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

flush has risen to his brow, his nostrils are dilated. Is she mad--to say such things to him? "Go!" says he, pointing imperiously to the door.

"You have said that twice!" returns she in a low tone. A moment her eyes rest on his, in another moment she is gone.

All that is left him is the memory of a little lovely creature, clad in a white gown, who had come to him with merry, happy eyes, and a smile upon her lips--a smile that he had killed!


CHAPTER XXVII.

HOW SIR MAURICE FEELS UNEASY; AND HOW TITA, FOR ONCE, SHOWS HERSELF IMPLACABLE, AND REFUSES TO ACCEPT THE OVERTURES OF PEACE. AND HOW A LITTLE GOSSIP WARMS THE AIR.


It is the next day, and luncheon is well over, a somewhat badly-attended meal. But now all have managed to scramble downstairs, and the terrace is full of people who are saying "Good-morning" to each other at four o'clock in the afternoon.

"I never felt so tired in my life," says Mrs. Chichester, subsiding into a lounge chair, and trying to look as if her tea-gown isn't quite new. She has selected this evening in especial to spring it upon her women friends. As a rule people look dowdy after being up all night. Mrs. Chichester is determined _she_ won't. She appears as fresh as the proverbial lark, in an exquisite arrangement of white silk and lace, and a heavenly temper. Her eyes are a little greener than usual.

"You don't look it," says Sir Maurice, who is standing near. He is wondering if Tita will come down. Tita has not put in an appearance all day. There had been no necessity to send an apology about her absence from breakfast, as almost every one of the women had taken that meal in her own room, but she _had_ sent a word or two of regret about her inability to appear at luncheon, and, somehow, it has got into Sir Maurice's mind that perhaps she has made up her mind to stay in her own rooms all day. The thought makes him uneasy; but at this moment an end is put to it.

There is a little stir on his left, and, looking up, he sees Tita coming towards him down the terrace, stopping at every step to say a word to somebody. Now she stops as she comes to Margaret, and, laying her hands upon her shoulders, kisses her. She is dressed in the simplest little white frock in the world--a frock that makes her look even younger than usual. Her pretty short air is curling all over her head, and her dark gray eyes are _very_ dark to-day. Do shadows lie in them, or has she been crying? It is Rylton who, watching her, asks himself this question, and as he asks it a strange pang shoots through his heart. Good heavens! why had he married her? To make her unhappy? He must have been possessed of the devil when he did that deed.

"How pretty you look, Tita!" Margaret whispers to her--Margaret, who has the gift of knowing how to soothe and please. She, too, has her misgivings about those lovely eyes; but all girls like to be told they are pretty, and Tita at once brightens.

"Am I? You are a goose, Madge!" But she presses Margaret's hands fondly for all that as she leaves her.

"Lady Rylton, come and sit here," cries Mrs. Chichester. "I have a lovely chair here for you. It's as soft as----" She cannot find a simile.

"As what?" asks Gower, who delights in annoying Mrs. Chichester.

"As you!" returns she, with a contemptuous glance that fills him with joy.

"Come," says Mrs. Chichester, calling again to Tita, and patting the chair in question. "You look tired. This is a perfect lounge."

"She looks as if she had been crying," says old Miss Gower, frowning at Tita over her glasses.

Again that strange pang contracts Rylton's heart. _Has_ she been crying--and because of him?

"Looks! What are looks?" cries Mrs. Chichester gaily. "Looks always belie one."

"Certainly Lady Rylton's must belie _her,"_ says Mrs. Bethune, with a slow smile. "What cause has she for tears?"

"Not one!" declares Mrs. Chichester with decision. "It would be 'a sinner above all the Galileans' who would make Lady Rylton cry."

Her queer green eyes smile at Tita, who smiles back at her in her little sweet way, and then all at once bursts out laughing. It is a charming laugh, apparently full of mirth. There are only two present who do not quite believe in it, Margaret and Tom Hescott--but these two love her.

As for Rylton, some instinct causes him at this moment to look at Hescott. Tita's cousin is staring at her, his brows met, his lips somewhat compressed. He has forgotten that people may be staring at him in return, maybe measuring his thoughts on this or that. He has forgotten everything, indeed, except Tita's pale, laughing face and dancing, tear-stained eyes.

"Do you see a ghost?" whispers Mrs. Bethune to him, who has been watching him with cruel amusement.

"I don't know," he answers, hardly hearing her. Is not Tita to-day a ghost of her sweet self? And those words, "A sinner above all the Galileans!" _Is_ there such a sinner?--and if so, surely it is----

Hescott lifts his eyes to meet those of Rylton. For a moment the two men regard each other steadily, and in that moment know that each hates the other with an undying intensity. Mrs. Bethune, who alone sees the working of the little tragedy, leans back in her chair, and lets her lids fall over her eyes. So still she lies that one might think her sleeping, but she is only battling with a fierce joy that threatens every moment to break its bonds, and declare her secret to the world!

