Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters Page B

I did not. I only felt piqued, that our time alone together - which I thought little enough! - should be made shorter.
    The visitor was a gentleman: a stranger, evidently, to Kitty, for she greeted him politely, but quite cautiously. He had a silk hat on his head which - seeing her, and then me lurking in the little room behind her - he removed, and held to his bosom. ‘Miss Butler, I believe,’ he said; and when she nodded, he gave a bow: ‘Walter Bliss, ma’am. Your servant.’ His voice was deep and pleasant and clear, like Tricky’s. As he spoke he produced a card from his pocket and held it out. In the second or so it took Kitty to gaze at it and give a little ‘Oh!’ of surprise, I studied him. He was very tall, even without his hat, and was dressed rather fashionably in chequered trousers and a fancy waistcoat. Across his stomach there was a golden watch-chain as thick as the tail of a rat; and more gold, I noticed, flashed from his fingers. His head was large, his hair a dull ginger; gingerish, too - and somehow at once both impressive and rather comical - were the whiskers that swept from his top lip to his ears, and his eyebrows, and the hair in his nose. His skin was as clear and shiny as a boy’s. His eyes were blue.
    When Kitty returned his card to him, he asked if he might speak with her a moment, and at once she stood aside to let him pass. With him in it, the little room seemed very full and hot. I rose, reluctantly, and put on my gloves and my hat, and said that I should go; and then Kitty introduced me - ‘My friend, Miss Astley,’ she called me, which made me feel a little gayer - and Mr Bliss shook my hand.
    â€˜Tell your Mother,’ said Kitty as she showed me to the door, ‘that I shall come tomorrow, any time she likes.’
    â€˜Come at four,’ I said.
    â€˜Four it is, then!’ She briefly took my hand again, and kissed my cheek.
    Over her shoulder I saw the flashy gentleman fingering his whiskers, but with his eyes turned, politely, away from us.
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    I can hardly say what a curious mix of feelings mine were, the Sunday afternoon when Kitty came to call on us in Whitstable. She was more to me than all the world; that she should be visiting me in my own home, and supping with my family, seemed both a delight too lovely to be borne and a great and dreadful burden. I loved her, and could not but long to have her come; but I loved her, and not a soul must know it - not even she. It would be a torture, I thought, to have to sit beside her at my father’s table with that love within me, mute and restless as a gnawing worm. I would have to smile while Mother asked, Why didn’t Kitty have a beau? and smile again when Davy held Rhoda’s hand, or Tony pinched my sister’s knee beneath the table - when all the while my darling would be at my side, untouchable.
    Then again, there was the crampedness, and the dinginess - and the unmistakable fishiness - of our home to fret over. Would Kitty think it mean? Would she see the tears in the drugget, the smears on the walls; would she see that the armchairs sagged, that the rugs were faded, that the shawl which Mother had tacked to the mantel, so that it fluttered in the draught from the chimney, was dusty and torn, its fringes unravelling? I had grown up with these things, and for eighteen years had barely noticed them, but I saw them now, for what they really were, as if through her own eyes.
    I saw my family, too, anew. I saw my father - a gentle man, but prone to dullness. Would Kitty think him dull? And Davy: he could be rather brash; and Rhoda - horrible Rhoda - would certainly be over-pert. What would Kitty make of them? What would she think of Alice - my dearest friend, until a month ago? Would she think her cold, and would her coldness puzzle her? Or would she - and this thought was a dreadful one - would she think her pretty, and like her more than me? Would she wish it had been