The Marriage of William Ashe. Mrs. Humphry Ward

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      Colonel Wensleydale did not appear. Madame d'Estrées let it be understood that her step-daughter was of a difficult temper, and now spent most of her time in Ireland. Her own daughter, her "darling Kitty," was being educated in Paris by the Soeurs Blanches, and she pined for the day when the "little sweet" should join her, ready to spread her wings in the great world. But mothers must not be impatient, Kitty must have all the advantages that befitted her rank; and to what better hands could the most anxious mother intrust her than to those charming, aristocratic, accomplished nuns of the Soeurs Blanches?

      Then one January day M. d'Estrées drove out to San Paolo fuori le Mura, and caught a blast from the snowy Sabines coming back. In three days he was dead, and his well-provided widow had snatched the bulk of his fortune from the hands of his needy and embittered kindred.

      Within six months of his death she had bought a house in St. James's Place, and her London career had begun.

      "It is here that we come in," said Lord Grosville, when, with more digressions and more plainness of speech with regard to his quondam sister-in-law than can be here reproduced, he had brought his story to this point. "Blackwater—the old ruffian—when he was dying had a moment of remorse. He wrote to my wife and asked her to look after his girls, 'For God's sake, Lina, see if you can help Alice—Wensleydale's a perfect brute.' That was the first light we had on the situation, for Adelina had long before washed her hands of him; and we knew that she hated us. Well, we tried; of course we tried. But so long as her husband lived Alice would have nothing to say to any of us. I suppose she thought that for her boy's sake she'd better keep a bad business to herself as much as possible—"

      "Wensleydale—Wensleydale?" said Ashe, who had been smoking hard and silently beside his host. "You mean the man who distinguished himself in the Crimea? He died last year—at Naples, wasn't it?"

      Lord Grosville assented.

      It appeared that during the last year of his life Lady Alice had nursed her husband faithfully through disease and poverty; for scarcely a vestige of her fortune remained, and an application for money made by Wensleydale to Madame d'Estrées, unknown to his wife, had been peremptorily refused. The colonel died, and within three months of his death Lady Alice had also lost her son and only child, of blood-poisoning developed in Naples, whither he had been summoned from school that his father might see him for the last time.

      Then, after seventeen years, Lady Alice came back to her kindred, who had last seen her as a young girl—gentle, undeveloped, easily led, and rather stupid. She returned a gray-haired woman of thirty-four, who had lost youth, fortune, child, and husband; whose aspect, moreover, suggested losses still deeper and more drear. At first she wrapped herself in what seemed to some a dull and to others a tragic silence. But suddenly a flame leaped up in her. She became aware of the position of Madame d'Estrées in London; and one day, at a private view of the Academy, her former step-mother went up to her smiling, with out-stretched hand. Lady Alice turned very pale; the hand dropped, and Alice Wensleydale walked rapidly away. But that night, in the Grosville house, she spoke out.

      "She told Lina and myself the whole story. You'd have thought the woman was possessed. My wife—she's not of the crying sort, nor am I. But she cried, and I believe—well, I can tell you it was enough to move a stone. And when she'd done, she just went away, and locked her door, and let no one say a word to her. She has told one or two other relations and friends, and—"

      "And the relations and friends have told others?"

      "Well, I can answer for myself," said Grosville after a pause. "This happened three months ago. I never have told, and never shall tell, all the details as she told them to us. But we have let enough be known—"

      "Enough?—enough to damn Madame d'Estrées?"

      "Oh, well, as far as the women were concerned, she was mostly that already. There are other tales going about. I expect you know them."

      "No, I don't know them," said Ashe.

      Lord Grosville's face expressed surprise. "Well, this finished it," he said.

      "Poor child!" said Ashe, slowly, putting down his cigarette and turning a thoughtful look on the carpet.

      "Alice?" said Lord Grosville.

      "No."

      "Oh! you mean Kitty? Yes, I had forgotten her for the moment. Yes, poor child."

      There was silence a moment, then Lord Grosville inquired:

      "What do you think of her?"

      "I?" said Ashe, with a laugh. "I don't know. She's obviously very pretty—"

      "And a handful!" said Lord Grosville.

      "Oh, quite plainly a handful," said Ashe, rather absently. Then the memory of Kitty's entry recurred to them both, and they laughed.

      "Not much shyness left in that young woman—eh?" said the old man. "She tells my girls such stories of her French doings—my wife's had to stop it. She seems to have had all sorts of love-affairs already. And, of course, she'll have any number over here—sure to. Some unscrupulous fellow'll get hold of her, for naturally the right sort won't marry her. I don't know what we can do. Adelina offered to take her altogether. But that woman wouldn't hear of it. She wrote Lina rather a good letter—on her dignity—and that kind of thing. We gave her an opening, and, by Jove! she took it."

      "And meanwhile Lady Kitty has no dealings with her step-sister?"

      "You heard what she said. Extraordinary girl! to let the thing out plump like that. Just like the blood. They say anything that comes into their heads. If we had known that Alice was to be with the Sowerbys this week-end, my wife would certainly have put Kitty off. It would be uncommonly awkward if they were to meet—here for instance. Hullo! Is it getting late?"

      For the whist-players at the end of the library had pushed back their chairs, and men were strolling back from the billiard-room.

      "I am afraid Lady Kitty understands there is something wrong with her mother's position," said Ashe, as they rose.

      "I dare say. Brought up in Paris, you see," said the white-haired Englishman, with a shrug. "Of course, she knows everything she shouldn't."

      "Brought up in a convent, please," said Ashe, smiling. "And I thought the French girl was the most innocent and ignorant thing alive."

      Lord Grosville received the remark with derision.

      "You ask my wife what she thinks about French convents. She knows—she's had lots of Catholic relations. She'll tell you tales."

      Ashe thought, however, that he could trust himself to see that she did nothing of the sort.

      The smoking-room broke up late, but the new Under-secretary sat up still later, reading and smoking in his bedroom. A box of Foreign Office papers lay on his table. He went through them with a keen sense of pleasure, enjoying his new work and his own competence to do it, of which, notwithstanding his remarks to Mary Lyster, he was not really at all in doubt. Then when his comments were done, and the papers replaced in the order in which they would now go up to the Secretary of State, he felt the spring night oppressively mild, and walking to the window, he threw it wide open.

      He looked out upon a Dutch garden, full of spring flowers in СКАЧАТЬ