During all this, conversation has been going on. Last night's sayings and doings are on the _tapis,_ and everyone is giving his and her experiences. Just now the rather disreputable wife of a decidedly disreputable neighbour is lying on the social dissecting board.

"She gives herself away a good deal, I must say," says Mrs. Chichester, who loves to hear her own voice, and who certainly cannot be called ungenerous on her own account. "The way she dances! And her frock! Good heavens!"

"I hear she makes all her own clothes," says Margaret, who perhaps hopes that this may be one small point in her favour.

Minnie Hescott makes a little _moue_.

"She may possibly make the things that cover her----"

"That _what?"_ questions Mr. Gower, resting innocent eyes on hers, but Miss Hescott very properly refuses to hear him.

"It must be a matter for regret to all well-minded people," says Miss Gower, shaking her head until all her ringlets are set flying, "that when making that hideous dress, she did not add a yard or two, to----" She pauses.

"The what?" asks Mrs. Chichester, leaning forward.

"The _bodice!"_ replies Miss Gower severely.

"Oh, auntie!" says her nephew, falling back in his chair and covering his face with his hands. "You shouldn't! You really shouldn't! It's--it's not delicate!"

"What do you mean, Randal?" demands his aunt, with a snort that would have done credit to a war-horse. "To whom are you addressing your remarks? Are you calling _me_ indelicate?"

"Oh no--not for worlds!" says Mrs. Chichester, who is choking with laughter, and who only emerges from behind her fan to say this, and go back again. "Who could? But we feared--we thought you were going to say her _skirt."_

"It is my opinion that you fear nothing," says Miss Gower, with a withering glance at the fan. "And let me tell you that there are _other_ people,"--with awful emphasis--"besides Mrs. Tyneway who would do well to put a tucker round their----"

"Ankles!" puts in Mrs. Chichester sweetly.

"No; their----"

"What was her dress made of?" breaks in Margaret hurriedly, who is afraid of their going too far with the irascible old lady.

"Goodness knows! She was all black and blue, at all events!"

"No! You don't say so?" exclaims Mr. Gower, with a tragic gesture. "So her husband has been at it again!"

At this they all roar, as people will, at _anything,_ when they have nothing else to do. Even Tita, who, though smiling always, is looking rather depressed, gives way to a merry little laugh. Hearing her, Margaret blesses Randal for his silly old joke.

"Oh, Randal! you are too stupid for anything," says Tita, showing all her pretty teeth.

"You have for once lighted on a solemn truth," puts in Randal's aunt grimly. "Let us hope you are getting sense."

"Or a wise tooth," says Colonel Neilson, with a friendly smile at Tita. "Lady Rylton is very _nearly_ old enough to be thinking of that now."

"As for that wretched Mrs. Tyneway," says Miss Gower, taking no notice of him, "if her husband did so far take the law into his own hands as to make her black and blue, I, for one, should not blame him."

"That's funny!" says Mrs. Chichester, giving her a saucy little smile.

"What is funny, may I ask?"

"To hear you defend a man. I thought you despised them in a body."

"I have my own views about them," says Miss Gower, with a sniff. "But I admit they have rights of their own."

"Fancy allowing a man to have rights nowadays!" cries Mrs. Chichester, uplifting her long arms as if in amazement. "Good heavens! What a wife you would have made! Rights?" She looks up suddenly at Captain Marryatt, who is, as usual, hanging over the back of her chair. "Do you think a man has any rights?"

"If you don't, I don't," returns that warrior, with much abasement and perhaps more sense than one would have expected from him.

"Good boy," says she, patting his hand with her fan.

"I suppose husbands have some rights, at all events?" says Sir Maurice.

He says it quite lightly--quite debonnairly, yet he hardly knows why he says it. He had been looking at Tita, and suddenly she had looked back at him. There was something in the cold expression of her face, something defiant, that had driven him to make this foolish speech.

"Husbands? Pouf! They least of all," says Mrs. Chichester, who loves to shock her audience, and now finds Miss Gower ready to her hand.

"Where is your husband now, Mrs. Chichester?" asks Colonel Neilson, quite without _malice prepense_.

Margaret gives him a warning glance, just a little too late. Though indeed, after all, what is there to warn about Mrs. Chichester? She is only one of a thousand flighty young women one meets every day, and though Captain Marryatt's infatuation for her is beyond dispute, still, her infatuation for him has yet to be proved. Margaret had objected to her, in her own mind, as a companion for Tita--Tita, who seems too young to judge for herself in the matter of friendships.

"I don't know, I'm sure," returns Mrs. Chichester, lifting her shoulders. "Miss Gower will tell you; she knows everything. Miss Gower," raising her voice slightly, and compelling that terrible old woman to look at her, "will you tell Colonel Neilson where my husband is now?"

_Poor_ Colonel Neilson! who is beginning to wish that the earth would open and swallow him up.

"It argues ill for you that you should be obliged to ask such a question," says Miss Gower, with a lowering eye.

"Does