The parents were not
rich, but the girls had to be dressed, taken abroad, produced at
country-houses, at Ascot, and the opera, like all other girls. The
eldest girl, a considerable beauty, was an accomplished egotist at
nineteen, and regarded her mother as a rather inefficient
dame de
compagnie. Kitty understood this young lady perfectly, and after
luncheon, over her cigarette, her little, sharp, probing questions gave
the beauty twenty minutes' annoyance. Then appeared a young man,
ill-dressed, red-haired, and shy. Carelessly as he greeted the mother
and daughters, his entrance, however, transformed them. The mother
forgot fatigue; the beauty ceased to yawn; the younger girl, who had
been making surreptitious notes of Kitty's costume in the last leaf of
her guide-book, developed a charming gush. He was the owner of the
Magellan estates and the historic Magellan Castle; a professed hater of
"absurd womankind," and, in general, a hunted and self-conscious person.
Kitty gave him one finger, looked him up and down, asked him whether he
was yet engaged, and when he laughed an embarrassed "No," told him that
he would certainly die in the arms of the Magellan housekeeper.
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