Kirby plunged off into a series of legends on the Moors in Spain. His manner of telling was vivid and enthralling—he spoke as though he loved the forlorn race of Barbary pirates, with its sonorous names and darkly jewelled history. Suddenly he broke off, and said:
"I'd like to take you there. I'd like to stand with you at sunset on that hill—the Last Sigh of the Moor—and look down at the Alhambra——"
Kathleen was smitten with a new racing excitement ... hot and fierce and sweet....
It passed again. And she became aware of him talking absurdly and maliciously about their fellow-inmates of Rapparee House.
"It was good of you to have rescued me from Miss Frazer—I made a bad break coming up. She told me she was the direct descendant of John Keats—who wasn't married, you must know. I asked: 'Got any interesting relics?' 'Oh, yes, indeed; my sister-in-law was photographed sitting on his tomb!' I didn't quite gather whether the tomb, the photograph, or the sister-in-law was the relic; but to carry on conversation, I remarked lightly: 'So you call him your bastard great-grandfather, I suppose?' She pretends I'm not there, now, when she looks at me.... She can't have known he wasn't married! Or else she wasn't as direct as she thought...."
He gave Kathleen no time for amused comment, but drawled on in his low flexible voice:
"Funny thing, isn't it, that Mrs. Collins really thinks it was fun to-day. She'll go on thinking so. So few people realize the difference between enjoying themselves, and looking like other people look when they are doing something which is popularly supposed to be enjoyable. I had a strained afternoon, waiting for Trixie Worley to burst—she'll burst in purple and red when she does—like that fellow's heart in 'Maud': ... 'Will rise and tremble under your feet, and blossom in purple and red——' You've played the old game: 'I planted a careful young man and it came up Thrift,' etc.... I planted Mrs. Worley, and she came up fuchsias!"
... Again he darted off at a tangent: "How splendidly you walk. You're not entirely Saxon blood, are you?"
"I'm a direct descendant of a Red Indian princess—who was married, by the by."
"Oh, I don't mind—I'm not a conventionalist. I'd overlook even Miss Frazer's shameful secret, if she gave me a chance."