing--and kissing him.
"Dear Kitty!" said Lady Tranmore, much moved. "I think--partly--he is tired with the heat."
Kitty shook her head.
"Take him!" she said to the nurse--"take him! I can"t bear it."
The nurse took him from her, and Kitty dried her tears with a kind of fierceness.
"There is the post!" she said, springing up, as though determined to throw off her grief as quickly as possible, while the nurse carried the child away.
The footman brought the letters across the lawn. There were some for Lady Tranmore and for Margaret French. In the general opening and reading that ensued, neither lady noticed Kitty for a while. Suddenly Margaret French looked up. She saw Kitty sitting motionless with a book on her lap, a book of which the wrapper lay on the gra.s.s beside her. Her finger kept a page; her eyes, full of excitement, were fixed on the distant horizon of the park; the hurried breathing was plainly noticeable under the thin bodice.
"Kitty--time to dress!" said Margaret, touching her.
Kitty rose, without a word to either of them, and walked quickly away, her hands, still holding the book, dropped in front of her, her eyes on the ground.
"Oh, Kitty!" cried Margaret, in laughing protest, as she stooped to pick up the litter of Kitty"s letters, some of them still unopened, which lay scattered on the gra.s.s, as they had fallen unheeded from her lap.
But the little figure in the trailing skirts was already out of hearing.