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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14126 ***
+
+[Illustration: LADY KITTY BRISTOL]
+
+The Marriage
+of
+William Ashe
+
+BY
+
+MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
+Author of "Lady Rose's Daughter" "Eleanor" etc.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+ALBERT STERNER
+
+[Illustration]
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+                                  PAGE
+PART I. ACQUAINTANCE . . . . . . .   1
+PART II. THREE YEARS AFTER . . . . 125
+PART III. DEVELOPMENT  . . . . . . 293
+PART IV. STORM . . . . . . . . . . 365
+PART V. REQUIESCAT . . . . . . . . 511
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+D.M.W.
+
+DAUGHTER AND FRIEND
+
+I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK
+
+
+MARCH, 1905
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+LADY KITTY BRISTOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  _Frontispiece_
+LADY TRANMORE AND MARY LYSTER  . . . . . . . . . . . . _Facing page_   6
+"A SLIM GIRL IN WHITE AT THE FAR END OF THE LARGE ROOM"  . . . . . .  44
+THE FINISHING TOUCHES  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
+"HE GATHERED HER IN HIS ARMS"  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
+"THE ACTRESS PAUSED TO STARE AT LADY KITTY"  . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
+"SHE THOUGHT OF CLIFFE STANDING BESIDE THE DOOR OF THE GREAT HALL" . 474
+"HE DREW SOME CHAIRS TOGETHER BEFORE THE FIRE" . . . . . . . . . . . 556
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+ACQUAINTANCE
+
+                              "Just oblige me and touch
+     With your scourge that minx Chloe, but don't hurt her much."
+
+
+
+
+The Marriage of William Ashe
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"He ought to be here," said Lady Tranmore, as she turned away from the
+window.
+
+Mary Lyster laid down her work. It was a fine piece of church
+embroidery, which, seeing that it had been designed for her by no less a
+person than young Mr. Burne Jones himself, made her the envy of her
+pre-Raphaelite friends.
+
+"Yes, indeed. You made out there was a train about twelve."
+
+"Certainly. They can't have taken more than an hour to speechify after
+the declaration of the poll. And I know William meant to catch that
+train if he possibly could."
+
+"And take his seat this evening?"
+
+Lady Tranmore nodded. She moved restlessly about the room, fidgeting
+with a book here and there, and evidently full of thoughts. Mary Lyster
+watched her a little longer, then quietly took up her work again. Her
+air of well-bred sympathy, the measured ease of her movements,
+contrasted with Lady Tranmore's impatience. Yet in truth she was
+listening no less sharply than her companion to the sounds in the
+street outside.
+
+Lady Tranmore made her way to the window, and stood there looking out on
+the park. It was the week before Easter, and the plane-trees were not
+yet in leaf. But a few thorns inside the park railings were already
+lavishly green and there was a glitter of spring flowers beside the park
+walks, not showing, however, in such glorious abundance as became the
+fashion a few years later. It was a mild afternoon and the drive was
+full of carriages. From the bow-window of the old irregular house in
+which she stood, Lady Tranmore could watch the throng passing and
+repassing, could see also the traffic in Park Lane on either side.
+London, from this point of sight, wore a cheerful, friendly air. The dim
+sunshine, the white-clouded sky, the touches of reviving green and
+flowers, the soft air blowing in from a farther window which was open,
+brought with them impressions of spring, of promise, and rebirth, which
+insensibly affected Lady Tranmore.
+
+"Well, I wonder what William will do, this time, in Parliament!" she
+said, as she dropped again into her seat by the fire and began to cut
+the pages of a new book.
+
+"He is sure to do extremely well," said Miss Lyster.
+
+Lady Tranmore shrugged her shoulders. "My dear--do you know that William
+has been for eight years--since he left Trinity--one of the idlest young
+men alive?"
+
+"He had one brief!"
+
+"Yes--somewhere in the country, where all the juniors get one in turn,"
+said Lady Tranmore. "That was the year he was so keen and went on
+circuit, and never missed a sessions. Next year nothing would induce
+him to stir out of town. What has he done with himself all these eight
+years? I can't imagine."
+
+"He has grown--uncommonly handsome," said Mary Lyster, with a momentary
+hesitation as she threaded her needle afresh.
+
+"I never remember him anything else," said Lady Tranmore. "All the
+artists who came here and to Narroways wanted to paint him. I used to
+think it would make him a spoiled little ape. But nothing spoiled him."
