The effect of the few sobbing words, with which Kitty Bristol had greeted his presence beside her, upon the feeling of William Ashe was both sharp and deep, for they seemed already to imply a peculiar relation, a special link between them.  Had it not, indeed, begun in that very moment at St. James’s Place when he had first caught sight of her, sitting forlorn in her white dress?—­when she had “willed” him to come to her, and he came?  Surely—­though as to this he had his qualms—­she could not have spoken with this abandonment to any other of her new English acquaintances?  To Darrell, for instance, who was expected at Grosville Park that evening.  No!  From the beginning she had turned to him, William Ashe; she had been conscious of the same mutual understanding, the same sympathy in difference that he himself felt.

It was, at any rate, with the feeling of one whose fate has most strangely, most unexpectedly overtaken him that he sat down beside her.  His own pulses were running at a great rate; but there was to be no sign of it for her.  He tried, indeed, to calm her by that mere cheerful strength and vitality of which he was so easily master.  “Why should you be in despair?” he said, bending towards her.  “Tell me.  Let me try and help you.  Was your sister unkind to you?”

Kitty made no reply at once.  The tears that brimmed her large eyes slipped down her cheeks without disfiguring her.  She was looking absently, intently, into a dark depth of wood as though she sought there for some truth that escaped her—­truth of the past or of the present.

“I don’t know,” she said, at last, shaking her head, “I don’t know whether it was unkind.  Perhaps it was only what we deserve, maman and I.”

“You!” cried Ashe.

“Yes,” she said, passionately.  “Who’s going to separate between maman and me?  If she’s done mean, shocking things, the people she’s done them to will hate me too.  They shall hate me!  It’s right.”

She turned to him violently.  She was very white, and her little hands as she sat there before him, proudly erect, twisted a lace handkerchief between them that would soon be in tatters.  Somehow Ashe winced before the wreck of the handkerchief; what need to ruin the pretty, fragile thing?

“I am quite sure no one will ever hate you for what you haven’t done,” he said, steadily.  “That would be abominably unfair.  But, you see, I don’t understand—­and I don’t like—­I don’t wish—­to ask questions.”

“Do ask questions!” she cried, looking at him almost reproachfully.  “That’s just what I want you to do—­Only,” she added, hanging her head in depression, “I shouldn’t know what to answer.  I am played with, and treated as a baby!  There is something horrible the matter—­and no one trusts me—­every one keeps me in the dark.  No one ever thinks whether I am miserable or not.”

She raised her hands to her eyes and vehemently wiped away her tears with the tattered lace handkerchief.  In all these words and actions, however, she was graceful and touching, because she was natural.  She was not posing or conscious, she was hiding nothing.  Yet Ashe felt certain she could act a part magnificently; only it would not be for the lie’s sake, but for the sake of some romantic impulse or imagination.