Her mind had become a storehouse of miscellaneous English literature, a good deal mispronounced in the words, because she had never heard it read aloud by a cultivated voice. She knew French grammatically, but her accent would have made a delicate ear wince. Her own voice was singularly refined; it was not for nothing that she had diligently listened to the voices of impecunious aristocrats for over three years!
For the moment, Katherine Bush was in love. Lord Algy had happened to glance over the glass screen upon his first visit to Liv and Dev to be accommodated with a thousand pounds, and his attractive blue eyes had met the grey-green ones.
He had spoken to her when she came out to luncheon. But he had done it really intelligently, and Katherine was not insulted. Indeed, accustomed as she was to weigh everything in life, she accorded him a mead of praise for the manner in which he had carried out his intention to make her acquaintance. She had flouted him and turned him more or less inside out for over a month, but she had let him give her lunch—and now she had decided to spend the Saturday to Monday with him.
For the scheme of existence which she had planned out for herself, she decided her experience must be more complete. One must see life, she argued, and it was better to make a first plunge with a person of refinement, who knew the whole game, than with one of her own class who would be but a very sorry instructor.
Heavens! To spend a Saturday to Monday with the counterpart of her brothers Fred and Bert! The idea made her shudder. She disliked them and their friends enough as it was—and the idea of marriage in that circle never entered her level head. Of what use would be all her studies, and the lessons she had mastered, if she buried herself forever at Brixton with Charlie Prodgers or at Clapham with Percy Watson?
At this stage no moral questions troubled her at all, nor had she begun really to apply the laws of cause and effect in their full measure—although she was quite aware that what she proposed to do was the last thing she would have considered wise or safe for another woman to attempt. Rules of conduct were wisely made for communities she felt, and must be kept or disaster must inevitably follow. But in her own case she was willing to take risks, thoroughly believing in her own cool discrimination.
The outlook for her should always be vast.
Lord Algy was passionately devoted, and it was wiser early in life to know the nature of men. Thus she argued to herself, being totally unaware that her point of view was altogether affected because her heart and her senses pleaded hard, being touched for the first time in her twenty-two years.
She was quite untroubled by what the world calls morality—and she had no scruples. These were for a later date in her career.
The path looked clear and full of roses.