“You must excuse me, Lady Jane,” said Katherine, “if I don’t want to hear any more of Mrs. Seton and her men. They are exceedingly rude, stupid, disagreeable men. You may think it a fine thing for us to be elevated to the sphere in which we can meet men like Sir Charles Somers. I don’t think so. I think he is detestable. I think he believes women to exist only for the purpose of amusing him and making him laugh, like an idiot, as he is!”
Lady Jane sat in her easy-chair and looked sardonically at the passion of the girl, whose face was crimson, whose voice was breaking. She was, with that horrible weakness which a high-spirited girl so resents in herself, so near an outbreak of crying that she could scarcely keep the tears within her eyes. The elder lady looked at her for some time in silence. The sight troubled her a little, and amused her a little also. It occurred to her to say, “You are surely in love with him yourself,” which was her instinct, but for once forbore, out of a sort of awed sense that here was a creature who was outside of her common rules.
“He is not an idiot, however,” she said at last. “I don’t say he is intellectual. He does think, perhaps, that women exist, &c. So do most of them, my dear. You will soon find that out if you have anything to do with men. Still, for a good little girl, I have always thought you were nice, Katherine. It is for your sake more than hers that I feel inclined to do that silly little Stella a good turn. How could she be such a little fool? Has she lived on this cliff half her life and doesn’t know when a gale’s coming on? The more shame to her, then! And I don’t doubt that instead of being ashamed she is quite proud of her adventure. And I hear, to make things worse, that Algy Scott went and caught a bad cold over it. That will make his mother and all her set furious with the girl, and say everything about her. He’s not going to die—that’s a good thing. If he had, she need never have shown her impertinent little nose anywhere again. Lady Scott’s an inveterate woman. It will be bad enough as it is. How are we to get things set right again?”
“It is a pity you should take any trouble,” said Katherine; “things are quite right, thank you. We have quite enough in what you call our own monde.”
“Well, and what do you find to object to in the word? It is a very good word; the French understand that sort of thing better than we do. So you have quite enough to make you happy in your own monde? I don’t think so—and I know the world in general better than you do. And, what is more, I am very doubtful indeed whether Stella thinks so.”
“Oh, no,” cried a little voice, and Stella, running in, threw herself down at Lady Jane’s feet, in the caressing attitude which she had so lately held in spite of herself at Miss Mildmay’s. “Stella doesn’t think so at all. Stella will be miserable if you don’t take her up and put things right for her, dear Lady Jane. I have been a dreadful little fool. I know it, I know it; but I didn’t mean it. I meant nothing but a little—fun. And now there is nobody who can put everything right again but you, and only you.”
CHAPTER X.
Lady Jane Thurston was a fine lady in due place and time; but on other occasions she was a robust countrywoman, ready to walk as sturdily as any man, or to undertake whatever athletic exercise was necessary. When she had gone downstairs again, and been served with a cup of warm tea (now those old cats were gone), she sent her carriage off that the horses might be put under shelter, not to speak of the men, and walked herself in the rain to the hotel, where the two young men were still staying, Captain Scott being as yet unable to be moved. It was one of those hotels which are so pretty in summer, all ivy and clematis, and balconies full of flowers. But on a wet day in October it looked squalid and damp, with its open doorway traversed by many muddy footsteps, and the wreaths of the withered creepers hanging limp about the windows. Lady Jane knew everybody about, and took in them all the interest which a member of the highest class—quite free from any doubt about her position—is able to take with so much more ease and naturalness than any other. The difference between the Tredgolds, for instance, and Mrs. Black of the hotel in comparison with herself was but slightly marked in her mind. She was impartially kind to both. The difference between them was but one of degree; she herself was of so different a species that the gradations did not count. In consequence of this she was more natural with the Blacks at the hotel than Katherine Tredgold, though in her way a Lady Bountiful, and universal friend, could ever have been. She was extremely interested to hear of Mrs. Black’s baby, which had come most inopportunely, with a sick gentleman in the house, at least a fortnight before it was expected, and went upstairs to see the mother and administer a word or two of rebuke to the precipitate infant before she proceeded on her own proper errand. “Silly little thing, to rush into this rain sooner than it could help,” she said, “but mind you don’t do the same, my dear woman. Never trouble your head about the sick gentleman. Don’t stir till you have got up your strength.” And then she marched along the passages to the room in which Algy and Charlie sat, glum and tired to death, looking out at the dull sky and the raindrops on the window. They had invented a sort of sport with those same raindrops, watching them as they ran down and backing one against the other. There had just been a close race, and Algy’s man had won to his great delight, when Lady Jane’s sharp knock came to the door; so that she went in to the sound of laughter pealing forth from the sick gentleman in such a manner as to reassure any anxious visitor as to the state of his lungs, at least.
“Well, you seem cheerful enough,” Lady Jane said.
“Making the best of it,” said Captain Scott.