+
+Miss Lyster smiled. "You know, Cousin Elizabeth--and you may as well
+confess it at once!--that you think him the ablest, handsomest, and
+charmingest of men!"
+
+"Of course I do," said Lady Tranmore, calmly. "I am certain,
+moreover--now--that he will be Prime Minister. And as for idleness,
+that, of course, is only a _façon de parler_. He has worked hard enough
+at the things which please him."
+
+"There--you see!" said Mary Lyster, laughing.
+
+"Not politics, anyway," said the elder lady, reflectively. "He went
+into the House to please me, because I was a fool and wanted to see
+him there. But I must say when his constituents turned him out last
+year I thought they would have been a mean-spirited set if they
+hadn't. They knew very well he'd never done a stroke for them.
+Attendances--divisions--perfectly scandalous!"
+
+"Well, here he is, in triumphantly for somewhere else--with all sorts of
+delightful prospects!"
+
+Lady Tranmore sighed. Her white fingers paused in their task.
+
+"That, of course, is because--now--he's a personage. Everything'll be
+made easy for him now. My dear Mary, they talk of England's being a
+democracy!"
+
+The speaker raised her handsome shoulders; then, as though to shake off
+thoughts of loss and grief which had suddenly assailed her, she abruptly
+changed the subject.
+
+"Well--work or no work--the first thing we've got to do is to marry
+him."
+
+She looked up sharply. But not the smallest tremor could she detect in
+Mary Lyster's gently moving hand. There was, however, no reply to her
+remark.
+
+"Don't you agree, Polly?" said Lady Tranmore, smiling.
+
+Her smile--which still gave great beauty to her face--was charming, but
+a little sly, as she observed her companion.
+
+"Why, of course," said Miss Lyster, inclining her head to one side that
+she might judge the effect of some green shades she had just put in.
+"But that surely will be made easy for him, too."
+
+"Well, after all, the girls can't propose! And I never saw him take any
+interest in a girl yet--outside his own family, of course," added Lady
+Tranmore, hastily.
+
+"No--he does certainly devote himself to the married women," replied
+Miss Lyster, in the half-absent tone of one more truly interested in her
+embroidery than in the conversation.
+
+"He would sooner have an hour with Madame d'Estrées than a week with the
+prettiest miss in London. That's quite true, but I vow it's the girls'
+own fault! They should stand on their dignity--snub the creatures
+more! In my young days--"
+
+[Illustration: LADY TRANMORE AND MARY LYSTER]
+
+"Ah, there wasn't a glut of us then," said Mary, calmly. "Listen!"--she
+held up her hand.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Tranmore, springing up. "There he is."
+
+She stood waiting. The door flew open, and in came a tall young man.
+
+"William, how late you are!" said Lady Tranmore, as she flew into his
+arms.
+
+"Well, mother, are you pleased?"
+
+Her son held her at arm's-length, smiling kindly upon her.
+
+"Of course I am," said Lady Tranmore. "And you--are you horribly tired?"
+
+"Not a bit. Ah, Mary!--how do you do?"
+
+Miss Lyster had risen, and the cousins shook hands.
+
+"But I don't deny it's very jolly to come back--out of all that beastly
+scrimmage," said the new member, as he threw himself into an arm-chair
+by the fire with his hands behind his head, while Lady Tranmore prepared
+him a cup of tea.
+
+"I expect you've enjoyed it," said Miss Lyster, also moving towards the
+fire.
+
+"Well, when you're in it there's a certain excitement in wondering how
+you're going to come out of it! But one might say that, of course, of
+the infernal regions."
+
+"Not quite," said Mary Lyster, smiling demurely.
+
+"Polly! you _are_ a Tory. Everybody else's hell has moved--but yours!
+Thank you, mother," as Lady Tranmore gave him tea. Then, stretching out
+his great frame in lazy satisfaction, he turned his brown eyes from one
+lady to the other. "I say, mother, I haven't seen anything as
+good-looking as you--or Polly there, if she'll forgive me--for weeks."
+
+"Hold your tongue, goose," said his mother, as she replenished the
+teapot. "What--there were no pretty girls--not one?"
+
+"Well, they didn't come my way," said William, contentedly munching at
+bread-and-butter. "I have gone through all the usual humbug--and
+perjured my soul in all the usual ways--without any consolation worth
+speaking of."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, sir," said Lady Tranmore. "You know you like
+speaking--and you like compliments--and you've had plenty of both."
