“I thank you!” Mr. Westruther said sardonically. “If not to you, Freddy, to whom are my thanks due for this clever touch?” He perceived that he had bewildered his cousin, and added impatiently: “Well? Who made Kitty known to the girl her perfidious cousin Jack has made the object of his attentions?”
“Don’t think anyone did,” replied Freddy. “Met her by chance. Know what I think? Good thing if you was to take a damper! Not engaged to Kit, coz!”
Those very blue eyes glinted at him. “I might make the obvious retort, Freddy, but I won’t!”
The two ladies in question, meanwhile, were treading briskly down one of the paths in the Park, their hands tucked in their muffs, and their pelisses fastened tightly up to their throats, for although the sun shone, encouraging daffodils to burst from their sheaths, an east wind blew strongly.
“Dear Miss Charing, if you knew the solace it is to me to be in your company!” Olivia said. “I should not repine—I know that Mama has made many, many sacrifices to make this visit to the Metropolis p(^sible, but, oh, I was happier by far at home, with my sisters!”
Kitty was already aware of the existence of Amelia, and Jane, and Selina, and she uttered a murmur of sympathy. She was not of an age fully to comprehend the anxieties of a mother indifferently blessed with four daughters, but she understood from Olivia that these were acute. Dear Papa, it seemed, had not left his family in affluent circumstances; but he had certainly endowed them with good looks, a commodity in which they had been bred from earliest youth to trade to the best advantage. Only Jane, they feared, was bookish; and Amelia showed a dreadful tendency to freckles. Olivia, the loveliest as well as the eldest of the sisters, did not question that it was her duty to make a good match. She had come to London with that object; but whenever her maiden fancy had speculated on the good match it had always corne to her in the guise of a young and handsome suitor, and never in that of an elderly roue. She had supposed too that Dear Papa’s grand relations in Brook Street would welcome her and Mama to their house; but here again reality had fallen sadly short of expectation. Repulsed by the Batterstowns, Mama had been obliged to accept the hospitality of her sister, living in Hans Crescent; and however good-natured Mrs. Scorton might be, she had no entrde into the world of fashion, and was undeniably vulgar. Not for Miss Broughty the select gatherings at Almack’s, the ton parties, the box, when the season began, at the Italian Opera. Mama, skirmishing round the fringes of society, had achieved one or two genteel invitations for her daughter, but none of them led to the triumphs she had so confidently predicted. As for taking the town by storm, as the beautiful Gunning sisters had done, sixty-five years earlier, either times had changed, or there was some peculiar virtue attached to pairs. “But Amelia is not yet sixteen,” Olivia explained seriously, “and the expense, besides, could not have been met.”
It seemed to Kitty a pity that her new friend’s mind was set so irrevocably upon marriage, but her suggestion that Olivia might seek an eligible situation as a governess met with no favour at all. Olivia stared at her with dismay in her big eyes, and unequivocally stated her preference for death. Upon reflection, Kitty was obliged to own that she was scarcely fitted for such a post. Her intellect was not superior, and her education was scanty. She had great sweetness of temper, a biddable disposition, and sufficient refinement to shrink from the machinations of her Mama and her cheerful, loud-voiced cousins; but the more Kitty saw of her the less was she able to believe that that lovely exterior hid the slightest strength of character. She thought it surprising, too, that so beautiful a girl should have had no suitors at home for whom she appeared to have felt any partiality. Olivia explained that the neighbourhood was restricted. “I am sure no one could like Ned Bandy, and the Wrays, you know, are horribly vulgar. There was only Mr. Sticklepath, and of course that would not do.”
“He was not eligible?” Kitty ventured to ask.
“Oh, no! I daresay he has not twopence to rub together, poor man!”
“But you liked him, perhaps?”
“No, but he would have been very glad to have married me, even though I have no fortune, because his housekeeper is lately dead, and he does not know how to go on, and I can dress meat neatly and cheaply, besides being able to sew, and to iron better than the washerwoman.”
