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"We'll manage him between us, won't we?" The young man, dazzled by her prettiness and her strangeness, murmured a hopeful assent. Lord Grosville, with the air of a man determined on dinner though the skies fall, offered his arm to Lady Edith Manley, the wife of the cabinet minister, and made for the dining-room.
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?"
Moreover, it appeared that this much-beflounced young lady could talk; that she had heard of the famous names and the great affairs to which the Dean made allusion; that she possessed indeed a native and surprising interest in matter of the sort; and a manner, above all, with the old, alternately soft and daring, calculated, as Lady Grosville would no doubt have put it, merely to make fools of them.
Darrell, though inwardly wounded by the small trouble they took to include him, let nothing appear, put in a word now and then, or turned over the pages of the illustrated books. After five minutes a fresh guest arrived. In walked the little Dean, Dr. Winston, who had originally made acquaintance with Lady Kitty at Grosville Park. He came in overflowing with spirits and enthusiasm.
There was a moment's pause. Then Ashe said, in a voice as serious as her own: "I am sorry to hear you say that, partly because I like Madame d'Estrées, and partly because I was particularly attracted by Lady Kitty." Lady Grosville looked up sharply. "Don't marry her, William! don't marry her! She comes of a bad stock." Ashe recovered his gayety. "She is your own niece.
While on the other members of the Haggart party the sheer pity of Kitty's condition had worked with surprising force. Lord Grosville had actually made his wife offer Grosville Park for Kitty's convalescence Kitty got her first laugh out of the proposal.
Footmen appeared; some guests from the next carriage went to help; there was a general movement and agitation, in the midst of which Kitty and her companions disappeared into the house. Lady Edith Manley and Lord Grosville began to cross the lawn. "What is the matter?" asked Mrs. Alcot, as they converged. "Kitty ran over a boy," said Lord Grosville, in evident annoyance.
"Can they hear the balls?" said Kitty, eagerly, with a gesture towards the library. Mary Lyster, who had been perfunctorily looking at a book, laid it down. "It would certainly greatly distress Lady Grosville," she said, in a voice studiously soft, but on that account perhaps all the more significant. Kitty glanced at Mary, and Ashe saw the sudden red in her cheek.
He was conscious of the same pang, the same sudden terror that he had felt on that never-to-be-forgotten evening when she had talked to him of the mask in the "Tempest." He thought of the Blackwater stories he had heard from Lord Grosville. "Mad, my dear fellow, mad!" the old man's frequent comment ran through his memory. Was there, indeed, some unsound spot in Kitty?
A smile of extraordinary sweetness sprang into her eyes; and when Lady Grosville came up to thank her, the girl impetuously rose, and, in the foreign way, kissed her hand, courtesying. Lord Grosville said, heartily, "Upon my word, Kitty, you ought to go on the stage!" and she smiled upon him, too, in a flutter of feeling, forgetting his scolding and her own impertinence, before dinner.
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