Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/806

746 to whom they were owed!—his standards were still essentially those of the Whigs from whom he descended, of Fox the all-indebted, or of Melbourne, who has left an amusing' disquisition on the art of dividing a few loaves and fishes in the shape of bank-notes among a multitude of creditors.

Not that affairs were as yet very bad. Far from it. But there was little to spare for Madame d'Estrées—who ought, indeed, to want nothing; and Ashe was vaguely meditating his reply to that lady, when a face in a carriage near them, which was trying to enter the line, caught his attention.

"Mary!" he said, "à la Sir Joshua—and mother. They don't see us. Query, will Cliffe take the leap to-night? Mother reports a decided increase of ardor on his part. Sorry you don't approve of it, darling!"

"It's just like lighting a lamp to put it out—that's all!" said Kitty, with vivacity. "The man who marries Mary is done for."

"Not at all. Mary's money will give him the pedestal he wants, and trust Cliffe to take care of his own individuality afterwards! Now if you'll transfer your alarms to Mary, I'm with you!"

"Oh! of course he'll be unkind to her. She may lay her account for that. But it's the marrying her!" And Kitty's upper lip curled under a slow disdain.

William laughed out.

"Kitty, really!—you remind me, please, of Miss Jane Taylor—

Mary is thirty; she would like to be married. And why not? She'll give quite as good as she gets."

"Well, she won't get—anything. Geoffrey Cliffe thinks of no one but himself."

Ashe's eyebrows went up.

"Oh, well, all men are selfish,—and the women don't mind."

"It depends on how it's done," said Kitty.

Ashe declared that Cliffe was just an ordinary person, "l'homme sensuel moyen,"—with a touch of genius. Except for that, no better and no worse than other people. What then?—the world was not made up of persons of enormous virtue like Lord Althorp and Mr. Gladstone. If Mary wanted him for a husband, and could capture him, both in his opinion would have pretty nearly got their deserts.

Kitty, however, fell into a reverie, after which she let him see a face of the same startling sweetness as she had several times shown him of late.

"Do you want me to be nice to her?" She nestled up to him.

"Bind her to your chariot wheels, madam! You can!" said Ashe, slipping a hand round hers.

Kitty pondered.

"Well, then, I won't tell her that I know he's still in love with the Frenchwoman. But it's on the tip of my tongue."

"Heavens!" cried Ashe. "The Vicomtesse D, the lady of the poems? But she's dead! I thought that was over long ago."

Kitty was silent for a moment, then said with low-voiced emphasis:

"That any one could write those poems, and then think of Mary!"

"Yes—the poems were fine," said Ashe—"but make-believe!"

Kitty protested indignantly. Ashe bantered her a little on being one of the women who were the making of Cliffe.

"Say what you like!" she said, drawing a quick breath. "But, often and often, he says divine things—divinely! I feel them there!" And she lifted both hands to her breast with an impulsive gesture.

"Goodness!" said Ashe, kissing her hand because enthusiasm became her so well. "And to think that I should have dared to roast the divine one in a Times letter this morning!"

The hall and staircase of Yorkshire House were already filled with a motley and magnificent crowd when Ashe and Kitty arrived. Kitty, still shrouded in her cloak, pushed her way through, exchanging greetings with friends, shrieking a little now and then for the safety of her bow and quiver, her face flushed with pleasure and excitement. Then she disappeared into the cloak-room, and Ashe was left to wonder how he was going to endure his robes through the heat of the evening, and to exchange a laughing remark or two with the Parlia-