The vision of an impoverished but romantic young lover died still-born. Daunted, Kitty said: “And was there no one else? No one at all? I declare, it must be as dull as my own home, and I had thought that nothing could be!”
“Only young Mr. Drakemire,” said Olivia. “He is rather stout, but very genteel. He stood up twice with me at the Assembly, but the Drakemires, you must know, live at the Big House, and Lady Drakemire did not at all like his seeming to admire me, so he did not take me out driving as he said he would. Mama scolded, but indeed it was not my fault! I said everything she told me to, but it wouldn’t serve.” “I have sometimes thought,” said Kitty, tentatively, and after a short pause, “that nothing could be more disagreeable than to marry a gentleman for whom one feels no strong attachment.”
“No, indeed!” Olivia sighed.
“I could not do it. In fact, I would liefer by far die unwed!”
“Would you?” said Olivia wistfully. “But, then, dear Miss Charing, our circumstances are so different! You have all the comfort and consequence of fortune—”
“No, I assure you I have not! I am wholly dependant upon the generosity of my guardian! I do not exaggerate when I say that I have not a penny in the world!”
“Yes, but your guardian is rich, is he not? Mama, you see, is not rich at all, and I have three sisters,” said Olivia unanswerably. “I must be married. Oh, how vexed Mama would be if she was obliged to take me home again, and all the money she saved for this visit spent to no purpose!”
She looked so really frightened that Kitty said quickly: ‘ ‘Of course you will be married, and to a man you can esteem, too! Good gracious, don’t tell me you have not a great many admirers already, for I shall certainly not believe you! Indeed, I think everyone who sees you must admire you, for you are by far the prettiest girl in London!”
Olivia coloured, and averted her face. “Don’t—pray! Gentlemen do sometimes admire me, but—but they do not offer to marry me. Situated as I am—the manners of my cousins—so very free!—I have met with a want of propriety in—in some whom I believed to be so very gentlemanly!”
“I know what you mean, I daresay,” said Kitty, wisely, but in blissful ignorance of Miss Broughty’s meaning. “You are now and then judged by your company, and you find yourself treated with that kind of high-bred insolence which I have frequently noticed in London, and which I do not consider high-bred at all, but, on the contrary, excessively ill-bred!” She added frankly: “Forgive me, but I could not but notice that you were not quite pleased to meet Mr. Westruther in Berkeley Square! If you should have thought that he was not civil to you when you met him previously, I assure you he does not mean to offend! He has sometimes a little height in his manner: Lady Buckhaven rallies him on it, saying he sets up people’s backs. He is never formal, you know—indeed, I fancy he treats no one with particular distinction!”
“Oh, no!” breathed Olivia. “I did not mean—I should not have mentioned—Such a very distinguished man! His air and address so exactly—” She broke off in confusion, and quickly directed Kitty’s attention to a clump of purple crocuses.
Some inkling of the truth began to dawn on Kitty. It was apparent to her that the magnificence of Mr. Westruther had had its inevitable effect upon Miss Broughty. She did not wonder at it; she would indeed have found it hard to believe that any female could be ten minutes in Mr. Westruther’s company without falling under the spell of his charm. But her sojourn in London, short though it had been, had convinced her that those who called Jack a shocking flirt spoke no less than the truth. It was, of course, reprehensible, but the failing did not diminish his charm: rather, it added to it, Kitty admitted to herself, a little guiltily. Nor was it just, she thought, to censure him too heavily, for the many ladies who blatantly set their caps at him gave him every encouragement to persist in his evil ways. But Kitty had quite a shrewd head on her shoulders, for all her country innocence, and somewhere, at the very back of her mind, not consciously acknowledged, lurked the conviction that Jack woxdd never marry to his own disadvantage. None knew better than she what havoc he could create in female breasts; it would be dreadful if he (unwittingly, of course) scarred Olivia’s tender heart. She said impulsively: “Yes, Freddy—Mr. Standen—