Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/243

Rh ter keep a bad business to herself as much as possible—"

"Wensleydale—Wensleydale?" said Ashe, who had been smoking hard and silently beside his host. "You mean the man who distinguished himself in the Crimea? He died last year—at Naples, wasn't it?"

Lord Grosville assented.

It appeared that during the last year of his life Lady Alice had nursed her husband faithfully through disease and poverty; for scarcely a vestige of her fortune remained, and an application for money made by Wensleydale to Madame d'Estrées, unknown to his wife, had been peremptorily refused. The Colonel died, and within three months of his death Lady Alice had also lost her son and only child, of blood-poisoning developed in Naples, whither he had been summoned from school that his father might see him for the last time.

Then, after seventeen years, Lady Alice came back to her kindred, who had last seen her as a young girl, gentle, undeveloped, easily led, and rather stupid. She returned a gray-haired woman of thirty-five, who had lost youth, fortune, child, and husband; whose aspect, moreover, suggested losses still deeper and more drear. At first she wrapped herself in what seemed to some a dull, and to others a tragic, silence. But suddenly a flame leapt up in her. She became aware of the position of Madame d'Estrées in London; and one day, at a private view of the Academy, her former stepmother went up to her, smiling, with outstretched hand. Lady Alice turned very pale; the hand dropped, and Alice Wensleydale walked rapidly away. But that night, in the Grosville house, she spoke out.

"She told Lina and myself the whole story. You'd have thought the woman was possessed. My wife—she's not of the crying sort, nor am I. But she cried,—and I believe—well, I can tell you it was enough to move a stone. And when she'd done, she just went away, and locked her door, and let no one say a word to her. She has told one or two other relations and friends, and—"

"And the relations and friends have told others?"

"Well, I can answer for myself," said Grosville, after a pause. "This happened three months ago. I never have told and never shall tell all the details as she told them to us. But we have let enough be known."

"Enough enough to damn Madame d'Estrées?"

"Oh, well, as far as the women were concerned, she was mostly that already. There are other tales going about. I expect you know them."

"No, I don't know them," said Ashe.

Lord Grosville's face expressed surprise. "Well, this finished it," he said.

"Poor child," said Ashe, slowly, putting down his cigarette and turning a thoughtful look on the carpet.

"Alice?" said Lord Grosville.

"No."

"Oh! you mean Kitty? Yes, I had forgotten her for the moment. Yes,—poor child."

There was silence a moment; then Lord Grosville inquired,

"What do you think of her?"

"I?" said Ashe, with a laugh. "I don't know. She's obviously very pretty—"

"And a handful!" said Lord Grosville.

"Oh! quite plainly a handful," said Ashe, rather absently. Then the memory of Kitty's entry recurred to them both, and they laughed.

"Not much shyness left in that young woman—eh?" said the old man. "She tells my girls such stories of her French doings,—my wife's had to stop it. She seems to have had all sorts of love-affairs already. And of course she'll have any number over here—sure to. Some unscrupulous fellow 'll get hold of her,—for naturally the right sort won't marry her. I don't know what we can do. Adelina offered to take her altogether. But that woman wouldn't hear of it. She wrote Lina rather a good letter—on her dignity, and that kind of thing. We gave her an opening, and, by Jove! she took it."

"And meanwhile Lady Kitty has no dealings with her stepsister?"

"You heard what she said. Extraordinary girl!—to let the thing out plump like that. Just like the blood. They say anything that comes into their heads. If we had known that Alice was to be with the Sowerbys this week-end, my wife would certainly have put Kitty off. It would be uncommonly awkward if they were to meet—here, for instance. Hello!