Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/478

438 arrived by the afternoon train. Clearly she observed Kitty and observed her with dislike. The attitude of her companions was not so simple.

"What an amazing young woman!" said Harman, presently, under his breath,—yet open-mouthed. "I suppose she and Cliffe are old friends."

"I believe they never met before," said Mary.

Darrell laughed.

"Lady Kitty makes short work of the preliminaries," he said; "she told me the other night life wasn't long enough to begin with talk about the weather."

"The weather?" said Harman. "At the present moment she and Cliffe seem to be discussing the Dame aux Camélias. Since when do they take young girls to see that kind of thing in Paris?"

Miss Lyster gave a little cough, and bending forward, said to Harman: "Lady Tranmore has shown me your picture. It is a dear, delicious thing! I never saw anything more heavenly than the angel."

Harman smiled a nattered smile. Mary Lyster referred to a copy of a Filippo Lippi "Annunciation" which he had just executed in water-color for Lady Tranmore, to whom he was devoted. He was, however, devoted to a good many peeresses, with whom he took tea, and for whom he undertook many harmless and elegant services. He painted their portraits, in small size after Pre-Raphaelite models, and he occasionally presented them with copies—a little weak, but charming—of their favorite Italian pictures. He and Mary began now to talk of Florence with much enthusiasm and many caressing adjectives. For Harman most things were "sweet"; for Mary, "interesting" or "suggestive." She talked fast and fluently; a subtle observer might have guessed she wished it to be seen that, for her, Lady Kitty Bristol's flirtations, be they in or out of taste, were simply non-existent.

Darrell listened intermittently, watched Cliffe and Lady Kitty, and thought a good deal. That extraordinary girl was certainly "carrying on" with Cliffe, as she had "carried on" with Ashe on the night of her first acquaintance with him in St. James's Place. Ashe apparently took it with equanimity, for he was still sitting beside the pair, twisting a paperknife and smiling,—sometimes putting in a word, but more often silent, and apparently of no account at all to either Kitty or Cliffe.

Darrell knew that the new minister disliked and despised Geoffrey Cliffe; he was aware too that Cliffe returned these sentiments, and was not unlikely to be found attacking Ashe in public before long on certain points of foreign policy, where Cliffe conceived himself to be a master. The meeting of the two men under the Grosvilles' roof struck Darrell as curious. Why had Cliffe been invited by these very respectable and strait-laced people, the Grosvilles? Darrell could only reflect that Lady Eleanor Cliffe, the traveller's mother, was probably connected with them by some of those innumerable and ever-ramifying links that hold together a certain large group of English families; and that, moreover, Lady Grosville, in spite of philanthropy and evangelicalism, had always shown a rather pronounced taste in "lions"—of the masculine sort. Of the women to be met with at Grosville Park, one could be certain. Lady Grosville made no excuses for her own sex. But she was a sufficiently ambitious hostess to know that agreeable parties are not constructed out of the saints alone. The men, therefore, must provide the sinners; and of some of the persons then most in vogue she was careful not to know too much. For, socially, one must live; and that being so, the strictness of to-day may have at any moment to be purchased by the laxity of to-morrow. Such at any rate was Darrell's analysis of the situation.

He was still astonished, however, when all was said. For Cliffe, during the preceding winter, on his return from some remarkable travels in Persia had paused on the Riviera, and an affair at Cannes with a French Vicomtesse had got into the English papers. No one knew the exact truth of it; and a small volume of verse by Cliffe published immediately afterwards, verse very distinguished, passionate, and obscure, had offered many clues, but no solution whatever. Nobody supposed, however, that the story was anything but a bad one. Moreover, the last book of travels—which had had an enormous success—contained one of the most