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 papa died. I didn't like papa—I'm very sorry, but I didn't! However, that's by-the-way. In all those years I have only seen maman once—she doesn't like children. But my aunt Grosville has some French relations—very, very 'comme il faut,' you understand—and I used to go and stay with them for the holidays. Tell me!—did you ever hunt in France?"
"Never," said Ashe, startled and amused by the sudden glance of enthusiasm that lit up the face and expressed itself in the clasped hands.
"Oh! it's such heaven," she said, lifting her shoulders with an extravagant gesture—"such heaven! First there are the old dresses—the men look such darlings!—and then the horns, and the old ways they have—si noble!—si distingué!—not like your stupid English hunting. And then the dogs! Ah! the dogs"—the shoulders went higher still; "do you know my cousin Henri actually gave me a puppy of the great breed—the breed, you know—the Dogs of St. Hubert. Or at least he would if maman would have let me bring it over. And she wouldn't! Just think of that! When there are thousands of people in France who'd give the eyes out of their head for one. I cried all one night—Allons!—faut pas y penser!"—she shook back the hair from her eyes with an impatient gesture. "My cousins have got a château, you know, in the Seine-et-Oise. They've promised to ask me next year—when the Grand-Duke Paul comes—if I'll promise to behave. You see, I'm not a bit like French girls—I had so many affairs!"
Her eyes flashed with laughter.
Ashe laughed too.
"Are you going to tell me about them also?"
She drew herself up.
"No! I play fair, always—ask anybody! Oh, I do want to go back to France so badly!" Once more she was all appeal and childishness. "Anyway, I won't stay in England! I have made up my mind to that!"
"How long has it taken?"
"A fortnight," she said, slowly—"just a fortnight."
"That hardly seems time enough—does it?" said Ashe. "Give us a little longer."
"No—I—I hate you!" said Lady Kitty, with a strange drop in her voice. Her little fingers began to drum on the table near her, and to Ashe's intense astonishment he saw her eyes fill with tears.
Suddenly a movement towards the other room set in around them. Madame d'Estrées could be heard giving directions. A space was made in the large drawing-room—a little table appeared in it, and a footman placed thereon a glass of water.
Lady Kitty looked up.
"Oh, that detestable man!" she said, drawing back. "No—I can't, I can't bear it. Come with me!" and beckoning to Ashe she fled with precipitation into the farther part of the inner drawing-room, out of her mother's sight. Ashe followed her, and she dropped panting and elate into a chair.
Meanwhile the outer room gathered to hear the recitation of some vers de société, fondly believed by their author to be of a very pretty and Praedian make. They certainly amused the company, who laughed and clapped as each neat personality emerged. Lady Kitty passed the time either in a running commentary on the reciter, which occasionally convulsed her companion, or else in holding her small hands over her ears.
When it was over, she drew a long breath.
"How maman can! Oh! how bête you English are to applaud such a man! You have only one poet, haven't you—one living poet? Ah! I shouldn't have laughed if it had been he!"
"I suppose you mean Geoffrey Cliffe?" said Ashe, amused. "Nobody abroad seems ever to have heard of any one else."
"Well, of course, I just long to know him! Every one says he is so dangerous!—he makes all the women fall in love with him. That's delicious! He shouldn't make me! Do you know him?"
"I knew him at Eton. We were 'swished' together," said Ashe.
She inquired what the phrase might mean, and when informed, flushed hotly, denouncing the English school system as quite unfit for gentlemen and men of honor. Her French cousins would sooner die than suffer such a thing. Then in the midst of her tirade she suddenly paused, and fixing Ashe with her brilliant eyes, she asked him a surprising question, in a changed and steady voice:
"Is Lady Tranmore not well?"
Ashe was fairly startled.
"Thank you, I left her quite well. Have you—"
"Did maman ask her to come to-night?"
It was Ashe's turn to redden.
"I don't know. But—we are in mourning, you see, for my brother."
Her face changed and softened instantly.
"Are you? I'm so sorry. I—I always say something stupid. Then—Lady Tranmore used to come to maman's parties—before—"
She had grown quite pale; it seemed to him that her hand shook. Ashe felt an extraordinary pang of pity and concern.
"It's I, you see, to whom your mother has been kind," he said, gently. "We're an independent family; we each make our own friends."
"No—" she said, drawing a deep breath. "No, it's not that. Look at that room."
Following her slight gesture, Ashe looked. It was an old, low-ceiled room, panelled in white and gold, showing here and there an Italian picture—saint, or holy family, agreeable school-work—from which might be inferred the tastes if not the expertise of Madame d'Estrées' first husband, Lord Blackwater. The floor was held by a plentiful collection of seats, neither too easy nor too stiff; arranged by one who understood to perfection the physical conditions at least which should surround the "great art" of conversation. At this moment every seat was full. A sea of black coats overflowed on the farther side, into the staircase landing, where through the open door several standing groups could be seen; and in the inner room, where they sat, there was but little space between its margin and themselves. It was a remarkable sight; and in his past visits to the house Ashe had often said to himself that the elements of which it was made up were still more remarkable. Ministers and Opposition; ambassadors, travellers, journalists; the men of fashion and the men of reform; here a French republican official, and beyond him, perhaps, a man whose ancestors were already of the most ancient noblesse in Saint-Simon's day; artists, great and small, men of letters good and indifferent; all these had been among the guests of Madame d'Estrées, brought to the house, each of them, for some quality's sake, some power of keeping up the social game.
But now, as he looked at the room, not to please himself but to obey Lady Kitty, Ashe became aware of a new impression. The crowd was no less, numerically, than he had seen it in the early winter; but it seemed to him less distinguished, made up of coarser and commoner items. He caught the face of a shady financier long since banished from Lady Tranmore's parties; beyond him a red-faced colonel, conspicuous alike for doubtful money-matters and matrimonial trouble; and in a farther corner the sallow profile of a writer whose books were apt to rouse even the man of the world to a healthy and contemptuous disgust. Surely these persons had never been there of old; he could not remember one of them.
He looked again, more closely. Was it fancy, or was the gathering itself
