Not that affairs were as yet very bad. Far from it. But there was little to spare for Madame d'Estrées, who ought, indeed, to want nothing; and Ashe was vaguely meditating his reply to that lady when a face in a carriage near them, which was trying to enter the line, caught his attention.
"Mary!" he said, "à la Sir Joshua--and mother. They don't see us. Query, will Cliffe take the leap to-night? Mother reports a decided increase of ardor on his part. Sorry you don't approve of it, darling!"
"It's just like lighting a lamp to put it out--that's all!" said Kitty, with vivacity. "The man who marries Mary is done for."
"Not at all. Mary's money will give him the pedestal he wants, and trust Cliffe to take care of his own individuality afterwards! Now, if you'll transfer your alarms to _Mary_, I'm with you!"
"Oh! of _course_ he'll be unkind to her. She may lay her account for that. But it's the _marrying_ her!" And Kitty's upper-lip curled under a slow disdain.
"Kitty, really!--you remind me, please, of Miss Jane Taylor:
"'I did not think there could be found--a little heart so hard!'
Mary is thirty; she would like to be married. And why not? She'll give quite as good as she gets."
"Well, she won't get--anything. Geoffrey Cliffe thinks of no one but himself."
"Oh, well, all men are selfish--and the women don't mind."
"It depends on how it's done," said Kitty.
Ashe declared that Cliffe was just an ordinary person, "l'homme sensuel moyen"--with a touch of genius. Except for that, no better and no worse than other people. What then?--the world was not made up of persons of enormous virtue like Lord Althorp and Mr. Gladstone. If Mary wanted him for a husband, and could capture him, both, in his opinion, would have pretty nearly got their deserts.
Kitty, however, fell into a reverie, after which she let him see a face of the same startling sweetness as she had several times shown him of late.
"Do you want me to be nice to her?" She nestled up to him.
"Bind her to your chariot wheels, madam! You can!" said Ashe, slipping a hand round hers.
"Well, then, I won't tell her that I _know_ he's still in love with the Frenchwoman. But it's on the tip of my tongue."
"Heavens!" cried Ashe. "The Vicomtesse D---, the lady of the poems? But she's dead! I thought that was over long ago."