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"Who is that?" she inquired. Mary Lyster, with a sharp sense of interruption, replied that she believed the lady in question was the Grosville's French governess.
Had the French cousin with whom she rode stag-hunting ever seen her like this? No; Ashe felt certain that "Henri" had never seen her, except as a fashion-plate, or en amazone. He could have made nothing of this ghost in black this distinguished, piteous, little ghost. After luncheon it became tolerably clear to Ashe that Lady Grosville's preoccupation had a cause.
Then, becoming aware of Lord Grosville's open mouth and eye, he sat up, caught his wife's expression, and came back to prose and the present. "My dear young lady," he began, "you have the most extraordinary talent " when Lady Grosville advanced upon him. Standing before him, she majestically signalled to her husband across his small person. "William, kindly order Mrs. Wilson's carriage."
Mary advanced smiling; Kitty held out a limp hand, and they exchanged a few words standing in the centre of the floor, while the other guests found seats. "What a charming contrast!" said Lady Edith Manley in Lady Grosville's ear.
The click of the billiard-balls had ceased abruptly about ten minutes after he had begun upon his papers; there had been voices in the hall, Lord Grosville's he thought among them; and now all was silence. He thought of the events of the afternoon with mingled amusement and annoyance. Cliffe was an unscrupulous fellow, and the child's head might be turned.
"There is no other hostess in London as clever as your mother," he declared, and then tried to change the subject; but she paid no heed. "The other day, at Aunt Grosville's," she said, slowly, "I asked if my two cousins might come to-night, and they looked at me as though I were mad! Oh, do talk to me!"
Ashe at once divined that the Grosville family were in revolt. Nor had he to look far to discover the cause. Was that astonishing young lady in truth identical with the pensive figure of the morning? Kitty had doffed her black, and she wore a "demi-toilette" gown of the utmost elegance, of which the expensiveness had, no doubt, already sunk deep into Lady Grosville's soul.
In his heat of feeling he got up, and began to pace up and down. Lady Grosville's countenance expressed first astonishment then wavering. "Oh of course, it's very sad," she said "extremely sad. But I should have thought Kitty was clever enough to understand at least that Alice must have some grave reason for breaking with her mother "
Afterwards Kitty and the Cambridge boy Eddie Helston performed a duologue in French for the amusement of the company. Whatever could be understood in it had better not have been understood such at least was Lord Grosville's impression.
It was not at all the custom for young ladies to breakfast in bed on Sundays at Grosville Park, and Lady Grosville's brow was clouded. Ashe felt it a positive effort to tell her that he was not going to church, and when she had marshalled her flock and carried them off, those left behind knew themselves, indeed, as heathens and publicans.
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