The Hoyden. Duchess

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СКАЧАТЬ not," says Tita, shaking her head. "Tennis is not so very exhausting—is it, Mrs. Bethune?"

      "I don't know, I'm sure. It seems to have exhausted your hair, at all events," says Mrs. Bethune, with her quick smile. "I think you had better go upstairs and settle it; it is very untidy."

      "Is it? Is it?" says Tita.

      She runs her little fingers through her pretty short locks, and gazes round. Her eyes meet Margaret's.

      "No, no," says the latter, laughing. "It looks like the hair of a little girl. You," smiling, "are a little girl. Go away and finish your fight with Mr. Gower."

      "Yes. Come! Miss Knollys is on my side. She knows I shall win," says the stout young man; and, whilst disputing with him at every step, Tita disappears.

      "What a girl! No style, no manners," says Lady Rylton; "and yet I must receive her as a daughter. Fancy living with that girl! A silly child, with her hair always untidy, and a laugh that one can hear a mile off. Yet it must be done."

      "After all, it is Maurice who will have to live with her," says Mrs.

       Bethune.

      "Oh, I hope not," says Margaret quickly.

      "Why?" asks Lady Rylton, turning to her with sharp inquiry.

      "It would never do," says Margaret with decision. "They are not suited to each other. Maurice! and that baby! It is absurd! I should certainly not counsel Maurice to take such a step as that!"

      "Why not? Good heavens, Margaret, I hope you are not in love with him, too!" says Lady Rylton.

      "Too?"

      Margaret looks blank.

      "She means me," says Mrs. Bethune, with a slight, insolent smile.

       "You know, don't you, how desperately in love with Maurice I am?"

      "I know nothing," says Miss Knollys, a little curtly.

      "Ah, you will!" says Mrs. Bethune, with her queer smile.

      "The fact is, Margaret," says Lady Rylton, with some agitation, "that if Maurice doesn't marry this girl, there—there will be an end of us all. He must marry her."

      "But he doesn't love—he barely knows her—and a marriage without love——"

      "Is the safest thing known."

      "Under given circumstances! I grant you that if two people well on in life, old enough to know their own minds, and what they are doing, were to marry, it might be different. They might risk a few years of mere friendship together, and be glad of the venture later on. But for two young people to set out on life's journey with nothing to steer by—that would be madness!"

      "Ah! yes. Margaret speaks like a book," says Mrs. Bethune, with an amused air; "Maurice, you see, is so young, so inexperienced——"

      "At all events, Tita is only a child."

      "Tita! Is that her name?"

      "A pet name, I fancy. Short for Titania; she is such a little thing."

      "Titania—Queen of the Fairies; I wonder if the original Titania's father dealt in buttons! Is it buttons, or soap, or tar? You didn't say," says Mrs. Bethune, turning to Lady Rylton.

      "I really don't know—and as it has to be trade, I can't see that it matters," says Lady Rylton, frowning.

      "Nothing matters, if you come to think of it," says Mrs. Bethune. "Go on, Margaret—you were in the middle of a sermon; I dare say we shall endure to the end."

      "I was saying that Miss Bolton is only a child."

      "She is seventeen. She told us about it last night at dinner. Gave us month and day. It was very clever of her. We ought to give her birthday-gifts, don't you think? And yet you call her a child!"

      "At seventeen, what else?"

      "Don't be ridiculous, Margaret," says Lady Rylton pettishly; "and, above all things, don't be old-fashioned. There is no such product nowadays as a child of seventeen. There isn't time for it. It has gone out! The idea is entirely exploded. Perhaps there were children aged seventeen long ago—one reads of them, I admit, but it is too long ago for one to remember. Why, I was only eighteen when I married your uncle."

      "Pour uncle!" says Mrs. Bethune; her tone is full of feeling.

      Lady Rylton accepts the feeling as grief for the uncle's death; but Margaret, casting a swift glance at Mrs. Bethune, wonders if it was meant for grief for the uncle's life—with Lady Rylton.

      "He was the ugliest man I ever saw, without exception," says Lady Rylton placidly; "and I was never for a moment blind to the fact, but he was well off at that time, and, of course, I married him. I wasn't in love with him." She pauses, and makes a little apologetic gesture with her fan and shoulders. "Horrid expression, isn't it?" says she. "In love! So terribly bourgeois. It ought to be done away with. However, to go on, you see how admirably my marriage turned out. Not a hitch anywhere. Your poor dear uncle and I never had a quarrel. I had only to express a wish, and it was gratified."

      "Poor dear uncle was so clever," says Mrs. Bethune, with lowered lids.

      Again Margaret looks at her, but is hardly sure whether sarcasm is really meant.

      "Clever? Hardly, perhaps," says Lady Rylton meditatively. "Clever is scarcely the word."

      "No, wise—wise is the word," says Mrs. Bethune.

      Her eyes are still downcast. It seems to Margaret that she is inwardly convulsed with laughter.

      "Well, wise or not, we lived in harmony," says Lady Rylton with a sigh and a prolonged sniff at her scent-bottle. "With us it was peace to the end."

      "Certainly; it was peace at the end," says Mrs. Bethune solemnly.

      It was, indeed, a notorious thing that the late Sir Maurice had lived in hourly fear of his wife, and had never dared to contradict her on any subject, though he was a man of many inches, and she one of the smallest creatures on record.

      "True! true! You knew him so well!" says Lady Rylton, hiding her eyes behind the web of a handkerchief she is holding. One tear would have reduced it to pulp. "And when he was——" She pauses.

      "Was dead?" says Margaret kindly, softly.

      "Oh, don't, dear Margaret, don't!" says Lady Rylton, with a tragical start. "That dreadful word! One should never mention death! It is so rude! He, your poor uncle—he left us with the sweetest resignation on the 18th of February, 1887."

      "I never saw such resignation," says Mrs. Bethune, with deep emphasis.

      She casts a glance at Margaret, who, however, refuses to have anything to do with it. But, for all that, Mrs. Bethune is clearly enjoying herself. She can never, indeed, refrain from sarcasm, even when her audience is unsympathetic.

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