‘My dear child,’ replied Madame, ‘I thought you knew me better than that; what theatre are you at?’
‘She’s with us,’ said Miss Fanny, who had been staring at this grave, handsomely-dressed lady who had alighted from such a swell carriage; ‘we are the Wopples Family.’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Villiers, thinking, ‘I remember, you were up at Ballarat last year. Well, Kitty, will you and your friend drive down to St Kilda with me, and I’ll show you my new house?’
Kitty would have refused, for she was afraid Madame Midas would perhaps send her back to her father, but the appealing looks of Fanny Wopples, who had never ridden in a carriage in her life, and was dying to do so, decided her to accept. So they stepped into the carriage, and Mrs Villiers told the coachman to drive home.
As they drove along, Mrs Villiers delicately refrained from asking Kitty any questions about her flight, seeing that a stranger was present, but determined to find out all about it when she got her alone down at St Kilda.
Kitty, on her part, was thinking how to baffle Madame’s inquiries. She knew she would be questioned closely by her, and resolved not to tell more than she could help, as she, curiously enough—considering how he had treated her—wished to shield Vandeloup. But she still cherished a tender feeling for the man she loved, and had Vandeloup asked her to go back and live with him, would, no doubt, have consented. The fact was, the girl’s nature was becoming slightly demoralised, and the Kitty who sat looking at Madame Midas now—though her face was as pretty, and her eyes as pure as ever—was not the same innocent Kitty that had visited the Pactolus, for she had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, and was already cultured in worldly wisdom. Madame, of course, believed that Kitty had gone from Ballarat straight on to the stage, and never thought for a moment that for a whole year she had been Vandeloup’s mistress, so when Kitty found this out—as she very soon did—she took the cue at once, and asserted positively to Madame that she had been on the stage for eighteen months.
‘But how is it,’ asked Madame, who believed her fully, ‘that I could not find you?’
‘Because I was up the country all the time,’ replied Kitty, quickly, ‘and of course did not act under my real name.’
‘You would not like to go back to your father, I suppose,’ suggested Madame.
Kitty made a gesture of dissent.