Page:Under the Deodars - Kipling (1890).djvu/33

 forward in the middle of this insanity—I firmly believe the man's demented—and kissed me."

"Morals above reproach," purred Mrs. Mallowe.

"So they were—so they are! It was the most absurd kiss. I don't believe he'd ever kissed a woman in his life before. I threw my head back, and it was a sort of slidy, pecking dab, just on the end of the chin—here." Mrs. Hauksbee tapped her rather masculine chin with her fan. "Then, of course, I was furiously angry and told him that he was no gentleman, and I was sorry I'd ever met him, and so on. He was crushed so easily that I could'nt be very angry. Then I came away straight to you."

"Was this before or after supper?"

"Oh, before—oceans before. Isn't it perfectly disgusting?"

"Let me think. I withhold judgment till to-morrow. Morning brings counsel."

But morning brought only a servant with a dainty bouquet of Annandale roses for Mrs. Hauksbee to wear at the dance at Viceregal Lodge that night.

"He doesn't seem to be very penitent," said Mrs Mallowe. "What's the billet-doux in the centre?"

Mrs. Hauksbee opened the neatly-folded note—another accomplishment that she had taught Otis—read it and groaned tragically.

"Last wreck of a feeble intellect! Poetry! Is it his own, do you think? Oh, that I ever built my hopes on such a maudlin idiot!"

"No. It's a quotation from Mrs. Browning, and, in view of the facts of the case, as Jack says, uncommonly well chosen. Listen:—

Sweet thou hast trod on a heart Pass! There's a world full of men, And women as fair as thou art Must do such things now and then.

Thou only hast stepped unaware— Malice not one can impute, And why should a heart have been there, In the way of a fair woman's foot?"