Kitty Read Online Free PDF Page A

slow brain and slouched out again.
    “An old retainer, you know,” simpered Mrs. Harrison. She spoke to deaf ears. Lady Henley was bent over the cake stand. Contrary to custom, instead of starting with the thin cucumber sandwiches on the bottom and working her way up through the layers of buns and tea cakes and scones to the cream cakes at the top, Lady Henley had started eating the other way around. As Kitty entered the room, Lady Henley seemed surprised by the empty cake plate and moved her huge hand down to the fruitcake on the plate below.
    She straightened up with a slice of cake halfway to her mouth and stared at the girl in the doorway. Kitty stood there, looking questioningly at Lady Henley, with her big gray eyes. Lady Henley felt a twinge of resentment. This stockbroker’s daughter had a natural elegance, a natural breeding, which under the circumstances, she had no right to have. Lady Henley posted the cake into the mailbox of her mouth and reached for another tea cake, keeping her eyes fastened on Kitty.
    “Lots of material there. But raw. Very raw. Needs polishing. Well, when I’ve finished with you, you’ll marry a lord.”
    Mrs. Harrison hesitated. Could she endure living with this woman?
    She addressed Lady Henley. “My name is Euphemia.”
    “What’s that got to do with it?”
    “Since we are to become friends, I shall call you ‘Amelia’ and you may call me ‘Euphemia.’”
    There was a silence as light colorless eyes met small black ones. Lady Henley recognized the steel in Mrs. Harrison’s voice. After all, she heard it in the voices of her creditors nearly every day. “Euphemia,” she said sourly.
    The first hurdle was over.
    “We met Lord Peter Chesworth at church one Sunday,” said Mrs. Harrison. “I gather he is not married?”
    “No,” replied Lady Henley, her voice nearly drowning in Bath bun. “Furthermore, he’s looking for a rich wife. Told me so the other day. He loves nothing but that great pile of his at Reamington. But it eats up the money and he’s talking about taking out a mortgage.”
    “Indeed,” said Mrs. Harrison with a sidelong glance at Kitty. “Indeed.”
    “I can get your daughter invitations to everywhere he goes during the season,” said the remains of the Bath bun.
    The next hurdle was over. Both middle-aged women stared at each other in silent agreement.
    “Then I think we should discuss the matter of money in more detail before broaching it with our lawyers. Don’t you agree… Amelia?”
    Lady Henley looked at a cucumber sandwich and sighed. “Oh, all right.”
    Kitty was dismissed. She ran lightly up the stairs to her room to sit before her precious picture and dream of stepping through the frame into that happy, painted world.
    Spring at last came to the Heath. The new grass turned and rolled in the sun all the way to Highgate. During the light evenings when the remains of winter hung on in the bluish hue at the end of the Hampstead streets and lanes, the faint sound of the German band playing in the tearooms at the Vale of Heath could be heard, jauntily banishing the middle-class night.
    But the Harrisons’ old home remained deserted with a few weedy daffodils blowing around the FOR SALE sign in the front garden. The Harrisons had taken up residence in Park Lane.
    Kitty was preparing for her first ball. She had been kept out of sight until a truly massive wardrobe of clothes suitable for a debutante had been arranged. Lady Henley had ruthlessly instructed Mrs. Harrison to say that her husband had died the previous year. “Can’t have the girl going about in black.”
    Kitty had often dreamt of getting ready for her first dance, and what she would wear, and how she would fix her hair. Until now, she had refused to let her French maid, Colette, dress her, but Colette had reported the fact to Lady Henley and Lady Henley and a huge plate of
petits fours
had assaulted the privacy of Kitty’s bedroom to “put an end to such shopkeeper