“I thank you!” Mr. Westruther said sardonically. “If not to you, Freddy, to whom are my thanks due for this clever touch?” He perceived that he had bewildered his cousin, and added impatiently: “Well? Who made Kitty known to the girl her perfidious cousin Jack has made the object of his attentions?”
“Don’t think anyone did,” replied Freddy. “Met her by chance. Know what I think? Good thing if you was to take a damper! Not engaged to Kit, coz!”
Those very blue eyes glinted at him. “I might make the obvious retort, Freddy, but I won’t!”
The two ladies in question, meanwhile, were treading briskly down one of the paths in the Park, their hands tucked in their muffs, and their pelisses fastened tightly up to their throats, for although the sun shone, encouraging daffodils to burst from their sheaths, an east wind blew strongly.
“Dear Miss Charing, if you knew the solace it is to me to be in your company!” Olivia said. “I should not repine—I know that Mama has made many, many sacrifices to make this visit to the Metropolis p(^sible, but, oh, I was happier by far at home, with my sisters!”
Kitty was already aware of the existence of Amelia, and Jane, and Selina, and she uttered a murmur of sympathy. She was not of an age fully to comprehend the anxieties of a mother indifferently blessed with four daughters, but she understood from Olivia that these were acute. Dear Papa, it seemed, had not left his family in affluent circumstances; but he had certainly endowed them with good looks, a commodity in which they had been bred from earliest youth to trade to the best advantage. Only Jane, they feared, was bookish; and Amelia showed a dreadful tendency to freckles. Olivia, the loveliest as well as the eldest of the sisters, did not question that it was her duty to make a good match. She had come to London with that object; but whenever her maiden fancy had speculated on the good match it had always corne to her in the guise of a young and handsome suitor, and never in that of an elderly roue. She had supposed too that Dear Papa’s grand relations in Brook Street would welcome her and Mama to their house; but here again reality had fallen sadly short of expectation. Repulsed by the Batterstowns, Mama had been obliged to accept the hospitality of her sister, living in Hans Crescent; and however good-natured Mrs. Scorton might be, she had no entrde into the world of fashion, and was undeniably vulgar. Not for Miss Broughty the select gatherings at Almack’s, the ton parties, the box, when the season began, at the Italian Opera. Mama, skirmishing round the fringes of society, had achieved one or two genteel invitations for her daughter, but none of them led to the triumphs she had so confidently predicted. As for taking the town by storm, as the beautiful Gunning sisters had done, sixty-five years earlier, either times had changed, or there was some peculiar virtue attached to pairs. “But Amelia is not yet sixteen,” Olivia explained seriously, “and the expense, besides, could not have been met.”
It seemed to Kitty a pity that her new friend’s mind was set so irrevocably upon marriage, but her suggestion that Olivia might seek an eligible situation as a governess met with no favour at all. Olivia stared at her with dismay in her big eyes, and unequivocally stated her preference for death. Upon reflection, Kitty was obliged to own that she was scarcely fitted for such a post. Her intellect was not superior, and her education was scanty. She had great sweetness of temper, a biddable disposition, and sufficient refinement to shrink from the machinations of her Mama and her cheerful, loud-voiced cousins; but the more Kitty saw of her the less was she able to believe that that lovely exterior hid the slightest strength of character. She thought it surprising, too, that so beautiful a girl should have had no suitors at home for whom she appeared to have felt any partiality. Olivia explained that the neighbourhood was restricted. “I am sure no one could like Ned Bandy, and the Wrays, you know, are horribly vulgar. There was only Mr. Sticklepath, and of course that would not do.”
“He was not eligible?” Kitty ventured to ask.
“Oh, no! I daresay he has not twopence to rub together, poor man!”
“But you liked him, perhaps?”