XIX

Sir Richard Lyster unfolded his Times with a jerk.

“A beastly rheumatic hole I call this,” he said, looking angrily at the window of his hotel sitting-room, which showed drops from a light shower then passing across the lagoon.  “And the dilatoriness of these Italian posts is, upon my soul, beyond bearing!  This Times is three days old.”

Mary Lyster looked up from the letter she was writing.

“Why don’t you read the French papers, papa?  I saw a Figaro of yesterday in the Piazza this morning.”

“Because I can’t!” was the indignant reply.  “There wasn’t the same amount of money squandered on my education, my dear, that there has been on yours.”

Mary smiled a little, unseen.  Her father had been, of course, at Eton.  She had been educated by a succession of small and hunted governesses, mostly Swiss, whose remuneration had certainly counted among the frugalities rather than the extravagances of the family budget.

Sir Richard read his Times for a while.  Mary continued to write checks for the board wages of the servants left at home, and to give directions for the beating of carpets and cleaning of curtains.  It was dull work, and she detested it.

Presently Sir Richard rose, with a stretch.  He was a tall old man, with a shock of white hair and very black eyes.  A victim to certain obscure forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid nor inhuman, but he suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class—­too much money and too few ideas.  He came abroad every year, reluctantly.  He did not choose to be left behind by county neighbors whose wives talked nonsense about Botticelli.  And Mary would have it.  But Sir Richard’s tours were generally one prolonged course of battle between himself and all foreign institutions; and if it was Mary who drove him forth, it was Mary also who generally hurried him home.

“Who was it you saw last night in that ridiculous singing affair?” he asked, as he put the fire together.

“Kitty Ashe—­and her mother,” said Mary—­after a moment—­still writing.

“Her mother!—­what, that disreputable woman?”

“They weren’t in the same gondola.”

“Ashe will be a great fool if he lets his wife see much of that woman!  By all accounts Lady Kitty is quite enough of a handful already.  By-the-way, have you found out where they are?”

“On the Grand Canal.  Shall we call this afternoon?”

“I don’t mind.  Of course, I think Ashe is doing an immense amount of harm.”

“Well, you can tell him so,” said Mary.

Sir Richard frowned.  His daughter’s manners seemed to him at times abrupt.

“Why do you see so little now of Elizabeth Tranmore?” he asked her, with a sharp look.  “You used to be always there.  And I don’t believe you even write to her much now.”