"What does it matter? It's all so long ago. I have nothing to do with what I did ten years ago—nothing!"
"A convenient doctrine!" laughed Ashe. "But it cuts both ways. You get neither the good of your good nor the bad of your bad."
"I have no good," said Kitty, bitterly.
"What's the matter with you, miladi?" said Ashe, half scolding, half tender. "You growl over my remarks as though you were your own small dog with a bone. Come here and let me tell you the news."
And drawing the sofa up to the open window which commanded the marvellous waterway outside, with its rows of palaces on either hand, he made her lie down while he read her extracts from his letters.
Margaret French, who was writing at the farther side of the room, glanced at them furtively from time to time. She saw that Ashe was trying to charm away the languor of his companion by that talk of his, shrewd, humorous, vehement, well informed, which made him so welcome to the men of his own class and mode of life. And when he talked to a woman as he was accustomed to talk to men, that woman felt it a compliment. Under the stimulus of it, Kitty woke up, laughed, argued, teased, with something of her natural animation.
Presently, indeed, the voices had sunk so much and the heads had drawn so close together that Margaret French slipped away, under the impression that they were discussing matters to which she was not meant to listen.
She had hardly closed the door when Kitty drew herself away from Ashe, and holding his arm with both hands looked strangely into his eyes.
"You're awfully good to me, William. But, you know—you don't tell me secrets!"
"What do you mean, darling?"