The Hoyden by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (best value ebook reader TXT) 📖

shall I leave you?"

She is looking very beautiful. Her pallor, the violet shades beneath her eyes, all tend to make her lovely.

"It is you who have left me."

"I? Oh no! Oh, think!" says she, laughing still.

Rylton draws a long breath.

"After all, it could never have come to anything," says he, in a dull sort of way.

"Never, never," smiling.

"I don't believe you care," says he bitterly.

She looks at him. It is a curious look.

"Why should I? Do _you_ care?"

He turns away.

"Don't let us part bad friends," says she, going to him, and twining one of her hands round his arm. "What have I done to you, or you to me? How have we been enemies? It is fate, it is poverty that has been our common enemy, Maurice, remember what we _have_ been to each other."

"It is what I dare not remember," says he hoarsely.

His face is resolutely turned from hers.

"Well, well, forget, then, _if you can_. As for me, remembrance will be my sole joy."

"It is madness, Marian, to talk to me like this. What is to be gained by it?"

"Why, nothing, nothing, and so let us forget; let us begin again as true friends only."

"There is no hope of that," says he.

His voice is a mere whisper.

"Oh yes, there is--there," eagerly, _"must_ be. What! Would you throw me over altogether, Maurice? Oh, that I _could_ not bear! Why should we not be as brother and sister to each other? Yes, yes," vehemently; "tell me it shall be so. You will ask me to your new house, Maurice, won't you?"

She is looking up into his face, her hand still pressing his arm.

"My wife's house."

"Your wife's house is yours, is it not? You owe yourself something from this marriage. You will ask me there now and then?"

"She will ask her own guests, I suppose."

"She will ask whom _you_ choose. Pah! what is she but a child in your hands?"

"Tita is not the cipher you describe her," says Rylton coldly.

"No, no; I spoke wrongly--I am always wrong, it seems to me," says she, with such sweet contrition that she disarms him again. "I cannot live if I cannot see you sometimes, and, besides, you _know_ what my life is here, and how few are the houses I can go to, and"--she slips her arms suddenly round his neck--"you _will_ ask me sometimes, Maurice?"

"Yes."

"You promise that?"

"I promise that, as far as it lies in my power, I will always befriend you."

"Ah, that is not enough," says she, laughing and sobbing in the same breath. "I am losing you for ever. Give me something to dwell upon, to hope for. Swear you will make me your guest sometimes."

"I swear it," says he huskily.

He removes her arms from his neck, and holds her from him. His face is gray.

"It is for the sake of our old _friendship_ that I plead," says she.

The tears are running down her cheeks.

"Our friendship," repeats he, with a groan.

He makes a movement as if to fling her from him, then suddenly catches her to his heart, and presses his lips passionately to hers.


* * * * *


"Maurice! Maurice!" calls somebody.

Marian sinks upon a couch near her, and buries her face in her hands. Sir Maurice goes into the hall to meet his bride.

The partings are very brief. Tita, who is in the gayest spirits, says good-bye to everybody with a light heart. Has not her freedom been accomplished? She receives Lady Rylton's effusive embrace calmly. There are some, indeed, who say that the little bride did not return her kiss. Just at the very last, with her foot almost on the carriage step, Tita looks back, and seeing Margaret at a little distance, runs to her, and flings herself into her embrace.

"You are mine now, my own cousin!" whispers she joyfully.

"God bless you, Tita," says Margaret in a whisper, too, but very earnestly, "and preserve to you your happy heart!"

"Oh, I shall always be happy," says Tita; "and I shall hurry back to see _you,"_ giving her another hug.

Then somebody puts her into the carriage, and, still smiling and waving her hands, she is driven away.

"Really, Margaret, you should be flattered," says Lady Rylton, with a sneer. "She seems to think more of you than of her husband."

"I hope her husband will think of her," returns Margaret coldly. "As I told you before, I consider this marriage ill done."


CHAPTER XII.

HOW TITA COMES BACK FROM HER HONEYMOON, AND HOW HER HUSBAND'S MOTHER TELLS HER OF CERTAIN THINGS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEFT UNTOLD.


"And the weather--the weather was the most marvellous thing!" says Tita, with enthusiasm. "Perpetual sunshine! Here, in September, it often pelts rain all day long!"

_ "Pelts!_ My dear Tita, _what_ a word!" says Lady Rylton.

She sinks back in her chair as if overcome, and presses her perfumed handkerchief to her face.

"What's the matter with it?" asks Tita, a little smartly, perhaps. "It's a right-down good word, in my opinion. I've heard lots of people use it."

"No doubt _you_ have," says her mother-in-law.

"Well, so have you, I dare say!" says Tita.

