"And, by George!" said Ashe, pausing in his walk, "she warned me."
And there rose in his memory the formal garden at Grosville Park, the little figure at his side, and Kitty's franknesses--"I shall take mad fancies for people. I sha'n't be able to help it. I have one now, for Geoffrey Cliffe."
He smiled. There was the difficulty! If only the people whose envious tongues were now wagging could see Kitty as she was, could understand what a gulf lay between her and the ordinary "fast" woman, there would be an end of this silly, ill-natured talk. Other women might be of the earth earthy. Kitty was a sprite, with all the irresponsibility of such incalculable creatures. The men and women--women especially--who gossiped and lied about her, who sent abominable paragraphs to scurrilous papers--he had one now in his pocket which had reached him at the House from an anonymous correspondent--spoke out of their own vile experience, judged her by their own standards. His mother, at any rate--he proudly thought--ought to know better than to be misled by them for a moment.
At the same time, something must be done. It could not be denied that Kitty had been behaving like a romantic, excitable child with this unscrupulous man, whose record with regard to women was probably wholly unknown to her, however foolishly she might idealize the _liaison_ commemorated in his poems. What had Kitty, indeed, been doing with herself this six weeks? Ashe tried to recall them in detail. Ascot, Lord's, innumerable parties in London and in the country, to some of which he had not been able to accompany her, owing to the stress of Parliamentary and official work. Grosville Park, for instance--he had been stopped at the last moment from going down there by the arrival of some important foreign news, and Kitty had gone alone. She had reappeared on the Monday, pale and furious, saying that she and her aunt had quarrelled, and that she would never go near the Grosvilles either in town or country again. She had not volunteered any further explanation, and Ashe had refrained from inquiry. There were in him certain disgusts and disdains, belonging to his general epicurean conception of existence, which not even his love for Kitty could overcome. One was a disdain for the quarrels of women. He supposed they were inevitable; he saw, by-the-way, that Kitty and Lady Parham were once more at daggers drawn; and Kitty seemed to enjoy it. Well, it was her own affair; but while there was a Greek play, or a Shakespeare sonnet, or even a Blue Book to read, who could expect him to listen?