+
+"You didn't read me, mother!"
+
+"Didn't I?" she said, smiling. He groaned, and took another piece of
+tea-cake.
+
+"My own family at least, don't you think, might omit that?"
+
+"H'm, sir--So you didn't believe a word of your own speeches?" said Lady
+Tranmore, as she stood behind him and smoothed his hair back from his
+forehead.
+
+"Well, who does?" He looked up gayly and kissed the tips of her fingers.
+
+"And it's in that spirit you're going back into the House?" Mary Lyster
+threw him the question--with a slight pinching of the lips--as she
+resumed her work.
+
+"Spirit? What do you mean, Polly? One plays the game, of course--and it
+has its moments--its hot corners, so to speak--or I suppose no one would
+play it!"
+
+"And the goal?" She lifted a gently disapproving face, in a movement
+which showed anew the large comeliness of head and neck.
+
+"Why--to keep the other fellows out, of course!" He lifted an arm and
+drew his mother down to sit on the edge of his chair.
+
+"William, you're not to talk like that," said Lady Tranmore, decidedly,
+laying her cheek, however, against his hand the while. "It was all very
+well when you were quite a free-lance--but now--Oh! never mind
+Mary--she's discreet--and she knows all about it."
+
+"What--that they're thinking of giving me Hickson's place? Parham has
+just written to me--I found the letter down-stairs--to ask me to go and
+see him."
+
+"Oh! it's come?" said Lady Tranmore, with a start of pleasure. Lord
+Parham was the Prime Minister. "Now don't be a humbug, William, and
+pretend you're not pleased. But you'll have to work, mind!" She held up
+an admonishing finger. "You'll have to answer letters, mind!--you'll
+have to keep appointments, mind!"
+
+"Shall I?... Ah!--Hudson--"
+
+He turned. The butler was in the room.
+
+"His lordship, my lady, would like to see Mr. William before dinner if
+he could make it convenient."
+
+"Certainly, Hudson, certainly," said the young man. "Tell his lordship
+I'll be with him in ten minutes."
+
+Then, as the butler departed--"How's father, mother?"
+
+"Oh! much as usual," said Lady Tranmore, sadly.
+
+"And you?"
+
+He laid his arm boyishly round her waist, and looked up at her, his
+handsome face all affection and life. Mary Lyster, observing them,
+thought them a remarkable pair--he in the very prime and heyday of
+brilliant youth, she so beautiful still, in spite of the filling-out of
+middle life--which, indeed, was at the moment somewhat toned and
+disguised by the deep mourning, the sweeping crape and dull silk in
+which she was dressed.
+
+"I'm all right, dear," she said, quietly, putting her hand on his
+shoulder. "Now, go on with your tea. Mary--feed him! I'll go and talk to
+father till you come."
+
+She disappeared, and William Ashe approached his cousin.
+
+"She _is_ better?" he said, with an anxiety that became him.
+
+"Oh yes! Your election has been everything to her--and your letters. You
+know how she adores you, William."
+
+Ashe drew a long breath.
+
+"Yes--isn't it bad luck?"
+
+"William!"
+
+"For her, I mean. Because, you know--I can't live up to it. I know it's
+her doing--bless her!--that old Parham's going to give me this thing.
+And it's a perfect scandal!"
+
+"What nonsense, William!"
+
+"It is!" he maintained, springing up and standing before her, with his
+hands in his pockets. "They're going to offer me the Under-Secretaryship
+for Foreign Affairs, and I shall take it, I suppose, and be thankful.
+And do you know"--he dropped out the words with emphasis--"that I don't
+know a word of German--and I can't talk to a Frenchman for half an hour
+without disgracing myself. There--that's how we're governed!"
+
+He stood staring at her with his bright large eyes--amused, yet
+strangely detached--as though he had very little to do with what he was
+talking about.
+
+Mary Lyster met his look in some bewilderment, conscious all the time
+that his neighborhood was very agreeable and stirring.
+
+"But every one says--you speak so well on foreign subjects."
+
+"Well, any fool can get up a Blue Book. Only--luckily for me--all the
+fools don't. That's how I've scored sometimes. Oh! I don't deny
+that--I've scored!" He thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, his
+whole tall frame vibrant, as it seemed to her, with will and good-humor.
+
+"And you'll score again," she said, smiling. "You've got a wonderful
+opportunity, William. That's what the Bishop says."
