‘Oh! perhaps I am mistaken,’ said Lady Caryisfort; and she changed the subject dexterously, leading Kate altogether away from this too decided suggestion. They talked afterwards of everything in earth and heaven; but at the end of that little dinner, which they ate tête-à-tête, Kate returned to the subject which in the meantime had been occupying a great part of her thoughts.
‘I have been thinking of what you said about Uncle Courtenay,’ she said, quite abruptly, after a pause. ‘I do write to him about once every month, and I always tell him whom we are seeing. I don’t believe he ever reads my letters. He is always paying visits through the Winter when Parliament is up, and I always direct to him at home. I don’t suppose he ever reads them. But that, of course, is not my fault, and whenever we meet anyone new I tell him. We don’t conceal anything; my aunt never permits that.’
‘And I am sure it is your own feeling too,’ cried Lady Caryisfort. ‘It is always best.’
And she dismissed the subject, not feeling herself possessed of sufficient information to enter into it more fully. She was a little shaken in her own theory on the subject of the Berties, one of whom at least she felt convinced must have designs on Kate’s fortune. That was ‘only natural;’ but at least Kate was not aware of it. And Lady Caryisfort was half annoyed and half pleased when one of her friends asked admittance in the evening, bringing with her the young Count Buoncompagni, whom Kate had met at the Embassy. It was a Countess Strozzi, an aunt of his, and an intimate of Lady Caryisfort’s, who was his introducer. There was nothing to be said against the admission of a good young man who had come to escort his aunt in her visit to her invalid friend, but it was odd that they should have chosen that particular night, and no other. Kate was in her morning dress, as she had gone to make a morning call, and was a little troubled to be so discovered; but girls look well in anything, as Lady Caryisfort said to herself, with a sigh.
CHAPTER XLII.
It was about this time, about two months after their arrival in Florence, and when the bright and pleasant ‘family life’ we have been describing had gone on for about six weeks in unbroken harmony, that there began to breathe about Kate, like a vague, fitful wind, such as sometimes rises in Autumn or Spring, one can’t tell how or from whence, a curious sense of isolation, of being somehow left out and put aside in the family party. For some time the sensation was quite indefinite. She felt chilled by it; she could not tell how. Then she would find herself sitting alone in a corner, while the others were grouped together, without being able to explain to herself how it happened. It had happened several times, indeed, before she thought of attempting to explain so strange an occurrence; and then she said to herself that of course it was mere chance, or that she herself must have been sulky, and nobody else was aware.
A day or two, however, after her visit to Lady Caryisfort, there came a little incident which could not be quite chance. In the evening Mrs. Anderson sat down by her, and began to talk about indifferent subjects, with a little air of constraint upon her, the air of one who has something not quite pleasant to say. Kate’s faculties had been quickened by the change which she had already perceived, and she saw that something was coming, and was chafed by this preface, as only a very frank and open nature can be. She longed to say, ‘Tell me what it is, and be done with it.’ But she had no excuse for such an outcry. Mrs. Anderson only introduced her real subject after at least an hour’s talk.
‘By-the-bye,’ she said—and Kate knew in a moment that now it was coming—‘we have an invitation for to-morrow, dear, which I wish to accept, for Ombra and myself, but I don’t feel warranted in taking you—and, at the same time, I don’t like the idea of leaving you.’
‘Oh! pray don’t think of me, aunt,’ said Kate, quickly. A flush of evanescent anger at this mode of making it known suddenly came over her. But, in reality, she was half stunned, and could not believe her ears. It made her vague sense of desertion into something tangible at once. It realised all her vague feelings of being one too many. But, at the same time, it stupefied her. She could not understand it. She did not look up, but listened with eyes cast down, and a pain which she did not understand in her heart.
‘But I must think of you, my darling,’ said Mrs. Anderson, in a voice which, at this moment, rung false and insincere in the girl’s ears, and seemed to do her a positive harm. ‘How is it possible that I should not think of you? It is an old friend of mine, a merchant from Leghorn, who has bought a place in the country about ten miles from Florence. He is a man who has risen from nothing, and so has his wife, but they are kind people all the same, and used to be good to me when I was poor. Lady Barker is going—for she, too, you know, is of my old set at Leghorn, and, though she has risen in the world, she does not throw off people who are rich. But I don’t think your uncle would like it, if I took you there. You know how very careful I have been never to introduce you to anybody he could find fault with. I have declined a great many pleasant invitations here, for that very reason.’