"I expect we all have," says Margaret Knollys, laughing. "Still, you know, Tita, it's not a pretty word."

"Very good; I shan't say it again," says Tita, the mutinous little face of a moment ago now lovely with love.

She has come back from her honeymoon quite as fond of Margaret as when she started.

It is now the middle of September; outside on the lawn the shadows are wandering merrily from tree to tree. The sun is high, but little clouds running across it now and again speak of sharp rains to come.


"The air so soft, the pines whispering so low,
The dragon-flies, like fairy spears of steel,
Darting or poised."


All these speak of the glad heat that still remains, though summer itself is but a dream that is gone.

Tita's honeymoon is at an end. It had seemed to her delightful. She had taken but a child's view of it. Maurice had been so kind, so good, so different from that nasty old uncle. He had been so good, indeed, that when he asked her to come first to see his mother (Lady Rylton had made quite a point of this in her letters to him; the county might think it so odd if the young wife did not appear anxious to fly into her arms on her return), she had said "Yes" quite willingly, and with a grateful little glance. He had done so much for her, she must do something for him. But she hated going back to The Place, for all that. She wanted to go straight to her own old home, her beautiful Oakdean, without a single stop.

She has been at The Place now for a week. Margaret Knollys and Randal Gower are the only two guests, Mrs. Bethune being on a visit to some friends in Scotland. The shooting here is excellent, and Sir Maurice has enjoyed himself immensely. Sir Maurice's wife has, perhaps, not enjoyed herself quite so much. But nothing, so far, has occurred to render her in the very least unhappy. If the clouds be black, she has not seen them. Her young soul has uplifted itself, and is soaring gaily amongst the stars. In her ignorance she tells herself she is quite, quite happy; it is only when we love that we doubt of happiness, and thus sometimes (because of our modesty, perhaps) we gain it. Tita has never known what love means.

There has been a little fret, a little jar to-day, between her and Lady Rylton. The latter's memory is good, and she has never forgotten what Maurice--in a moment's folly--had said of Tita's determination not to live with her at The Place. It is Lady Rylton's _rôle_ to return to all, in extra good measure, such injuries as she may judge herself to have received.

Tita naturally, in this small warfare, is at a disadvantage. She has forgotten her words, but even if she remembered them, would not for a moment suspect Maurice of having repeated them. And, indeed, Maurice, as we all know, had done it in a heated moment with best intent towards his small betrothed; besides, Tita at this time--so heartwhole and so _débonnaire--_gives no thinking to anything save the getting out into the fresh air in these uncertain days, and the breaking in of a young horse that Maurice has made her a present of. Danger walks behind her, but she never turns her head; what has she to fear?


"Youth, that knows no dread
Of any horrors lurking far ahead,
Across the sunny flowered fields of life."


carries her safely right into the enemy's camp. Cruel youth!

"Won't you come out with me and have a stroll in the gardens before tea?" asks Margaret, rising. It seems to her that the social air is growing a little too sultry. "Come, Tita; it will do you good."

"Oh, I should love it!" says Tita, starting to her feet.

"Dear Margaret, you forget that, though Tita has been here for a week, this is the very first quiet moment I have had with her! Do not tempt her from me!"

"Certainly not, Tessie, if you wish to have her with you," says Margaret, reseating herself.

Now, more than ever, she feels there is danger in the air.

"Don't let me keep _you,"_ says Lady Rylton, with deliberation. "Go, dear Margaret, and get some of the sweet evening air--it may be of use to your complexion; it is the tiniest bit yellow of late. And when one is twenty-five--it _is_ twenty-five?"

She knows Margaret's truthful nature.

"Thirty," says Margaret, who knows her, too, to the very ground.

"Ah, impossible!" says Lady Rylton sweetly. "Twenty-five, Margaret--not a day more! But, still, your complexion---- There, go away and refresh it; and come back when I have had my little chat with my dearest Tita."

Margaret casts a swift glance at the girl sitting there, apparently quite unconscious of the coming storm, and with her hands twined behind her head. She has her legs crossed--another sin--and is waving one little foot up and down in a rather too careless fashion.

Tita looks back at her.

"Don't be long," says she inaudibly.

Margaret gives her a nod, and goes out through the window.

"My dearest child," says Lady Rylton, nestling cosily into her chair, and smiling delicately at Tita over the top of her fan, "you may have noticed that I gave dear Margaret her _congé_ with intent?"

"I saw that you wanted to get rid of her," says Tita.

"I fear, my dear, your training has been somewhat defective," says Lady Rylton, biting her lips. "We never--we in society, I mean--never 'get rid' of people. There are better ways of doing things, that----"

"It must cause you a lot of trouble," says Tita. "It looks to me like walking half a dozen times round your bath on a frosty morning, knowing all along you will have