+
+"Much obliged to him!"
+
+Ashe looked down upon her rather oddly.
+
+"He told me he had never believed you were such an idler as other people
+thought you--that he felt sure you had great endowments, and that you
+would use them for the good of your country, and"--she hesitated
+slightly--"of the Church. I wish you'd talk to him sometimes, William.
+He sees so clearly."
+
+"Oh! does he?" said Ashe.
+
+Mary had dropped her work, and her face--a little too broad, with
+features a trifle too strongly marked--was raised towards him. Its pale
+color had passed into a slight blush. But the more strenuous expression
+had somehow not added to her charm, and her voice had taken a slightly
+nasal tone.
+
+Through the mind of William Ashe, as he stood looking down upon her,
+passed a multitude of flying impressions. He knew perfectly well that
+Mary Lyster was one of the maidens whom it would be possible for him to
+marry. His mother had never pressed her upon him, but she would
+certainly acquiesce. It would have been mere mock modesty on his part
+not to guess that Mary would probably not refuse him. And she was
+handsome, well provided, well connected--oppressively so, indeed; a man
+might quail a little before her relations. Moreover, she and he had
+always been good friends, even when as a boy he could not refrain from
+teasing her for a slow-coach. During his electoral weeks in the country
+the thought of "Polly" had often stolen kindly upon his rare moments of
+peace. He must marry, of course. There was no particular excitement or
+romance about it. Now that his elder brother was dead and he had become
+the heir, it simply had to be done. And Polly was very nice--quite
+sweet-tempered and intelligent. She looked well, moved well, would fill
+the position admirably.
+
+Then, suddenly, as these half-thoughts rushed through his brain, a
+breath of something cold and distracting--a wind from the land of
+_ennui_--seemed to blow upon them and scatter them. Was it the mention
+of the Bishop--tiresome, pompous fellow--or her slightly pedantic
+tone--or the infinitesimal hint of "management" that her speech implied?
+Who knows? But in that moment perhaps the scales of life inclined.
+
+"Much obliged to the Bishop," he repeated, walking up and down. "I am
+afraid, however, I don't take things as seriously as he does. Oh, I hope
+I shall behave decently--but, good Lord, what a comedy it is! You know
+the sort of articles"--he turned towards her--"our papers will be
+writing to-morrow on my appointment. They'll make me out no end of a
+fine fellow--you'll see! And, of course, the real truth is, as you and I
+know perfectly well, that if it hadn't been for poor Freddy's death--and
+mother--and her dinners--and the chaps who come here--I might have
+whistled for anything of the sort. And then I go down to Ledmenham and
+stand as a Liberal, and get all the pious Radicals to work for me! It's
+a humbugging world--isn't it?"
+
+He returned to the fireplace, and stood looking down upon her--grinning.
+
+Mary had resumed her embroidery. She, too, was dimly conscious of
+something disappointing.
+
+"Of course, if you choose to take it like that, you can," she said,
+rather tartly. "Of course, everything can be made ridiculous."
+
+"Well, that's a blessing, anyway!" said Ashe, with his merry laugh. "But
+look here, Mary, tell me about yourself. What have you been
+doing?--dancing--riding, eh?"
+
+He threw himself down beside her, and began an elder-brotherly
+cross-examination, which lasted till Lady Tranmore returned and begged
+him to go at once to his father.
+
+When he returned to the drawing-room, Ashe found his mother alone. It
+was growing dark, and she was sitting idle, her hands in her lap,
+waiting for him.
+
+"I must be off, dear," he said to her. "You won't come down and see me
+take my seat?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I think not. What did you think of your father?"
+
+"I don't see much change," he said, hesitating.
+
+"No, he's much the same."
+
+"And you?" He slid down on the sofa beside her and threw his arm round
+her. "Have you been fretting?"
+
+Lady Tranmore made no reply. She was a self-contained woman, not readily
+moved to tears. But he felt her hand tremble as he pressed it.
+
+"I sha'n't fret now"--she said after a moment--"now that you've come
+back."
+
+Ashe's face took a very soft and tender expression.
+
+"Mother, you know--you think a great deal too much of me--you're too
+ambitious for me."
+
+She gave a sound between a laugh and a sob, and, raising her hands, she
+smoothed back his curly hair and held his face between them.
+
+"When do you see Lord Parham?" she asked.
