The Marriage of William Ashe

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

"Is he cross about William's letter?" thought Kitty. "Well, let's leave them to themselves."

Then, as she passed him, something in the silent personality of the man arrested her. She could not forbear a look at him over her shoulder. "Are you—Oh! of course, I remember—" for she had recognized the dress and cap of the Spanish grandee.

Cliffe did not reply for a moment, but the harsh significance of his face revived in her the excitable interest she had felt in him on the day of his luncheon in Hill Street; an interest since effaced and dispersed, under the influence of that serenity and home peace which had shone upon her since that very day.

"I should apologize, no doubt, for not taking your advice," he said, looking her in the eyes. Their expression, half bitter, half insolent, reminded her.

"Did I give you any advice?" Kitty wrinkled up her white brows. "I don't recollect."

Mary looked at her sharply, suspiciously. Kitty, quite conscious of the look, was straightway pricked by an elfish curiosity. Could she carry him off—trouble Mary's possession there and then? She believed she could. She was well aware of a certain relation between herself and Cliffe, if, at least, she chose to develop it. Should she? Her vanity insisted that Mary could not prevent it.

However, she restrained herself and moved on. Presently looking back, she saw them still together, Cliffe leaning against the pedestal of a bust, Mary beside him. There was an animation in her eyes, a rose of pleasure on her cheek which stirred in Kitty a queer, sudden sympathy. "I am a little beast!" she said to herself. "Why shouldn't she be happy?"

Then, perceiving Lady Tranmore at the end of the ballroom, she made her way thither surrounded by a motley crowd of friends. She walked as though on air, "raining influence." And as Lady Tranmore caught the glitter of the diamond crescent, and beheld the small divinity beneath it, she, too, smiled with pleasure, like the other spectators on Kitty's march. The dress was monstrously costly. She knew that. But she forgot the inroad on William's pocket, and remembered only to be proud of William's wife. Since the Parhams' party, indeed, the unlooked-for submission of Kitty, and the clearing of William's prospects, Lady Tranmore had been sweetness itself to her daughter-in-law.

But her fine face and brow were none the less inclined to frown. She herself as Katharine of Aragon would have shed a dignity on any scene, but she was in no sympathy with what she beheld.

"We shall soon all of us be ashamed of this kind of thing," she declared to Kitty. "Just as people now are beginning to be ashamed of enormous houses and troops of servants."