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

to get into it."

"Sh!" says Lady Rylton. "My dear, you should not mention your _bath_ before people."

"Why not? When one loves a thing, one speaks of it. Don't _you_ love your bath?" asks Tita.

Lady Rylton sits glaring at her, as if too horrified to go on. Tita continues:

"If you don't, you ought, you know," says she.

"You must be out of your mind to talk to me like this," says Lady Rylton at last. Something in the girl's air tells her that there is some little touch of devilment in it, some anger, some hatred. "But, naturally, I make allowances for you. Your birth, your surroundings, your bringing up, all preclude the idea that you should know how to manage yourself in the world into which you have been thrown by your marriage with my son."

"As for my birth," says Tita slowly, "I did not choose it; and you should be the last to throw it in my teeth. If you disapproved of it _before_ my marriage with your son, why did you not say so?"

"There were many reasons," says Lady Rylton slowly, deliberately. "For one, as you know, your money was a necessity to Maurice; and for another----" She breaks off, and scans the girl's face with an air of question. "Dare I go on?" asks she.

"Why should you not dare?" says Tita.

A quick light has come into her eyes.

"Ah, that is it! I have something to say to you that I think, perhaps, should be said, yet I fear the saying of it."

"For you, or for me?" asks Tita.

She has her small brown hands clasped tightly together in her lap now. There is something nervous in the tension of them. Where, _where_ is Margaret? For all that, she looks back at her mother-in-law with a clear and fearless glance.

"For you," says Lady Rylton--"for you only! But before I begin--I am a very nervous person, you know, and scenes," again pressing her handkerchief to her face, "upset me so--tell me, _do_ tell me, if you have a good temper!"

"I don't know," says Tita. "Why?"

"Well, a reasonable temper! I know Maurice would try anything--_less_ than that."

"Has it to do with Maurice? Yes? I am _very_ reasonable," says Tita, laughing. She shows all her pretty teeth. "Now for the other reason for deigning to accept me as your son's wife!"

She laughs again. She seems to turn Lady Rylton into a sort of mild ridicule.

"I don't think I should laugh about it if I were _you,"_ returns Lady Rylton calmly, and with the subdued air that tells her intimates when she is in one of her vilest moods. "I feel very sorry for you, my poor child; and I would have warned you of this thing long ago, but I dreaded the anger of Maurice."

"Why, what _is_ it?" cries Tita vehemently. "Has Maurice murdered somebody, or defrauded somebody, or run away with somebody?"

"Oh no! He did not run _away_ with her," says lady Rylton slowly.

"You mean--you mean----"

The girl is now leaning forward, her small face rather white.

"I mean that he has been in love with his cousin for the past two years."

"His cousin!" Tita's thoughts run to Margaret. "Margaret?"

"Nonsense!" says Lady Rylton; the idea strikes her as ludicrous. The surprise, the strange awakening to the young bride, who, if not in love with her husband, has at all events expected loyalty from him, has affected her not at all; but this suggestion of Margaret as a possible lover of Maurice's convulses her with amusement. "Margaret! _No!"_

"Who, then?" asks Tita.

"Marian--Marian Bethune."

"Mrs. Bethune!"

"Did you never guess? I fancied perhaps you had heard nothing, so I felt it my duty to let you into a _little_ of the secret--to _warn_ you. Marian might want to stay with you, for example--and Maurice----"

"Mrs. Bethune may stay with me with pleasure," says Tita. "Why not?"

"Why _not?"_ Lady Rylton pauses as if choking. She had thought to lower this girl into the very dust, and revenge herself on Maurice at the same time by her shameful revelation. "You do not care, then?" says she, bitterly disappointed.

Tita does not answer her. Suddenly her young thoughts have gone backwards, and all at once she remembers many things. The poison has entered into her. In a moment, as it were, she is back in that dim conservatory where Maurice (he has never been "he" or "him" to her, as happier girls, who love more and are more beloved, would have styled him)--where Maurice had asked her to marry him.

Now, in some strange fashion, her memory grows alive and compels her to remember how he looked and spoke that night--that night of his proposal to her, when she had asked him if he loved his cousin.

There had been a queer, indescribable change in his face--a sudden pallor, a start! She had thought nothing of it then, but now it comes back to her. She _had_ meant Margaret--Margaret whom she loves; but he--who had _he_ meant?

Really it doesn't matter so much after all, this story of Lady Rylton's. Maurice can go his way and she hers--that was arranged! But, for all that, it _does_ seem rather mean that he should have married her, telling her nothing of this.

"Care! why should I care?" says she suddenly, Lady Rylton's last words clinging to her brain, in spite of all its swift wanderings during the last sixty seconds.

"Such an admirable indifference would almost lead me to believe that you had been born of good parentage," says Lady Rylton, cold with disappointed revenge.

"I was born of excellent parentage----" Tita is beginning, when the sound of footsteps slowly mounting the stairs of the veranda outside comes to them.