+
+"Eight o'clock--in his room at the House. I'll send you up a note."
+
+"You'll be home early?"
+
+"No--don't wait for me."
+
+She dropped her hands, after giving him a kiss on the cheek.
+
+"I know where you're going! It's Madame d'Estrées' evening."
+
+"Well--you don't object?"
+
+"Object?" She shrugged her shoulders. "So long as it amuses you--You
+won't find _one_ woman there to-night."
+
+"Last time there were two," he said, smiling, as he rose from the sofa.
+
+"I know--Lady Quantock--and Mrs. Mallory. Now they've deserted her, I
+hear. What fresh gossip has turned up I don't know. Of course," she
+sighed, "I've been out of the world. But I believe there have been
+developments."
+
+"Well, I don't know anything about it--and I don't think I want to know.
+She's very agreeable, and one meets everybody there."
+
+"_Everybody_. Ungallant creature!" she said, giving a little pull to his
+collar, the set of which did not please her.
+
+"Sorry! Mother!"--his laughing eyes pursued her--"Do you want to marry
+me off directly?--I know you do!"
+
+"I want nothing but what you yourself should want. Of course, you must
+marry."
+
+"The young women don't care twopence about me!"
+
+"William!--be a bear if you like, but not an idiot!"
+
+"Perfectly true," he declared; "not the dazzlers and the high-fliers,
+anyway--the only ones it would be an excitement to carry off."
+
+"You know very well," she said, slowly, "that now you might marry
+anybody."
+
+He threw his head back rather haughtily.
+
+"Oh! I wasn't thinking about money, and that kind of thing. Well, give
+me time, mother--don't hurry me! And now I'd better stop talking
+nonsense, change my clothes, and be off. Good-bye, dear--you shall hear
+when the job's perpetrated!"
+
+"William, really!--don't say these things--at least to anybody but me.
+You understand very well"--she drew herself up rather finely--"that if I
+hadn't known, in spite of your apparent idleness, you would do any work
+they _set_ you to do, to your own credit and the country's, I'd never
+have lifted a finger for you!"
+
+William Ashe laughed out.
+
+"Oh! intriguing mother!" he said, stooping again to kiss her. "So you
+admit you did it?"
+
+He went off gayly, and she heard him flying up-stairs three steps at a
+time, as though he were still an untamed Eton boy, and there were no
+three weeks' hard political fighting behind him, and no interview which
+might decide his life before him.
+
+He entered his own sitting-room on the second floor, shut the door
+behind him, and glanced round him with delight. It was a large room
+looking on a side street, and obliquely to the park. Its walls were
+covered with books--books which almost at first sight betrayed to the
+accustomed eye that they were the familiar companions of a student.
+Almost every volume had long paper slips inside it, and when opened
+would have been found to contain notes and underlinings in a somewhat
+reckless and destructive abundance. A large table, also loaded untidily
+with books and papers, stood in the centre of the room; many of them
+were note-books, stored with evidences of the most laborious and patient
+work; a Cambridge text lay beside them face downward, as he had left it
+on departure. His mother's housekeeper, who had been one of his best
+friends from babyhood, was the only person allowed to dust his room--but
+on the strict condition that she replaced everything as she found it.
+
+He took up the volume, and plunged a moment headlong into the Greek
+chorus that met his eye. "_Jolly!_" he said, putting it down with a sigh
+of regret. "These beastly politics!"
+
+And he went muttering to his dressing-room, summoning his valet almost
+with ill-temper. Yet half his library was the library of a politician,
+admirably chosen and exhaustively read.
+
+The footman who answered his call understood his moods and served him at
+a look. Ashe complained hotly of the brushing of his dress-clothes, and
+worked himself into a fever over the set of his tie. Nevertheless,
+before he left he had managed to get from the young man the whole story
+of his engagement to the under-housemaid, giving him thereupon some bits
+of advice, jocular but trenchant, which James accepted with a readiness
+quite unlike his normal behavior in the circles of his class.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Ashe took his seat, dined, and saw the Prime Minister. These things took
+time, and it was not till past eleven that he presented himself in the
+hall of Madame d'Estrées' house in St. James's Place. Most of her guests
+were already gathered, but he mounted the stairs together with an old
+friend and an old acquaintance, Philip Darrell, one of the ablest
+writers of the moment, and Louis Harman, artist and man of fashion, the
+friend of duchesses and painter of portraits, a person much in request
+in many worlds.
