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Kitty went very sweetly to the Peak, and two days afterward Max Raymond, straying up the hills with his fishing rod, strayed upon Tom Duffan, sketching. Max did a great deal of fishing that summer, and at the end of it Tom Duffan's pretty daughter was inextricably caught. She had no will but Max's will, and no way but his way.
Duffan skipped a good deal of criticism, and Tom got back to his "Ah! che la morte ognora" much quicker than the column of printed matter warranted. "Well, Kitty child, what do you want?" "See here." "Tickets for Booth's?" "Parquette seats, middle aisle; I know them. Jack always does get just about the same numbers." "Jack? You don't mean to say that Jack Warner sent them?"
Duffan took in hand the long tresses, and Kitty rattled away about wedding dresses and traveling suits and bridal gifts with as much interest as if they were the genuine news of life, and newspaper intelligence a kind of grown-up fairy lore.
I shall not want many new dresses there; and then, papa, you are so good to me all the time, you deserve your own way about your holiday." And Tom Duffan said, "Thank you, Kitty," in such a peculiar way that Kitty lost all her wits, blushed crimson, dropped her fan, and finally left the room with the lamest of excuses. And then Mrs. Duffan said, "Tom, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!
She began to practice: Max liked music, and wanted to sing with her. She stopped crimping her hair: Max said it was unnatural and inartistic. She went to scientific lectures and astronomical lectures and literary societies: Max took her. Tom Duffan did not quite like the change, for Tom was of that order of men who love to put their hearts and necks under a pretty woman's foot.
But even a morning paper is not universally interesting, and in the very middle of an elaborate criticism on tragedy and Edwin Booth, the parlor door partially opened, and a lovelier picture than ever Tom Duffan painted stood in the aperture a piquant, brown-eyed girl, in a morning gown of scarlet opera flannel, and a perfect cloud of wavy black hair falling around her.
She was in love's land for about three hours; then she had to come back into the cold frosty air, the veritable streets, and the unmistakable stone houses. But it was hardest of all to come back and be the old radiant, careless Kitty. "Well, pussy, what of the play?" asked Tom Duffan; "you cut 's criticism short this morning. Now, what is yours?" "Oh, I don't know papa.
Kitty thought profoundly for a few moments, and then said, "I thought so. I wish Jack Warner was at home." "What for?" "Only a little matter I should like to have out with him; but it will keep." Jack, however, went South without visiting New York, and when he returned, pretty Kitty Duffan had been Mrs. Max Raymond for two years. His first visit was to Tom Duffan's parlor-studio.
Then there were introductions and a jingle of merry words and smiles that blended in Kitty's ears with the dreamy music, the rustle of dresses, and perfume of flowers, and the new-comer was gone. But that three minutes' interview was a wonderful event to Kitty Duffan, though she did not yet realize it. The stranger had touched her as she had never been touched before.
"Men don't know everything, Tom." "They don't know anything about women; their best efforts in that line are only guesses at truth." "Go to bed, Tom Duffan; you are getting prosy and ridiculous. Kitty will explain herself in the morning." But Kitty did not explain herself, and she daily grew more and more inexplicable. She began to read: Max brought the books, and she read them.
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