Kitty rose, without a word to either of them, and walked quickly away, her hands, still holding the book, dropped in front of her, her eyes on the ground.
"Oh, Kitty!" cried Margaret, in laughing protest, as she stooped to pick up the litter of Kitty's letters, some of them still unopened, which lay scattered on the grass, as they had fallen unheeded from her lap.
But the little figure in the trailing skirts was already out of hearing.
At dinner Kitty was in her wildest spirits—a sparkling vision of diamonds and lace, much beyond—so it seemed to Lord Grosville—what the occasion required. "Dressed out like a comedy queen at a fair!" was his inward comment, and he already rolled the phrases in which he should describe the whole party to his wife. Like the expected Lord Parham, he was there in sign of semi-reconciliation. Nothing would have induced Kitty to invite her aunt; the memory of a certain Sunday was too strong. On her side, Lady Grosville averred that nothing would have induced her to sit at Kitty's board. As to this, her husband cherished a certain scepticism. However, her resolution was not tried. It was Ashe, in fact, who had invited Lord Grosville, and Lord Grosville, who was master in his own house, and had no mind to break with William Ashe just as that gentleman's company became even better worth having than usual, had accepted the invitation.
But his patience was sorely tried by Kitty. After dinner she insisted on table-turning, and Lord Grosville was dragged breathless through the drawing-room window, in pursuit of a table that broke a chair and finally danced upon a flower-bed. His theology was harassed by these proceedings and his digestion upset. The Dean took it with smiles; but then the Dean was a Latitudinarian.
Afterwards Kitty and the Cambridge boy—Eddie Helston—performed a duologue in French for the amusement of the company. Whatever could be understood in it had better not have been understood—such at least was Lord Grosville's impression. He wondered how Ashe—who laughed immoderately—could allow his wife to do such things; and his only consolation was that, for once, the Dean—whose fancy for Kitty was ridiculous!—seemed to be disturbed. He had at any rate walked away to the library in the middle of the piece. Kitty was, of course, making a fool of the boy all through. Any one could see that he was head over ears in love with her. And she seemed to have all sorts of mysterious understandings with him. Lord Grosville was certain they passed each other notes, and made assignations. And one night, on going up himself to bed very late, he had actually come upon the pair pacing up and down the long passage after midnight!—Kitty in such a negligée as only an actress should wear, with her hair about her ears—and the boy out of his wits and off his balance, as any one could see. Kitty, indeed, had been quite unabashed—trying even to draw him into their unseemly talk about some theatrical nonsense or other; and such blushes as there were had been entirely left to the boy.
He supposed there was no harm in it. The lad was not a Geoffrey Cliffe, and it was no doubt Kitty's mad love of excitement which impelled her to these defiances of convention. But Ashe should put his foot down; there was no knowing with a creature so wild and so lovely where these things might end. And after the scandal of last year—
As to that scandal, Lord Grosville, as a man of the world, by no means endorsed the lurid imaginations of his wife. Kitty and Cliffe had certainly behaved badly at Grosville Park—that is to say, judged by any ordinary standards. And the gossip of the season had apparently gathered and culminated round some incident of a graver character than the rest—though nobody precisely knew what it might be. But it seemed that Ashe had at last asserted himself; and if in Kitty's abrupt departure to the country, and the sudden dissolution of the intimacy between herself and Cliffe, those who loved her not had read what dark things they pleased, her uncle by marriage was quite content to see in it a mere disciplinary act on the part of the husband.
Lord Grosville believed that some rumors as to Cliffe's private character had entered into the decisive defeat—in a constituency largely Nonconformist—which had befallen that gentleman at the polls. Poor Lady Tranmore! He saw her anxieties in her face, and was truly sorry for her. At the same time, inveterate gossip that he was, he regarded her with a kind of hunger. If she only would talk things over with him! So far, however, she had given him very little opening. If she ever did, he would certainly advise her to press something like a temporary separation on her son. Why should not Lady Kitty be left at Haggart when the next session began? Lord Grosville, who had been a friend of Melbourne's, recalled the early history of that great man. When Lady Caroline Lamb had become too troublesome to a political husband, she had been sent to Brocket. And then Mr. Lamb was only Irish Secretary—without a seat in the cabinet. How was it possible to take an important share in steering the ship of state, and to look after a giddy wife at the same time?