Kitty was speaking when I heard them first, talking in a broken, hesitating voice, which was very queer from our bright, fluent little Kitty: "Mr. Warriner, you don't know what a humbug you make me feel when you talk of 'my innocence' and 'unconsciousness' and 'lack of vanity,' and all the rest of it. I have been feeling more and more what a vain, deceitful, hypocritical little wretch I am ever since I knew you. I have been expecting you to find me out every day, and I almost hoped you would."
"What do you mean, Miss Grey?" asked the Jook in tones of utter amazement, as well he might.
"Oh dear! how shall I tell you?" sighed poor Kitty; and I could feel her blushes burning through her words. Then, with a sudden rush: "Can't you see? I feel as if I had stolen your love, for it was all gained under false pretences. You never would have cared for me if you had known what a miserable hypocrite I really was. Why, that very first day I wasn't afraid of the cow—she didn't even look at me—but I saw you coming, and—and—Helen wouldn't introduce you to me—and it just struck me it would be a good chance, and so I rushed up to you and—Oh! what will you think of me?"
"Think?" said the Jook: "why, I think that while ninety-nine women out of a hundred are hypocrites, not one in a thousand has the courage to atone for it by an avowal like yours. Not that it was exactly hypocrisy, either."
The poor blundering Jook! Always saying the most maddening things under the firm conviction that it was the most delicate compliment.
Kitty was too much in earnest to mind it now, though. "Do you know," she went on, "that from the very first day I came into the house I was determined to captivate you?—that every word and every look was directed to that end? I have been nothing but an actress all through. I have done it before, hundreds and hundreds of times, but I never felt the shame of it until now—because—because—"
"Because you never loved any one before? Is that it, Kitty?" said the Jook tenderly.
"Oh, I don't know," said Kitty desperately. "How can I tell? But it's all Helen's fault. If she had introduced you to me in a rational way, I should never have gone on so. But she wouldn't, and I was piqued—"
"I must exonerate Miss Helen," interrupted the Jook. "She wanted to introduce me, and I declined. I am sure I don't know why—English reserve, I suppose. I had not seen you then, you know, and some of the people here are such a queer lot that I rather dreaded new acquaintances."
"Not Helen's fault?" wailed Kitty. "Oh, this is stolen—oh, poor Helen!"