‘COME and tell me all about yourself, Kate,’ said Lady Caryisfort, from her sofa. She had a cold, and was half an invalid. She had kept Kate with her while the others went out, after paying their call. Lady Caryisfort had enveloped her choice of Kate in the prettiest excuses: ‘I wish one of you girls would give up the sunshine, and stay and keep me company,’ she had said. ‘Let me see—no, I will not choose Ombra, for Ombra has need of all the air that is to be had; but Kate is strong—an afternoon’s seclusion will not make any difference to her. Spare me Kate, please, Mrs. Anderson. I want some one to talk to—I want something pleasant to look at. Let her stay and dine with me, and in the evening I will send her home.’
So it had been settled; and Kate was in the great, somewhat dim drawing-room, which was Lady Caryisfort’s abode. The house was one of the great palazzi in one of the less-known streets of Florence. It was on the sunny side, but long ago the sun had retreated behind the high houses opposite. The great lofty palace itself was like a mountain side, and half way down this mountain side came the tall windows, draped with dark velvet and white muslin, which looked out into the deep ravine, called a street, below. The room was very large and lofty, and had openings on two sides, enveloped in heavy velvet curtains, into two rooms beyond. The two other side walls were covered with large frescoes, almost invisible in this premature twilight; for it was not late, and the top rooms in the palace, which were inhabited by Cesare, the mosaic-worker, still retained the sunshine. All the decorations were of a grandiose character; the velvet hangings were dark, though warm in colour; a cheerful wood fire threw gleams of variable reflection here and there into the tall mirrors; and Lady Caryisfort, wrapped in a huge soft white shawl, which looked like lace, but was Shetland wool, lay on a sofa under one of the frescoes. As the light varied, there would appear now a head, now an uplifted arm, out of the historical composition above. The old world was all about in the old walls, in the waning light, in the grand proportions of the place; but the dainty lady in her shawl, the dainty table with its pretty tea-service, which stood within reach of her hand, and Kate, whose bloom not even the twilight could obliterate, belonged not to the old, but the new. There was a low, round chair, a kind of luxurious shell, covered with the warm, dark velvet, on the other side of the little table.
‘Come and sit down beside me here,’ said Lady Caryisfort, ‘and tell me all about yourself.’
‘There is not very much to tell,’ said Kate, ‘if you mean facts; but if it is me you want to know about, then there is a little more. Which would you like best?’
‘I thought you were a fact.’
‘I suppose I am,’ said Kate, with a laugh. ‘I never thought of that. But then, of course, between the facts that have happened to me and this fact, Kate Courtenay, there is a good deal of difference. Which would you like best? Me? But, then, where must I begin?’
‘As early as you can remember,’ said the inquisitor; ‘and, recollect, I should most likely have sought you out, and known all about you long before this, if you had stayed at Langton—so you may be perfectly frank with me.’
To tell the truth, all the little scene had been got up on purpose for this confidential talk; the apparently chance choice of Kate as a companion, and even Lady Caryisfort’s cold, were means to an end. Kate was of her own county, she was of her own class, she was thrown into a position which Lady Caryisfort thought was not the one she ought to have filled, and with all the fervour of a lively fancy and benevolent meaning she had thrown herself into this little ambush. The last words were just as near a mistake as it was possible for words to be, for Kate had no notion of being anything but frank; and the little assurance that she might be so safely almost put her on her guard.
‘You would not have been allowed to seek me out,’ said Kate. ‘Uncle Courtenay had made up his mind I was to know nobody—I am sure I don’t know why. He used to send me a new governess every year. It was the greatest chance that I was allowed to keep even Maryanne. He thought servants ought to be changed; and I am afraid,’ said Kate, with humility, ‘that I was not at all nice when I was at home.’
‘My poor child! I don’t believe you were ever anything but nice.’
‘No,’ said Kate, taking hold of the caressing hand which was laid on her arm; ‘you can’t think how disagreeable I was till I was fifteen; then my dear aunt—my good aunt, whom you don’t like so much as you might——’
‘How do you know that, you little witch?’
‘Oh, I know very well! She came home to England, after being years away, and she wrote to my uncle, asking if she might see me, and he was horribly worried with me at the time,’ said Kate. ‘I had worried him so that he could not eat his dinner even in peace—and Uncle Courtenay likes his dinner—so he wrote and said she might have me altogether if she pleased; and though he gave the very worst account of me, and said all the harm he could, auntie started off directly and took me home.’
‘That was kind of her, Kate.’
‘Kind of her! Oh, it was a great deal more than kind! Fancy how I felt when she cried and kissed me! I am not sure that anybody had ever kissed me before, and I was such a stupid—such a thing without a soul—that I was quite astonished when she cried. I actually asked her why? Whenever I think of it I feel my cheeks grow crimson.’ And here Kate, with a pretty gesture, laid one of Lady Caryisfort’s soft rose-tipped fingers upon her burning cheek.
‘You poor dear child! Well, I understand why Mrs. Anderson cried, and it was nice of her; but après,’ said Kate’s confessor.
‘Après? I was at home; I was as happy as the day was long. I got to be like other girls; they never paid any attention to me, and they petted me from morning to night.’
‘But how could that be?’ said Lady Caryisfort, whose understanding was not quite equal to the strain thus put upon it.
