She went up to Elizabeth, and lightly kissed that lady's cheek.
"Good-morning. William, I just came to tell you that I may be late for dinner, so perhaps you had better dine at the House. I am going on the river."
"Are you?" said Ashe, gathering up his papers. "Wish I was."
"Are you going with the Crashaw's party?" asked Elizabeth. "I know they have one."
"Oh, dear, no!" said Kitty. "I hate a crowd on the river. I am going with Geoffrey Cliffe."
Ashe bent over his desk. Lady Tranmore's eyebrows went up, and she could not restrain the word:
"Alone?"
"Naturellement!" laughed Kitty. "He reads me French poetry, and we talk French. We let Madeleine Alcot come once, but her accent was so shocking that Geoffrey wouldn't have her again!"
Lady Tranmore flushed deeply. The "Geoffrey" seemed to her intolerable. Kitty, arrayed in the freshest of white gowns, walked away to the farther end of the library to consult a Bradshaw. Elizabeth, looking up, caught her son's eyes—and the mingled humor and vexation in them, wherewith he appealed to her, as it were, to see the whole silly business as he himself did. Lady Tranmore felt a moment's strong reaction. Had she indeed been making a foolish fuss about nothing?
Yet the impression left by the miserable meditations of her night was still deep enough to make her say—with just a signal from eye and lips, so that Kitty neither saw nor heard—"Don't let her go!"