She pulled her hand out of Lord Biddenden’s warm, plump clasp, and jumped up, saying impulsively: “I hope I am not ungrateful, but when you speak of generosity I feel as though my heart must burst!”
“Kitty, Kitty, do not talk in that intemperate style!” Hugh said.
“No, no, but you do not understand!” she cried. “You speak of his fortune, and you know it to be large! Everyone says that, but I have no cause to suspect it! If he yielded to a generous impulse when he adopted me, at least he has atoned for that during all these years! No, Hugh, I won’t hush! Ask poor Fish what wage she has received from him for educating me! Ask her what shifts she has often and often been put to to contrive that I should not be dressed in rags! Well, perhaps not rags, precisely, but only look at this gown I am wearing now!”
All three gentlemen obeyed her, but perhaps only Lord Biddenden recognized the justice of her complaint. Hugh said: “You look very well, Kitty, I assure you. There is a neatness and a propriety—”
“I do not want neatness and propriety!” interrupted Kitty, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes sparkling. “I want elegant dresses, and I want to have my hair cut in the first style of fashion, and I want to go to assemblies, and rout-parties, and to the theatre, and to the Opera, and not— not!— to be a poor little squab of a dowdy!”
Again, only Biddenden was able to appreciate her feelings. “Very understandable!” he said. “It is not at all to be wondered at. Why, you have been kept so cooped-up here that I daresay you may never have attended so much as a concert!”
“Very true,” Hugh concurred. “I have frequently observed to my uncle that the indulgence of some degree of rational amusement should be granted to you, Kitty. Alas, I fear that his habits and prejudices are fixed! I cannot flatter myself that my words have borne weight with him.”
“Exactly so!” Biddenden said. “And so it must always be while you remain under this roof, Kitty! However little you may relish the manner of my uncle’s proposals, you must perceive all the advantages attached to an eligible marriage. You will have a position of the first respectability; you will be mistress of a very pretty establishment, able to order things as you choose; with the habits of economy you have learnt you will find yourself at the outset most comfortably circumstanced; and in the course of time you will be able to command every imaginable extravagance.”
From his lengthening upper lip it was to be deduced that this sketch of the future made little appeal to the Rector. He said: “I do Kitty the justice to believe that the tone of her mind is too nice to allow of her hankering after extravagance. I am not a Puritan; I sympathize to the full in her desire to escape from the restrictions imposed upon her by my uncle’s valetudinarian habits—”
“Oh!” cried Kitty wistfully, “I should like so much to be extravagant!”