Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/800

742 could not explain,—for it was not an emotion of the senses, just as her yielding had not been a yielding of the senses, but a yielding of the soul,—he continued to hold her in his arms, her life, her will, given to him wholly, sighed out upon his heart.

Then gradually she recovered her balance; the normal Kitty came back. She put out her hand and touched his face.

"You must go back to the House, William."

"Yes, if you are all right."

She sat up, and began to rearrange some of her hair that had slipped down.

"You have carried us both into such heights and depths, darling!" said Ashe, after he had watched her a little in silence, "that I have forgotten to tell you the gossip I brought back from mother this morning."

Kitty paused, interrogatively. She was still pale.

"Do you know that mother is convinced Mary Lyster has made up her mind to marry Cliffe?"

There was a pause, then Kitty said, with incredulous contempt, "He would never dream of marrying her!"

"Not so sure! She has a great deal of money, and Cliffe wants money badly."

Ashe began to put his papers together. Kitty questioned him a little more, intermittently, as to what his mother had said. When he had left her, she sat for long on the sofa, playing with some flowers she had taken from her dress, or sombrely watching the child, as it lay on the floor beside her.

Y lady! It's come!"

The maid put her head in just to convey the good news. Kitty was in her bedroom, walking up and down in a fury which was now almost speechless.

The housemaid was waiting on the stairs. The butler was waiting in the hall. Till that hurried knock was heard at the front door, and the much-tried Wilson had rushed to open it, the house had been wrapped in a sort of storm silence. It was ten o'clock on the night of the ball. Half Kitty's costume lay spread out upon her bed. The other half—although, since seven o'clock, all Kitty's servants had been employed in rushing to Fanchette's establishment in New Bond Street, at half-hour intervals, in the fastest hansoms to be found—had not yet appeared.

However, here at last was the end of despair. A panting boy dragged the box into the hall, the butler and footman carried it up-stairs and into their mistress's room, where Kitty in a white peignoir stood waiting, with the brow of Medea.

"The boy that brought it looked just fit to drop, my lady!" said the maid, as she undid the box. She was a zealous servant, but she was glad sometimes to chasten these great ones of the land, by insisting on the seamy side of their pleasures.

Kitty paused in the eager task of superintendence and turned to the under-housemaid, who stood by, gazing open-mouthed at the splendors emerging from the box.

"Run down and tell Wilson to give him some wine and cake!" she said, peremptorily. "It's all Fanchette's fault—odious creature!—running it to the last like this—after all her promises!"

The housemaid went, and soon sped back. For no boy on earth would she have been long defrauded of the sight of her ladyship's completed gown.

"Did Wilson feed him?" Kitty flung her the question as she bent, alternately frowning and jubilant, over the creation before her.

"Yes, my lady. It was quite a little fellow. He said his legs were just run off his feet," said the girl, growing confused as the moon-robe unfolded.

"Poor wretch!" said Kitty, carelessly. "I'm glad I'm not an errand— Blanche!—you know, Fanchette may be an old demon, but she has got taste! Just look at these folds, and the way she's put on the pearls! Now then—make haste!"

Off flew the peignoir, and, with the help of the excited maids, Kitty slipped into her dress. Ten times over did she declare that it was hopeless, that it didn't fit in the least, that it wasn't one bit what she had ordered, that she couldn't and wouldn't go out in it, that it was simply scandalous, and Fanchette should never be paid a penny. Her maids understood her, and simply went on, pulling, patting,