+
+"What a _cachet_ they have, these houses!" said Harman, looking round
+him. "St. James's Place is the top!"
+
+"Where else would you expect to find Madame d'Estrées?" asked Darrell,
+smiling.
+
+"Yes--what taste she has! However, it was I really who advised her to
+take the house."
+
+"Naturally," said Darrell.
+
+Harman threw a dubious look at him, then stopped a moment, and with a
+complacent proprietary air straightened an engraving on the staircase
+wall.
+
+"I suppose the dear lady has a hundred slaves of the lamp, as usual,"
+said Ashe. "You advise her about her house--somebody else helps her to
+buy her wine--"
+
+"Not at all, my dear fellow," said Harman, offended--"as if I couldn't
+do that!"
+
+"Hullo!" said Darrell, as they neared the drawing-room door. "What a
+crowd there is!"
+
+For as the butler announced them, the din of talk which burst through
+the door implied indeed a multitude--much at their ease.
+
+They made their way in with difficulty, shaping their course towards
+that corner in the room where they knew they should find their hostess.
+Ashe was greeted on all sides with friendly words and congratulations,
+and a passage was opened for him to the famous "blue sofa" where Madame
+d'Estrées sat enthroned.
+
+She looked up with animation, broke off her talk with two elderly
+diplomats who seemed to have taken possession of her, and beckoned Ashe
+to a seat beside her.
+
+"So you're in? Was it a hard fight?"
+
+"A hard fight? Oh no! One would have had to be a great fool not to get
+in."
+
+"They say you spoke very well. I suppose you promised them everything
+they wanted--from the crown downward?"
+
+"Yes--all the usual harmless things," said Ashe.
+
+Madame d'Estrées laughed; then looked at him across the top of her fan.
+
+"Well!--and what else?"
+
+"You can't wait for your newspaper?" he said, smiling, after a moment's
+pause.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders good-humoredly.
+
+"Oh! I _know_--of course I know. Is it as good as you expected?"
+
+"As good as--" The young man opened his mouth in wonder. "What right
+had I to expect anything?"
+
+"How modest! All the same, they want you--and they're very glad to get
+you. But you can't save them."
+
+"That's not generally expected of Under-Secretaries, is it?"
+
+"A good deal's expected of _you_. I talked to Lord Parham about you last
+night."
+
+William Ashe flushed a little.
+
+"Did you? Very kind of you."
+
+"Not at all. I didn't flatter you in the least. Nor did he. But they're
+going to give you your chance!"
+
+She bent forward and lightly patted the sleeve of his coat with the
+fingers of a very delicate hand. In this sympathetic aspect, Madame
+d'Estrées was no doubt exceedingly attractive. There were, of course,
+many people who were not moved by it; to whom it was the conjuring of an
+arch pretender. But these were generally of the female sex. Men, at any
+rate, lent themselves to the illusion. Ashe, certainly, had always done
+so. And to-night the spell still worked; though as her action drew his
+particular attention to her face and expression, he was aware of slight
+changes in her which recalled his mother's words of the afternoon. The
+eyes were tired; at last he perceived in them some slight signs of years
+and harass. Up till now her dominating charm had been a kind of timeless
+softness and sensuousness, which breathed from her whole
+personality--from her fair skin and hair, her large, smiling eyes. She
+put, as it were, the question of age aside. It was difficult to think of
+her as a child; it had been impossible to imagine her as an old woman.
+
+"Well, this is all very surprising," said Ashe, "considering that four
+months ago I did not matter an old shoe to anybody."
+
+"That was your own fault. You took no trouble. And besides--there was
+your poor brother in the way."
+
+Ashe's brow contracted.
+
+"No, that he never was," he said, with energy. "Freddy was never in
+anybody's way--least of all in mine."
+
+"You know what I mean," she said, hastily. "And you know what friends he
+and I were--poor Freddy! But, after all, the world's the world."
+
+"Yes--we all grow on somebody's grave," said Ashe. Then, just as she
+became conscious that she had jarred upon him, and must find a new
+opening, he himself found it. "Tell me!" he said, bending forward with a
+sudden alertness--"who is that lady?"
+
+He pointed out a little figure in white, sitting in the opening of the
+second drawing-room; a very young girl apparently, surrounded by a group
+of men.
+
+"Ah!" said Madame d'Estrées--"I was coming to that--that's my girl
+Kitty--"
+
+"Lady Kitty!" said Ashe, in amazement. "She's left school? I thought she
+was quite a little thing."
