Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/961

Rh voice. "Margaret's here, but if you don't mind her, she won't mind you."

Ashe entered. Kitty, as was her wont four days out of the seven, was breakfasting in bed. Margaret French was beside her with a batch of notes, mostly bills and unanswered invitations, with which she was trying to make Kitty cope.

"Excuse me, Mr. Ashe." Margaret lifted a smiling face. "I had to be out on business for my brother all day, so I thought I'd come early and remind Kitty of some of these tiresome things while there was still a chance of finding her."

"I don't know why guardian angels excuse themselves," said Ashe, as they shook hands.

"Oh dear, what a lot of them there are!" said Kitty, tossing over the notes with a bored air. "Refuse them all, Margaret; I'm tired to death of dining out."

"Not all, I think," pleaded Margaret. "Here's that nice woman—you remember—who wanted to thank Mr. Ashe for what he'd done for her son. You promised to dine with her."

"Did I?" Kitty wriggled with annoyance. "Well, then, I suppose we must. What did William do for her? When I ask him to do something for the nicest boys in the world, he won't lift a finger."

"I gave him some introductions in Berlin," laughed Ashe. "What you generally want me to do, Kitty, is to staff the public service with good-looking idiots. And there I really can't oblige you."

"Every one knows that corruption gets the best men," said Kitty. "Hullo! what's that?" and she lifted a dinner-card and looked at it strangely.

"My dear Kitty! when did it come?" exclaimed Margaret French, in dismay.

It was a dinner-card whereby Lord and Lady Parham requested the honor of Mr. and Lady Kitty Ashe's company at dinner, on a date somewhere within the first week of July.

Ashe bent over to look at it.

"I think that came ten days ago," he said, quietly. "I imagined Kitty accepted it."

"I never thought of it from that day to this," said Kitty, who had clasped her hands behind her head, and was staring at the ceiling. "Say, please, that"—she spaced out the words deliberately—"Mr. and Lady Kitty Ashe—are unable to accept—Lord and Lady Parham's invitation—etc.—"

"Kitty!" said Margaret, firmly, "there must be a 'regret' and a 'kind.' Think!—ten days! The party is next week!"

"No 'regret'—and no 'kind'!" said Kitty, still staring overhead. "It's my affair, please, Margaret, altogether. And I'll see the note before it goes, or you'll be putting in civilities."

Margaret, in despair, looked entreatingly at Ashe. He and she had often conspired before this to soften down Kitty's enormities. But he said nothing,—made not the smallest sign.

With difficulty Margaret got a few more directions out of Kitty, over whom a shade of sombre taciturnity had now fallen. Then, saying she would write the notes down-stairs and come back, she gathered up her basketful of letters and departed.

As soon as she was alone with Ashe, Kitty took up a novel beside her and pretended to be absorbed in it.

He hesitated a moment, then he stooped over her and took her hand.

"Why did you come in to visit me, Kitty?" he said, in a low voice.

"I don't know," was her indifferent reply, and her hand pulled itself away,—though not with violence.

"I wish I could understand you, Kitty." His tone was not quite steady.

"Well, I don't understand myself!" said Kitty, shortly, reaching out for a bunch of roses that Margaret had just brought her, and burying her face among them.

"Perhaps if you submitted the problem to me," said Ashe, laughing, "we might be able to thresh it out together!"

He folded his arms and leant against the foot of the bed, delighting his eyes with the vision of her amid the folds of muslin and lace, and all the costly refinements of pillow and coverlet with which she liked to surround herself at that hour of the morning. She might have been a French princess of the old régime, receiving her court.

Kitty shook her head. The roses fell idly from her hand, and made bright patches of bluish pink about her. Ashe went on: