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

mean to tell me that this girl," with a scornful intonation, "has a--Really" with a shrug, "considering her birth, one may be excused for calling it--a _follower?"_

"Yes."

"And so _l'ingénue_ has awakened at last!"

"If you mean Tita," icily, "I think she is in love with her cousin; and, beyond all doubt, her cousin is in love with her."

"Birds of a feather!" says Lady Rylton. It has been plain to Marian for the past five minutes that her aunt has been keeping back her temper with some difficulty. Now it flames forth. "The _insolence!"_ cries she, between her teeth. "That little half-bred creature! Fancy--just _fancy--_her daring to be unfaithful to _my_ son! To marry a Rylton, and then bring a low intrigue into his family!" She turns furiously on Marian. "Where is she?"

"Tita?"

"Yes. I must see her this moment--this _moment;_ do you hear?" The tyrannical nature of her breaks out now in a furious outburst. She would have liked to get Tita in her grasp and crush her. She rises. "I wish to speak to her."

"I should advise you to do no such foolish thing," says Mrs. Bethune, rising too.

_"You_ advise!--you! Who are you?" says Lady Rylton insolently. "When did I ask for your advice, or take it? Send that girl here--directly."

"Surely you forget that 'that girl' is at this moment your hostess!" says Marian Bethune, who has some sense of decency left. "This is her house; I could not deliver such a message to her."

"Then take another! Say----"

"Nor any other. She dislikes me, as I dislike her. If you wish to see her, send a message through her maid, or," a happy thought coming to her, "through Margaret; she cares for Tita as a cat might care for her kitten!"

"Poor Margaret," says Lady Rylton, with a sneer. "I fear she will always have to care for other cats' kittens!"

"Do you? I don't," says Marian, who, though she detests most people, has always a strange tenderness for Margaret.

"What do you mean?" asks Lady Rylton sharply.

"I think she will marry Colonel Neilson."

"Don't make yourself more absurd than you need be!" says her aunt contemptuously. "An old maid like that! What could Colonel Neilson see in her? I don't believe a word of that ridiculous story. Why, she is nearly as bad--_worse,_ indeed," with a short laugh, "than a widow----like you!"

"I think she will marry him, for all that," says Mrs. Bethune calmly, with supreme self-control. She takes no notice of her insult.

"You can think as you like," says her aunt. "There, go away; I must arrange about seeing that girl."


CHAPTER X.

HOW "THAT GIRL" WAS "SEEN" BY THE DOWAGER LADY RYLTON; AND HOW TITA HELD HER SMALL HEAD VERY HIGH, AND FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT WITH THE ENEMY.


There is scarcely time for Lady Rylton to make arrangements for a private interview with her daughter-in-law, as Mrs. Bethune has scarcely left her room before that small person knocks at the door. And there is, perhaps, a slight touch of confusion on the older woman's face as Tita enters. She had not had time to prepare the little bitter barbs she had meant to fling against the girl's heart, and is now slightly taken aback.

However, Nature, the All-Mother, has been generous to Tessie in the way of venom, and after a moment or two she tells herself that she will be able to get through this interview with honour.

"My dear Tita. You! So glad! Pray come and sit down."

"I just came," says Tita smiling, but hesitating on the threshold, as if desirous of an excuse to run away again as quickly as possible, "to see if you were quite comfortable--quite happy."

"Ah, _happy!"_ says Lady Rylton in a peculiar tone. "Do come in, Tita. It is a fad of mine--a silly one, no doubt--but I cannot bear to look at an open door. Besides, I wish to speak to you."

Tita closes the door and comes well into the room. She does not seat herself, however; she remains standing near the chimney-piece.

"About what?" asks she promptly.

"About many things." Perhaps the girl's bluntness has daunted her a little, because, as she says this, she moves uneasily, and finally changes her seat for a low lounge that brings the light on the back of her head. "I am sorry to say I have heard several unpleasant things about you of late."

Tita stares at her.

"I don't understand you," says she.

"Then it must be my unhappy task to have to explain myself," says Tessie, who has now recovered herself, and is beginning to revel in the situation. The merriest game of all, to _some_ people, is that of hurting the feelings of others. "For one thing, I am grieved to hear that you have made my son far from happy in his married life."

A quick red dyes Tita's face. It lasts for a moment only. She controls herself admirably, and, going to a chair, pulls it a little forward in a perfectly self-possessed fashion, pausing a little over the exact position of it, after which she seats herself amongst the cushions.

"Has Maurice told you that?" asks she.

"Maurice? _No!"_ haughtily. "In _our_ set husbands do not complain of their wives."

"No?" says Tita. She looks amused. "Then who else could it be in 'our set' who has said nasty little things about me? Mrs. Bethune?"

"All this is beside the question," says the dowager, with a wave of her hand. "There is something else I must speak of--painful though it is to me!" She unfurls the everlasting fan, and wafts it delicately to and fro, as if to blow away from her the hideous aroma of the thing she is forced to say. "I hear you have established a--er--a far too friendly relationship with a--er--a cousin of your own."

If Tita had grown red before, she is very white now.

"I am sure you are not aware of it," says she, setting her small teeth, but speaking quite calmly, "but you are very impertinent."

"I--_I?"_ says Lady Rylton. In all her long, tyrannical life she has met with so few people to show her defiance, that now this girl's contemptuous reply daunts her. "You forget yourself," says she, with ill-suppressed fury.

"No, indeed," says Tita, "it is because I remember myself that I spoke like that. And I think it will save time," says she quietly, "and perhaps a good deal of temper too--mine," smiling coldly, "is not good, you know--if you understand at once that I shall not allow you to say insolent things like that to me."

_ "You_ allow _me!"_ Tessie gets up from her chair and stares at her opponent, who remains seated, looking back at her. "I see you have made up your mind to ruin my son," says she, changing her tone to one of tearful indignation. "You accepted him, you married him, but you have never made even an effort to love him."

Here Tessie sinks back in her chair and covers her eyes with her handkerchief. This is her way of telling people she is crying; it saves the rouge and the powder, and leaves the eye-lashes as black as before.

"It is not always easy to love someone who is in love with someone else," says Tita.

"Someone else! What do you mean?"

"There is one fault, at all events, that you cannot find with me," says Tita; "I have not got a bad memory. As if it were only yesterday, I remember how you enlightened me about Maurice's affection"--she would have said "love," but somehow she cannot--"for--for Mrs. Bethune."

"Pouf!" says the dowager. _"That!_ I don't see how that can influence your conduct. You married my son, and you ought to do your duty by him. As for Marian, if you had been a good wife you should have taught him to forget all that long ago. It seems you have not." She darts this barbed arrow with much joy, and watches for the pain it ought to have caused, but watches in vain. "The fact of your remembering it all this time only shows," says Tessie vindictively, angry at the failure of her dart, "what a malicious spirit you have. You are not only malicious, but silly! People of the world _never_ remember unpleasant things."

"Well, I am not of them; I remember," says Tita. She pauses. "People of the world seem to me to do strange things."

"On the contrary," with a sneer, "it is people who are not in society who do strange things."

"Meaning me?" flushing and frowning. Tita's temper is beginning to give way. "What have I done now?" asks she.

"That is what I have been trying to explain," says Lady Rylton, "but your temper is so frightful that I am afraid to go into anything. Temper, my dear Tita, should always be one's slave; it should never be given liberty except in one's room, with one's own maid or one's own husband."

"Or one's own mother-in-law!"

"Well, yes! Quite so!" says Tessie with a fine shrug. "If you _will_ make me one apart, so be it. I hate scenes; but when one has a son--a precious, _only_ child--one must make sacrifices."

"I beg you will make none for _me."_

"I have made one already, however. I have permitted my son to marry you."

"Lady Rylton----"

"Be silent!" says Tessie, in a low but terrible voice. "How _dare_ you interrupt me, or speak to me at all, until I ask for a reply? _You,_ whom I have brought from the very depths, to a decent position in society! You--whom I have raised!"

"Raised!"

"Yes--you! I tell you you owe me a debt you never can repay."

"I do indeed," says Tita, in a low voice; her small firm hands are clasped in front of her--they are tightly clenched.

"You married him for ambition," goes on Tessie, with cold hatred in her voice and eye, "and----"

"And he?" The girl has risen now, and is clinging with both hands to the arms of her chair. She is very pale.

"Pshaw!" says the dowager, laughing cruelly. "He married you for your money. What else do you think he would marry _you_ for? Are you to learn that now?"

"No." Tita throws up her head. _"That_ pleasure is denied you. He told me he was marrying me for my money, long before our marriage."

Lady Rylton laughs.

"What! He had the audacity?"

"The honesty!" Somehow this answer, coming straight from Tita's heart, goes to her soul, and in some queer, indescribable way soothes her--comforts her--gives her deep compensation for all the agony she has been enduring. Later on she wonders why the agony _was_ so great! Why had she cared or suffered? Maurice and she? What are they to each other? A mere name--no more! And yet--and yet!

"At all events," goes on Tessie, "when you made up your mind to marry my son, you----"

"It was your son who married me," says Tita, with a touch of hauteur that sits very prettily on her. She feels suddenly stronger--more equal to the fight.

"Was it? I quite forget"--Tessie shrugs her shoulders--"these _little_ points," says she. "Well, I give you that! Oh! he was honest!" says she. "But, after all, not quite honest enough."

"I think he was honest," says Tita.

Her heart is beginning to beat to suffocation. There is a horror in