l, and he
had dismissed half a dozen governesses in turn because they were trying
to make a prim little miss of her, and because they always insisted on
pouring out tea for him as if they expected him to marry them. When
Kitty was sixteen he dismissed 'the whole bothering lot of old women'
and finished her education himself. Lord Sherard spoke French like a
native, and was one of the best riders and sportsmen of his day. He
faithfully conveyed all that he knew to his daughter, with the result
that Kitty had more knowledge of French literature than of English, and
she and her father conversed but little with each other in their native
tongue. But the result as far as Kitty was concerned was that she had
turned out a beautiful and engaging young woman with eyes that looked
frankly and charitably on the world. She loved you so much that she
nearly always had her arm linked in yours when she told her absurd
little stories; and she smiled so delightedly when you saw the joke of
them, that even when you said, 'Well, really, Kitty!' you knew quite
well that hers was a sort of innocence of daring, and you warned her
severely that she must be very careful indeed to whom she said things
like that, but that of course it didn't matter a bit as far as you
yourself were concerned, because you understood her and loved her. And
because everybody else said exactly the same sort of thing to her, and
because no one would have ventured to crush that blithe and childlike
nature by one word of real disapproval, there was not much hope that
Kitty would ever reform and become sober-minded and well-behaved and
satisfactory. The plague of it was that you couldn't help loving her
whatever she did, and she loved you too, which was perfectly
intoxicating when you came to think of it, except that you knew that
she loved at least a hundred different people in exactly the same sort
of way. She kept her real affection for her father and Jane Erskine,
and lately she had fallen in love--which is a different thing--with Sir
Nigel Christopherson.

Kitty stamped her feet in the hall, and then drew off her gloves and
came forward to the drawing-room fire, with the big white sheepskin in
front of it; and kneeling down before the blaze she told Mr. Lawrence
and Miss Abingdon collectively that they had had very good sport in the
marshes, and that she had brought back some duck for Miss Abingdon; and
didn't everybody think it was too awfully cold, and wh