Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/629

Rh petulant melancholy for which the baby's defect seemed but an inadequate cause; Ashe's tender anxiety, his willingness to throw up Parliament, office, everything, that Kitty might travel and recover; and those huge efforts by which she and his best friends in the House had held him back,—when Kitty, it seemed, cared little or nothing whether he sacrificed his future or not. Finally she herself, with the assistance of a new friend of Kitty's, had become Kitty's nurse, had taken her abroad when Ashe could not be spared, had watched over her and humored her, and at last brought her back—so the doctors said—restored.

Was it really recovery? At any rate, Lady Tranmore was often inclined to think that since the return to London—now about a twelvemonth since—both she and William had had to do with a different Kitty. Young as she still was, the first exquisite softness of the expanding life was gone; things harder, stranger, more inexplicable than any which those who knew her best had yet perceived, seemed now and then to come to the surface, like wreckage in a summer sea.

The opening door disturbed these ponderings. The nurse appeared, carrying the little boy. Lady Tranmore took him on her knee and caressed him. He was a piteous, engaging child, generally very docile, but liable at times to storms of temper out of all proportion to the fragility of his small person. His grandmother was inclined to look upon his passions as something external and inflicted,—the entering in of the Blackwater devil to plague a tiny creature that normally was of a divine and clinging sweetness. She would have taught him religion as his only shield against himself; but neither his father nor his mother was religious; and Harry was likely to grow up a pagan.

He leant now against her breast; and she, whose inmost nature was maternity, delighted in the pressure of the tiny body, crooning songs to him when they were left alone, and pausing now and then to pity and kiss the little twisted foot that hung helpless beside the other.

She was interrupted by a soft entrance and the rustle of a dress.

"Ah!—Margaret!" she said, looking round and smiling.

The girl who had come in approached her, shook hands, and looked down at the baby. She was fair-haired and wore spectacles; her face was round and childish, her eyes round and blue—with certain lines about them, however, which showed that she was no longer in her first youth.

"I came to see if I could do anything to-day for Kitty. I know she is very busy about the ball—"

"Head over ears apparently," said Lady Tranmore. "Everybody has lost their wits—I see Kitty has chosen her dress."

"Yes, if Fanchette can make it all right. Poor Kitty! She has been in such a state of mind.—I think I'll go on with these invitations!"

And taking off her gloves and hat, Margaret French went to the writing-table like one intimately acquainted with the room and its affairs, took up a pile of cards and envelopes which lay upon it, and bringing them to Lady Tranmore's side, began to work upon them.

"I did about half yesterday," she explained,—"but I see Kitty hasn't been able to touch them, and it is really time they were out."

"For their party next week?"

Miss French nodded.

"I hope Kitty won't tire herself out. It has been a rush lately."

"Does she ever rest?"

"Never!—as far as I can see. And I am afraid she has been very much worried."

"About that silly affair in the Park?" said Lady Tranmore.

Margaret French nodded. "She vows that she meant no harm, and did no harm,—and that it has been all malice and exaggeration. But one can see she has been hurt."

"Well, if you ask me," said Lady Tranmore, in a low voice,—"I think she deserved to be."

Their eyes met—the girl's full of a half-smiling, half-soft consideration. Lady Tranmore, on the other hand, had flushed proudly, as though the mere mention of the matter to which she had referred had been galling to her. Kitty, in fact, had just been guilty of an