Lady Kitty nodded carelessly to Mr. Darrell, and he sat down beside her.
"That's a cool hand for a girl of eighteen!" thought Ashe. "She has the airs of a princess—except for the chatter."
Chatter indeed! Wherever he moved, the sound of the light, hurrying voice made itself persistently heard through the hum of male conversation.
Yet once Ashe, looking round to see if Darrell could be dislodged, caught the chatterer silent, and found himself all at once invaded by a slight thrill, or shock.
What did the girl's expression mean?—what was she thinking of? She was looking intently at the crowded room, and it seemed to Ashe that Darrell's talk, though his lips moved quickly, was not reaching her at all. The dark brows were drawn together, and beneath them the eyes looked sorely out. The delicate lips were slightly, piteously open, and the whole girlish form in its young beauty appeared, as he watched, to shrink together. Suddenly the girl's look, so wide and searching, caught that of Ashe, and he moved impulsively forward.
"Present me, please, to Lady Kitty," he said, catching Warington's arm.
"Poor child!" said a low voice in his ear.
Ashe turned and saw Louis Harman. The tone, however—allusive, intimate, patronizing,—in which Harman had spoken annoyed him, and he passed on without taking any notice.
"Lady Kitty," said Warington, "Mr. Ashe wishes to be presented to you. He is an old friend of your mother's. Congratulate him—he has just got into Parliament."
Lady Kitty drew herself up, and all trace of the look which Ashe had observed disappeared. She bowed, not carelessly as she had bowed to Darrell, but with a kind of exaggerated stateliness, not less girlish.
"I never congratulate anybody," she said, shaking her head, "till I know them."
Ashe opened his eyes a little.
"How long must I wait?" he said, smiling, as he drew a chair beside her.
"That depends. Are you difficult to know?" She looked up at him audaciously, and he on his side could not take his eyes from her, so singular was the small, sparkling face. The hair and skin were very fair, like her mother's, the eyes dark and full of fire, the neck most daintily white and slender, the figure undeveloped, the feet and hands extremely small. But what arrested him was, so to speak, the embodied contradiction of the personality—as between the wild intelligence of the eyes and the extreme youth, almost childishness, of the rest.
He asked her if she had ever known any one confess to being easy to know.
"Well, I'm easy to know," she said, carelessly, leaning back—"but then I'm not worth knowing."
"Is one allowed to find out?"
"Oh yes—of course! You know—when you were over there, I willed that you should come and talk to me, and you came. Only," she sat up, with animation, and began to tick off her sentences on her fingers—"don't ask me how long I've been in town. Don't ask where I was in Paris. Don't inquire whether I like balls! You see, I warn you at once"—she looked up frankly—"that we mayn't lose time."
"Well, then, I don't see how I'm ever to find out," said Ashe, stoutly.
"Whether I'm worth knowing?" She considered, then bent forward eagerly. "Look here!—I'll just tell you everything in a lump, and then that 'll do—won't it? Listen. I'm nearly eighteen. I was sent to the Sœurs Blanches when I was eight—the year papa died. I didn't like papa,—I'm very sorry, but I didn't! However, that's by the way.—In all those years I have only seen Maman once—she doesn't like children. But my aunt Grosville has some French relations—very, very 'comme il faut,' you understand—and I used to go and stay with them for the holidays. Tell me!—did you ever hunt in France?"
"Never," said Ashe, startled and amused by the sudden glance of enthusiasm that lit up the face and expressed itself in the clasped hands.
"Oh! it's such heaven," she said, lifting her shoulders with an extravagant gesture,—"such heaven! First there are the old dresses—the men look such darlings!—and then the horns, and the old ways they have—si noble! si distingué!—not like your stupid English hunting. And then the dogs!—Ah! the dogs"—the
