Passing of the Third Floor Back | Page 6

the ticketh--may ath well," thought Isidore.
"Damn stupid piece, I'm told."
"Motht of them thupid, more or leth. Pity to wathte the ticketh," argued
Isidore, and the pair went out.
"Are you staying long in London?" asked Miss Kite, raising her
practised eyes towards the stranger.
"Not long," answered the stranger. "At least I do not know. It depends."
An unusual quiet had invaded the drawing-room of Forty-eight
Bloomsbury Square, generally noisy with strident voices about this
hour. The Colonel remained engrossed in his paper. Mrs. Devine sat
with her plump white hands folded on her lap, whether asleep or not it
was impossible to say. The lady who was cousin to a baronet had
shifted her chair beneath the gasolier, her eyes bent on her everlasting
crochet work. The languid Miss Devine had crossed to the piano, where
she sat fingering softly the tuneless keys, her back to the cold
barely-furnished room.
"Sit down!" commanded saucily Miss Kite, indicating with her fan the
vacant seat beside her. "Tell me about yourself. You interest me." Miss
Kite adopted a pretty authoritative air towards all youthful-looking
members of the opposite sex. It harmonised with the peach complexion
and the golden hair, and fitted her about as well.
"I am glad of that," answered the stranger, taking the chair suggested.
"I so wish to interest you."
"You're a very bold boy." Miss Kite lowered her fan, for the purpose of
glancing archly over the edge of it, and for the first time encountered
the eyes of the stranger looking into hers. And then it was that Miss
Kite experienced precisely the same curious sensation that an hour or
so ago had troubled Mrs. Pennycherry when the stranger had first
bowed to her. It seemed to Miss Kite that she was no longer the Miss
Kite that, had she risen and looked into it, the fly-blown mirror over the
marble mantelpiece would, she knew, have presented to her view; but
quite another Miss Kite--a cheerful, bright-eyed lady verging on middle
age, yet still good-looking in spite of her faded complexion and
somewhat thin brown locks. Miss Kite felt a pang of jealousy shoot
through her; this middle-aged Miss Kite seemed, on the whole, a more

attractive lady. There was a wholesomeness, a broadmindedness about
her that instinctively drew one towards her. Not hampered, as Miss
Kite herself was, by the necessity of appearing to be somewhere
between eighteen and twenty-two, this other Miss Kite could talk
sensibly, even brilliantly: one felt it. A thoroughly "nice" woman this
other Miss Kite; the real Miss Kite, though envious, was bound to
admit it. Miss Kite wished to goodness she had never seen the woman.
The glimpse of her had rendered Miss Kite dissatisfied with herself.
"I am not a boy," explained the stranger; "and I had no intention of
being bold."
"I know," replied Miss Kite. "It was a silly remark. Whatever induced
me to make it, I can't think. Getting foolish in my old age, I suppose."
The stranger laughed. "Surely you are not old."
"I'm thirty-nine," snapped out Miss Kite. "You don't call it young?"
"I think it a beautiful age," insisted the stranger; "young enough not to
have lost the joy of youth, old enough to have learnt sympathy."
"Oh, I daresay," returned Miss Kite, "any age you'd think beautiful. I'm
going to bed." Miss Kite rose. The paper fan had somehow got itself
broken. She threw the fragments into the fire.
"It is early yet," pleaded the stranger, "I was looking forward to a talk
with you."
"Well, you'll be able to look forward to it," retorted Miss Kite.
"Good-night."
The truth was, Miss Kite was impatient to have a look at herself in the
glass, in her own room with the door shut. The vision of that other Miss
Kite--the clean-looking lady of the pale face and the brown hair had
been so vivid, Miss Kite wondered whether temporary forgetfulness
might not have fallen upon her while dressing for dinner that evening.
The stranger, left to his own devices, strolled towards the loo table,
seeking something to read.
"You seem to have frightened away Miss Kite," remarked the lady who
was cousin to a baronet.
"It seems so," admitted the stranger.
"My cousin, Sir William Bosster," observed the crocheting lady, "who
married old Lord Egham's niece--you never met the Eghams?"
"Hitherto," replied the stranger, "I have not had that pleasure."
"A charming family. Cannot understand--my cousin Sir William, I

mean, cannot understand my remaining here. 'My dear Emily'--he says
the same thing every time he sees me: 'My dear Emily, how can you
exist among the sort of people one meets with in a boarding-house.' But
they amuse me."
A sense of humour, agreed the stranger, was always of advantage.
"Our family