"Did she really do such
dreadful things?"
"My dear Kitty!--why talk about it?"
Kitty flushed, then threw a flower into the water below with a defiant
gesture.
"What does it matter? It's all so long ago. I have nothing to do with
what I did ten years ago--nothing!"
"A convenient doctrine!" laughed Ashe. "But it cuts both ways. You get
neither the good of your good nor the bad of your bad."
"I have no good," said Kitty, bitterly.
"What's the matter with you, miladi?" said Ashe, half scolding, half
tender. "You growl over my remarks as though you were your own small dog
with a bone. Come here and let me tell you the news."
And drawing the sofa up to the open window which commanded the
marvellous waterway outside, with its rows of palaces on either hand, he
made her lie down while he read her extracts from his letters.
Margaret French, who was writing at the farther side of the room,
glanced at them furtively from time to time. She saw that Ashe was
trying to charm away the languor of his companion by that talk of his,
shrewd, humorous, vehement, well informed, which made him so welcome to
the men of his own class and mode of life.
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