‘I forgot all about myself after that,’ said Kate. ‘I was just like other girls. Ombra thought me rather a bore at first; but, fortunately, I never found that out till she had got over it. She had always been auntie’s only child, and I think she was a trifle—jealous; I have an idea,’ said Kate——‘But how wicked I am to go and talk of Ombra’s faults to you!’
‘Never mind; I shall never repeat anything you tell me,’ said the confidante.
‘Well, I think, if she has a weakness, it is that perhaps she likes to be first. I don’t mean in any vulgar way,’ said Kate, suddenly flushing red as she saw a smile on her companion’s face, ‘but with people she loves. She would not like (naturally) to see her mother love anyone else as much as her! or even she would not like to see me——’
‘And how about other people?’ cried Lady Caryisfort, amused.
‘About other people I do not know what to say; I don’t think she has ever been tried,’ said Kate, with a grave and puzzled look. ‘She has always been first, without any question—or, at least, so I think; but that is puzzling—that is more difficult. I would rather not go into that question, for, by-the-bye, this is all about Ombra—it is not about me.’
‘That is true,’ said Lady Caryisfort; ‘we must change the subject, for I don’t want you to tell me your cousin’s secrets, Kate.’
‘Secrets! She has not any,’ said Kate, with a laugh.
‘Are you quite sure of that?’
‘Sure of Ombra! Of course I must be. If I were not quite sure of Ombra, whom could I believe in? There are no secrets,’ said Kate, with a little pride, ‘among us.’
‘Poor child!’ thought Lady Caryisfort to herself; but she said nothing, though, after a while, she asked gently, ‘Were you glad to come abroad? I suppose it was your guardian’s wish?’
Once more Kate laughed.
‘That is the funniest thing of all,’ she said. ‘He came to pay us a visit; and fancy he, who never could bear me to have a single companion, arrived precisely on my birthday, when we were much gayer than usual, and had a croquet party! It was as good as a play to see his face. But he made my aunt promise to take us abroad. I suppose he thought we could make no friends abroad.’
‘But in that he has evidently been mistaken, Kate.’
‘I don’t know. Except yourself, Lady Caryisfort, what friends have we made? You have been very kind, and as nice as it is possible to be——’
‘Thanks, dear. The benefit has been mine,’ said Lady Caryisfort, in an undertone.
‘But we don’t call Lady Granton a friend,’ continued Kate, ‘nor the people who have left cards and sent us invitations since they met us there. And until we came to Florence we had not met you.’
‘But then there are these two young men—Mr. Eldridge and Mr. Hardwick.’
‘Oh! the Berties,’ said Kate; and she laughed. ‘They don’t count, surely; they are old friends. We did not require to come to Italy to make acquaintance with them.’
‘Perhaps you came to Italy to avoid them?’ said Lady Caryisfort, drawing her bow at a venture.
Kate looked her suddenly in the face with a start; but the afternoon had gradually grown darker, and neither could make out what was in the other’s face.
‘Why should we come to Italy to avoid them?’ said Kate, gravely.
Her new seriousness quite changed the tone of her voice. She was thinking of Ombra and all the mysterious things that had happened that Summer day after the yachting. It was more than a year ago, and she had almost forgotten; but somehow, Kate could not tell how, the Berties had been woven in with the family existence ever since.
Lady Caryisfort gave her gravity a totally different meaning, ‘So that is how it is,’ she said to herself.
‘If I were you, Kate,’ she said aloud, ‘I would write and tell my guardian all about it, and who the people are whom you are acquainted with here. I think he has a right to know. Would he be quite pleased that the Berties, as you call them, should be with you so much? Pardon me if I say more than I ought.’
‘The Berties!’ said Kate, now fairly puzzled. ‘What has Uncle Courtenay to do with the Berties? He is not Ombra’s guardian, but only mine: and they have nothing to do with me.’
‘Oh! perhaps I am mistaken,’ said Lady Caryisfort; and she changed the subject dexterously, leading Kate altogether away from this too decided suggestion. They talked afterwards of everything in earth and heaven; but at the end of that little dinner, which they ate tête-à-tête, Kate returned to the subject which in the meantime had been occupying a great part of her thoughts.
‘I have been thinking of what you said about Uncle Courtenay,’ she said, quite abruptly, after a pause. ‘I do write to him about once every month, and I always tell him whom we are seeing. I don’t believe he ever reads my letters. He is always paying visits through the Winter when Parliament is up, and I always direct to him at home. I don’t suppose he ever reads them. But that, of course, is not my fault, and whenever we meet anyone new I tell him. We don’t conceal anything; my aunt never permits that.’
‘And I am sure it is your own feeling too,’ cried Lady Caryisfort. ‘It is always best.’
And she dismissed the subject, not feeling herself possessed of sufficient information to enter into it more fully. She was a little shaken in her own theory on the subject of the Berties, one of whom at least she felt convinced must have designs on Kate’s fortune. That was ‘only natural;’ but at least Kate was not aware of it. And Lady Caryisfort was half annoyed and half pleased when one of her friends asked admittance in the evening, bringing with her the young Count Buoncompagni, whom Kate had met at the Embassy. It was a Countess Strozzi, an aunt of his, and an intimate of Lady Caryisfort’s, who was his introducer. There was nothing to be said against the admission of a good young man who had come to escort his aunt in her visit to her invalid friend, but it was odd that they should have chosen that particular night, and no other. Kate was in her morning dress, as she had gone to make a morning call, and was a little troubled to be so discovered; but girls look well in anything, as Lady Caryisfort said to herself, with a sigh.