"Why, Polly!—and Cousin Richard! I wondered where you had hidden yourselves."
Mary's bright, involuntary smile transformed her. Ashe sat down beside her, and they were soon deep in all sorts of gossip—relations, acquaintance, politics, and what not. All Mary's stiffness disappeared. She became the elegant, agreeable woman, of whom dinner-parties were glad. Ashe plunged into the pleasant malice of her talk, which ranged through the good and evil fortunes—mostly the latter—of half his acquaintance; discussed the debts, the love-affairs, and the follies of his political colleagues or Parliamentary foes; how the Foreign Secretary had been getting on at Balmoral—how so-and-so had been ruined at the Derby and restored to sanity and solvency by the Oaks—how Lady Parham, at Hatfield, had been made to know her place by the French Ambassador—and the like; passing thereby a charming half-hour.
Meanwhile Kitty, Margaret French, and Sir Richard kept up intermittent remarks, pausing at every other phrase to gather the crumbs that fell from the table of the other two.
Kitty was very weary, and a dead weight had fallen on her spirits. If Sir Richard had thought her bad form ten minutes before, his unspoken mind now declared her stupid. Meanwhile Kitty was saying to herself, as she watched her husband and Mary:
"I used to amuse William just as well—last year!"
When the door closed on them, Kitty fell back on her cushions with an "ouf!" of relief. William came back in a few minutes from showing the visitors the back way to their hotel, and stood beside his wife with an anxious face.
"They were too much for you, darling. They stayed too long."
"How you and Mary chattered!" said Kitty, with a little pout. But at the same moment she slipped an appealing hand into his.
Ashe clasped the hand, and laughed.
"I always told you she was an excellent gossip."