Duchess - Rossmoyne

"Oh, not now ," says Miss Penelope, nervously.

"Yes, now, please," says Monica, with ever-increasing gravity.

"It may all be said in a few words, Monica," says Miss Priscilla, slowly. "And what I have to say affects you, my dear, even more than us."

" Me? "

"Yes, in that it affects your mother. Twenty years ago George Desmond was her affianced husband. Twenty years ago, wilfully and without cause, he deliberately broke with her his plighted troth."

"He threw her over?" exclaims Monica, aghast at this revelation.

"Well, I never heard be used actual violence to her, my dear," says Miss Penelope, in a distressed tone; "but he certainly broke off his engagement with her, and behaved as no man of honor could possibly behave."

"And mother must have been quite beautiful at that time, must she not?" says Monica, rising to her knees in her excitement, and staring with widely-opened eyes of purest amazement from one aunt to the other.

"'Beautiful as the blushing morn,'" says Miss Priscilla, quoting from some ancient birthday-book. "But, you see, even her beauty was powerless to save her from insult. From what we could learn, he absolutely refused to fulfil his marriage-contract with her. He was false to the oath he had sworn over our father's dying bed."

Nothing can exceed the scorn and solemnity of Miss Priscilla's manner as she says all this.

"And what did mother do?" asks Monica, curiously.

"What could she do, poor child? I have no doubt it went nigh to breaking her heart."

"Her heart?" says Monica.

"She suffered acutely. That we could see, or rather we had to guess it, as for days she kept her own chamber and would see no one, going out only when it was quite dusk for a solitary ramble. Ah! when sorrow afflicts the soul, there is no balm so great as solitude. Your poor mother took the whole affair dreadfully to heart."

"You mean that she really fretted ?" asks Monica, still in the same curious way, with her eyes fixed on her aunt. There is, indeed, so much unstudied surprise in her whole manner as might have produced a corresponding amount in the Misses Blake, had they noticed it.

"Yes, my dear, of course. Dear, dear, dear! what a sad thing it all was! Well, now you understand all that it is needful you should, Monica," says Miss Penelope, with a glance at her sister, who really seems quite overcome. "So we will say no more about it. Only you can see for yourself how impossible it is for any of our blood to be on friendly terms with a Desmond."

"They may not all be like that Mr. Desmond," says Monica, timidly, coloring to her brow.

"Yes, yes. Like father, like son; you know the old adage; and a nephew is as close a relation almost. We can know no one at Coole."

"I would almost rather see you dead than intimate with one of the name," says Miss Priscilla, with sudden harshness.

"I don't think we told Monica about the other guests at Aghyohillbeg," says Miss Penelope, hastily, with the kindly intention of changing the conversation. "A very pretty young woman came there about a week before your arrival, child, and is to remain, I believe, for some time. She is a widow, and young, and – by the bye, I wonder if she can be any relation to your friends in the South of France."

"Why?"

"Her name is Bohun, and – "

"Not Olga Bohun?" says Monica, springing to her feet. "A widow, you say, and young. Oh! auntie, if she only might be Olga!"

"Well, certainly she has a heathenish – I mean, a Russian – name like that," says Miss Priscilla. "She is a very little woman, with merry eyes, and she laughs always, and she has the prettiest, the most courteous manners. Quite a relief I found her, after the inanities of Bella Fitzgerald."

"She is even smaller than I am. Yes, and her eyes do laugh!" says Monica, delight making her cheeks warm. "She is the prettiest thing. Ah! how happy I shall be if I may see her sometimes!"

"You shall see her just as often as ever you and she wish," say the two old maids in a breath, glad in the thought that they can make her home at Moyne happy to her.

"I hope you like her," says Monica, glancing from one to the other of them.

"Yes. I thought her quite fascinating," says Miss Penelope. "Some people say she is rather – rather fast , I believe is the word they use nowadays," getting the word out with difficulty, as though afraid it may go off and do somebody an injury. "But for my part I don't believe a word of it. She is quite natural, and most pleasing in manner, especially to those who are older than herself. A great charm in these times, my dear, when age is despised."

Plainly, the little widow at Aghyohillbeg has been playing off her sweetest graces upon the two Misses Blake.

"I dare say Monica will like young Ronayne," says Miss Priscilla. "He is quite nice, that lad. But I hope, Monica, that, even if circumstances should throw you together, you will take no notice of young Mr. Desmond. I myself would not exchange a word with him if a queen's diadem were offered me as a bribe."

"You might speak to him without knowing him," says Monica, blushing again that nervous crimson of a while ago.

"Impossible, my dear. Instinct, sharpened by hatred, would tell me when one of the race was near me."

"Well, as it is your first party here, dear child, I hope you will enjoy it," says Miss Penelope, quickly, as though again anxious to throw oil on the waters by changing the conversation. "It is a charming place, and its mistress, if a little rough, is at least kindly."

At this moment Kit, emerging from the curtains that have hidden her for the past hour, comes slowly to the front. Her face, her very attitude, is martial. She is plainly in battle-array. Pausing before Miss Priscilla, she directs her first fire upon her.

"Am I not asked at all?" she says, in a terrible tone, that contrasts painfully with the ominous silence she has maintained ever since the invitation was brought by Mrs. O'Connor's groom.

"My dear child, you must remember you are only fourteen," says Miss Priscilla, who is sincerely sorry the child has not been included in the invitation, and, in fact, thinks it rather unkind she has been left out.

"I know that, thank you," says the youngest Miss Beresford, uncompromisingly, fixing her aunt with a stony glare. "I know my birthday as well as most people. And so, just because I am a child, I am to be slighted, am I? I call it unfair! I call it beastly mean , that every one here is to be invited out to enjoy themselves except me ."

"Young people are seldom asked to grown-up parties," says Miss Priscilla, in her best conciliatory manner. "When you are as old as Monica, of course you will go everywhere. In the meantime you are only a child."

"I am old enough to conduct myself properly, at all events," says Kit, unmoved. "I suppose at fourteen " – as if this is an age replete with wisdom – "I am not likely to do anything very extraordinary, or make myself unpleasant, or be in anybody's way."

"That is not the question, at all: it is merely one of age," says Miss Priscilla.

"Is it? And yet people say a great deal about childhood being the happiest time of one's life," says Kit, almost choking with scornful rage. "I should just like to see the fellow who first said that. Maybe I wouldn't enlighten him, and tell him what a hypocrite he was. Whoever said it, it is a decided untruth, and I know I wish to goodness I was grown up, because then," with withering emphasis, "I should not be trampled upon and insulted!"

This is dreadful. The two old ladies, unaccustomed in their quiet lives to tornadoes and volcanoes of any kind, are almost speechless with fright.

"Dearest," says Monica, going up to her, "how can you look at it in such a light?"