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

she hates this pretty, fair, patrician woman before her--this woman with a well-bred face, and the vulgarest of all vulgar natures. This woman who has betrayed her son's secret. Even to so young a girl, and one who is not in love with her husband, the idea of the husband being in love with somebody else is distinctly distasteful.

"Besides, remember," says Tita, "Mrs. Bethune lives here. After all you have told me of her, and--Maurice--you," breaking into a gay little laugh, "could hardly expect me to make this place my home."

"You certainly seem to take it very lightly," says Lady Rylton. "Maurice must be congratulated on having secured so _compliant_ a wife."

"Why should I care?" asks Tita, turning a bright face to her. "We made a bargain before our marriage--Maurice and I. He was to do as he liked."

"And you?"

"I was to follow suit."

_ "Outrageous!"_ says Lady Rylton. "I shall speak to Maurice about it. I shall warn you. I shall tell him how I disapprove of you, and he----"

"He will do nothing," interrupts Tita. She stands up, and looks at the older woman as if defying her. Her small face is all alight, her eyes are burning.

"I dare say not, after all," says Lady Rylton, with a cruel smile. "He knew what he was about when he made that arrangement. It leaves him delightfully free to renew his love-affair with Marian Bethune."

"If he desires such freedom it is his." Tita gathers up her fan, and the long suède gloves lying on the chair near her, and walks towards the door.

"Stay, Tita!" cries Lady Rylton hurriedly. "You will say nothing of this to Maurice. It was in strict confidence I spoke, and for your good and his. You will say nothing to him?"

"I! what should I say?" She looks back at Lady Rylton, superb disdain in her glance.

"You might mention, for example, that it was I who told you."

"Well, why shouldn't I?" asked Tita. "Are you ashamed of what you have said?"

"I have always told you that I spoke only through a sense of duty, to protect you and him in your married life. You will give me your word that you will not betray me."

"I shall give you my word about nothing," coldly. "I shall tell Maurice, or I shall not tell him, just as it suits me."


CHAPTER XIV.

HOW TITA COMES TO OAKDEAN, AND IS GLAD. AND HOW MAURICE CALLS TO HER, AND SHE PERFORMS AN ACROBATIC FEAT. AND HOW A DISCUSSION ARISES.


What a day it is! Golden light everywhere; and the sounds of singing birds, and the perfume of the late mignonette and stocks. Who shall say summer is gone? Tita, flitting gaily through the gardens and pleasure-grounds of her old dear home, her beloved Oakdean, tells herself that it is summer _here _at all events, whatever it may be in other stupid homes.

Oakdean to-day is at its best, and that is saying a great deal. The grand old lawn, studded here and there with giant beeches, seems sleeping solemnly in the warm light, and to their left the lake lies, sleeping too, rocking upon its breast the lily leaves, whose flowers are now all gone. Over there the hills are purple with flowering heather, and beyond them, yet not so far away but that the soft murmuring of it can be heard, dwells the sea, spreading itself out, grand, immense, until it seems to touch the pale blue heavens.

Tita, stopping with her hands full of lowers, stands upright, and as a little breeze comes to her, draws in a long breath, as if catching the salt from the great ocean that it brings her. Oh, what a day--what a day!

Her lovely old home! Here she is in it once more--parted for ever from the detested uncle, mistress of this one place that holds for her the only happy memories of her youth. Here she and her father had lived--she a young, _young _child, and he an old one--a most happy couple; and here, too, she had grown to girlhood. And now here she is again, free to roam, to order, to direct, with no single hitch anywhere to mar her happiness.

The lovely new horse that Maurice has got for her leaves nothing to be desired; she has had a gallop on him this morning. And all her dear dogs have been sent to Oakdean, so that her hands are full of favourites. As for Maurice himself, he is delightful. He doesn't even _know_ how to scold. And it will always to be like this--always. As for that story of Lady Rylton's about Marian Bethune--why, Marian is quite an old thing! And besides--well, besides, it doesn't matter. Maurice is here now, and he can't see her, and even if he did--well, even if he did, what harm? Neither she nor Maurice even _pretends _to be in love with the other, and if he should be in love--as the idiots call it--with Mrs. Bethune, why, he _can_ be! _She_ won't prevent it, only she hopes poor Maurice won't make himself unhappy over that dreadful red-headed creature. But there is certainly one thing; he might have told her.

But what does anything matter? Here she is in her old home, with all her dear delights around her! She glances backwards and forwards, a happy smile upon her lips. From one of the Scotch firs over there, the graceful blossoms of the hop-plant droop prettily. And beyond them on the hillside, far, far away, she can see mushrooms gleaming in the fields, for all the world like little sheep dotted here and there. She laughs to herself as she notes the resemblance. And all is hers--all. And she is in her own home, and happy.

