The Marriage of William Ashe | Page 7

to flirt with her! You must take care. Kitty's the most fantastic creature. Oh! my life now'll be very different. I find she takes all my thoughts and most of my time!"
There was something extravagant in the sweetness of the smile which emphasized the speech, and altogether, Madame d'Estr��es, in this new maternal aspect, was not as agreeable as usual. Part of her charm perhaps had always lain in the fact that she had no domestic topics of her own, and so was endlessly ready for those of other people. Those, indeed, who came often to her house were accustomed to speak warmly of her "unselfishness"--by which they meant the easy patience with which she could listen, smile, and flatter.
Perhaps Ashe made this tacit demand upon her, no less than other people. At any rate, as she talked cooingly on about her daughter, he would have found her tiresome for once but for some arresting quality in that small, distant figure. As it was, he followed what she said with attention, and as soon as she had been recaptured by the impatient Italian Ambassador, he moved off, intending slowly to make his way to Lady Kitty. But he was caught in many congratulations by the road, and presently he saw that his friend Darrell was being introduced to her by the old habitu�� of the house, Colonel Warington, who generally divided with the hostess the "lead" of these social evenings.
Lady Kitty nodded carelessly to Mr. Darrell, and he sat down beside her.
"That's a cool hand for a girl of eighteen!" thought Ashe. "She has the airs of a princess--except for the chatter."
Chatter indeed! Wherever he moved, the sound of the light hurrying voice made itself persistently heard through the hum of male conversation.
Yet 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