A second later Mrs. Gower shows himself.


CHAPTER XIII.

HOW A YOUNG AND LOVELY NATURE TAKES A SHOCK MOST CRUELLY ADMINISTERED. AND HOW A DOWAGER TAKES A NEW NAME AS A DIRECT INSULT. AND HOW TITA DECLINES TO PROMISE ANYTHING.


He stands at the open window looking in. All at once Tita knows and _feels_ that Margaret sent him to rescue her from captivity.

"Lady Rylton," calls he, "won't you come out? The evening is a perfect dream--a boon and a blessing to men, like those pens, you know."

The elder Lady Rylton answers him. She leans forward, a charming smile on her wonderfully youthful features.

"No. No, thanks." She shakes her pretty, fair head at Gower in a delightfully coquettish fashion. Dear boy! How sweet is it of him to come and fetch her for a little stroll among the hollyhocks. "I can't go out now. Not _to-night_, Randal!"

"Oh! er--so sorry! But----" He looks at Tita. It is impossible not to understand that the Lady Rylton he had intended to take for a little stroll in the calm, delightful evening, had been the younger Lady Rylton. "Well, if your--er--mother--won't come, won't _you?"_ asks he, now addressing Tita distinctly.

"I am not going out either," says she, smiling gently at him. To go now will be to betray fear, and she--no, she will not give in, any way, she will never show the white feather. She will finish this hour with Lady Rylton, whatever it may cost her.

"Really?" asks Gower. He looks as if he would have persuaded her to come with him, but something in her manner convinces him of the folly of persistence.

"Yes, really," returns she, after which he goes down the steps again. They can hear him going, slowly this time, as if reluctantly, and step by step. There doesn't seem to be a run left in him.

"How absurd it is, this confusion of titles!" says Lady Rylton, as the last unsatisfactory step is lost to them in the distance. "Lady Rylton here and Lady Rylton there. Absurd, _I_ call it." She makes a pretence at laughter, but it is a sorry one--her laugh is only angry.

"I suppose it can't be helped," says Tita indifferently. Her eyes are still downcast, her young mouth a little scornful.

"But if you are to be Lady Rylton as well as I, how are we to distinguish? What am _I_ to be?"

"The dowager, I suppose," says Tita, with a little flash of malice. She has been rubbed the wrong way a trifle too much for _one_ afternoon.

_"The dowager!"_ Lady Rylton springs to her feet. "I--do you think that _I_ shall follow _you_ out of a room?"

"Follow me! I'd hate you to follow me anywhere!" says Tita, who does not certainly follow her as to her meaning.

"That is meant to be a smart speech, I presume," says Lady Rylton, sinking back into her seat once more. "But do not for a moment imagine that I dread you. You know very little of Society if you think you will be tolerated _there."_

"I know nothing of Society," returns Tita, now very pale, "and perhaps you will understand me when I say that I never want to know anything. If Society means people who tell hateful, unkind stories of a husband to his wife, I think I am very well out of it."

"That is a little censure upon poor me, I suppose," says Lady Rylton with a difficult smile. She looks at Tita. Evidently she expects Tita to sink into the ground beneath that austere regard, but Tita comes up smiling.

"Well, yes. After all, I suppose so," says she slowly, thoughtfully. "You shouldn't have told me that story about Maurice and----" She stops.

"I shall not permit you to dictate to me what I should or should not do," interrupts Lady Rylton coldly. "You forget yourself! You forget what is due to the head of the house."

"I do not, indeed; Maurice will tell you so!"

"Maurice! What has he to do with it?"

"Why, he _is_ the head," slowly.

"True, you are right so far," says Lady Rylton bitterly. "But I was not alluding to the _actual_ head; I was alluding to the--the _mistress_ of this house." She pauses, and looks with open hatred at the little girl before her. Tita could have answered her, have told her that her authority was at an end for ever, but by a violent effort she restrains herself. Tita's naturally warm temper is now at boiling-point. Still, she puts a restraint upon herself.

"You will understand for the future, I hope," says Lady Rylton, who has lost all control over _her_ temper; "you will, for the future, at all events, I trust, bear yourself with respect towards the mistress of this house."

Her manner is so insolent, so unbearable, that Tita's short-lived calm gives way.

"Maurice says I am the mistress here," says she distinctly, clearly.

"You! _you----"_ Lady Rylton advances towards her with a movement that is almost threatening.

"Don't be uneasy about it," says Tita, with a scornful little laugh, and a gesture that destroys the meaning of Lady Rylton's. "I don't want to be the mistress here. I dislike the place. I shall be delighted if you will live here--_instead of me."_

"You are too good!" says Lady Rylton, in a choking tone. She looks as if she could kill this girl, whom she has driven to so fierce an anger.

"I think it dismal," goes on Tita. "I like light and gay places." There is a little clutch at her heart, though why, she hardly knows. What she _does_ know is that