What a blessing she hadn't said "No" when Maurice asked her. If she had, she would have been living at Rickfort now with Uncle George.

"Tita!" cries Maurice.

He has thrown up the window of his smoking-room, and is calling to her.

"Yes?"

She turns to him, her arms full of flowers, her vivacious little face, just like another sort of flower, peeping over them.

"Can you come in for a moment?"

"Why can't you come out? _Do_, it is lovely here!"

"I can if you like, but it will mean hauling out pencils and paper, and----"

"Oh well, I'll come."

She runs to him across the green, sweet grass, and, standing beneath the window, holds out her hands to him.

"You can't come in this way," says he.

"Can't I? I wish I had a penny for every time I _did_ get in this way," says she. "Here, give me your hands."

He stoops to her, and catches her small brown hands in a close grip. The new Lady Rylton plants a very shapely little foot against an excrescence in the wall, and in a second has her knee on the window-sill.

"After all, my mother was right," says Rylton, laughing. "You are a hoyden."

He takes the slight girlish figure in his arms, and swings her into the room. She stands for a second looking at him with a rather thoughtful air. Then--

"You mother may call me names if she likes," says she. "But _you_ mustn't!"

"No?" laughing again. She amuses him with her little air of authority. "Very good. I shan't! I suppose I may call you wife, any way."

"Oh, that!" She stops. "Did you bring me in to ask me that question?"

At this they laugh together.

"No. I confess so much."

"What, then?"

"Well, we ought to decide at once who we are going to ask for the rest of the shooting. The preserves are splendid, and it seems quite a sin to let them go to waste. Of course I know a lot of men I could ask, but there should be a few women, too, for you."

"Why for me? I like men a great deal better," says Tita audaciously.

"Well, you shouldn't! And, besides, you have some friends of your won to be asked."

"Your friends will do very well."

"Nonsense!" with a touch of impatience. "It is you and _your_ friends who are first to be considered; afterwards we can think of mine."

"I have no friends," says Tita carelessly.

"You have your uncle, at all events; he might like----"

"Oh, don't be an ass," says Lady Rylton.

She delivers this excellent advice with a promptitude and vigour that does her honour. Rylton stares at her for a moment, and then gives way to amusement.

"I shan't be if I can help it," says he; "but there are often so many difficulties in the way." He hesitates as if uncertain, and then goes on. "By the way, Tita, you shouldn't give yourself the habit of saying things like that."

"Like what?"

"Well, telling a fellow not to be an ass, you know. It doesn't matter to me, of course, but I heard you say something like that to old Lady Warbeck yesterday, and she seemed quite startled."

"Did she? Do her good!" says Tita, making a charming little face at him. "Nothing like electricity nowadays. It'll quite set her up again. Add _years_ to her life."

"Still, she wouldn't like it, perhaps."

"Having years added to her life?"

"No; your slang."

"She likes _me_, any way," says Tita nonchalantly, "so it doesn't matter about the slang. The last word she mumbled at me through her old false teeth was that she hoped I'd come over and see her every Tuesday that I had at my command (I'm not going to have _many_), because I reminded her of some granddaughter who was now in heaven, or at the Antipodes--it's all the same."

She pauses to catch a fly--dexterously, and with amazing swiftness, in the palm of her hand--that has been buzzing aimlessly against the window-pane. Having looked at it between her fingers, she flings it into the warm air outside.

"So you see," continues she triumphantly, "it's a good thing to startle people. They fall in love with you at once."

Here, as if some gay little thought has occurred to her, she lowers her head and looks at her dainty finger-nails, then up at Rylton from under half-closed lids.

"What a good thing I didn't try to startle _you!"_ says she. _"You_ might have fallen in love with me, too."

She waits for a second as it were, just time enough to let her see the nervous movement of his brows, and then--she laughs.

"I've escaped that bore," says she, nodding her head. She throws herself into a big chair. "And now, as the parsons say, 'to continue'; you were advising me to ask----"

"Your uncle."

All the brightness has died out of Rylton's voice; he looks dull, uninterested. That small remark of hers--what memories it has awakened! And yet--_would_ he go back?

"Chut! What a suggestion!" says Tita, shrugging her shoulders. "Don't you know that my one thought is to enjoy myself?"

"A great one," says he, smiling strangely.

She cares for nothing, he tells himself: _nothing!_ He has married a mere butterfly; yet how pretty the butterfly is, lying back there in that huge armchair, her picturesque little figure flung carelessly into artistic curves, her soft, velvety head rubbing itself restlessly amongst the amber cushions. The cushions had been in one of the drawing-rooms, but she had declared he was frightfully uncomfortable in his horrid old den,