+
+"She's eighteen. Isn't she a darling? Don't you think her very pretty?"
+
+Ashe looked a moment.
+
+"Extraordinarily bewitching!--unlike other people?" he said, turning to
+the mother.
+
+Madame d'Estrées raised her eyebrows a little, in apparent amusement.
+
+"I'm not going to describe Kitty. She's indescribable. Besides--you
+must find her out. Do go and talk to her. She's to be half with me, half
+with her aunt--Lady Grosville."
+
+Ashe made some polite comment.
+
+"Oh! don't let's be conventional!" said Madame d'Estrées, flirting her
+fan with a little air of weariness--"It's an odious arrangement. Lady
+Grosville and I, as you probably know, are not on terms. She says
+atrocious things of me--and I--" the fair head fell back a little, and
+the white shoulders rose, with the slightest air of languid
+disdain--"well, bear me witness that I don't retaliate! It's not worth
+while. But I know that Grosville House can help Kitty. So!--" Her
+gesture, half ironical, half resigned, completed the sentence.
+
+"Does Lady Kitty like society?"
+
+"Kitty likes anything that flatters or excites her."
+
+"Then of course she likes society. Anybody as pretty as that--"
+
+"Ah! how sweet of you!" said Madame d'Estrées, softly--"how sweet of
+you! I like you to think her pretty. I like you to say so."
+
+Ashe felt and looked a trifle disconcerted, but his companion bent
+forward and added--"I don't know whether I want you to flirt with her!
+You must take care. Kitty's the most fantastic creature. Oh! my life
+now'll be very different. I find she takes all my thoughts and most of
+my time!"
+
+There was something extravagant in the sweetness of the smile which
+emphasized the speech, and altogether, Madame d'Estrées, in this new
+maternal aspect, was not as agreeable as usual. Part of her charm
+perhaps had always lain in the fact that she had no domestic topics of
+her own, and so was endlessly ready for those of other people. Those,
+indeed, who came often to her house were accustomed to speak warmly of
+her "unselfishness"--by which they meant the easy patience with which
+she could listen, smile, and flatter.
+
+Perhaps Ashe made this tacit demand upon her, no less than other people.
+At any rate, as she talked cooingly on about her daughter, he would have
+found her tiresome for once but for some arresting quality in that
+small, distant figure. As it was, he followed what she said with
+attention, and as soon as she had been recaptured by the impatient
+Italian Ambassador, he moved off, intending slowly to make his way to
+Lady Kitty. But he was caught in many congratulations by the road, and
+presently he saw that his friend Darrell was being introduced to her by
+the old habitué of the house, Colonel Warington, who generally divided
+with the hostess the "lead" of these social evenings.
+
+Lady Kitty nodded carelessly to Mr. Darrell, and he sat down beside her.
+
+"That's a cool hand for a girl of eighteen!" thought Ashe. "She has the
+airs of a princess--except for the chatter."
+
+Chatter indeed! Wherever he moved, the sound of the light hurrying voice
+made itself persistently heard through the hum of male conversation.
+
+Yet once, Ashe, looking round to see if Darrell could be dislodged,
+caught the chatterer silent, and found himself all at once invaded by a
+slight thrill, or shock.
+
+What did the girl's expression mean?--what was she thinking of? She was
+looking intently at the crowded room, and it seemed to Ashe that
+Darrell's talk, though his lips moved quickly, was not reaching her at
+all. The dark brows were drawn together, and beneath them the eyes
+looked sorely out. The delicate lips were slightly, piteously open, and
+the whole girlish form in its young beauty appeared, as he watched, to
+shrink together. Suddenly the girl's look, so wide and searching, caught
+that of Ashe; and he moved impulsively forward.
+
+"Present me, please, to Lady Kitty," he said, catching Warington's arm.
+
+"Poor child!" said a low voice in his ear.
+
+Ashe turned and saw Louis Harman. The tone, however--allusive, intimate,
+patronizing--in which Harman had spoken, annoyed him, and he passed on
+without taking any notice.
+
+"Lady Kitty," said Warington, "Mr. Ashe wishes to be presented to you.
+He is an old friend of your mother's. Congratulate him--he has just got
+into Parliament."
+
+Lady Kitty drew herself up, and all trace of the look which Ashe had
+observed disappeared. She bowed, not carelessly as she had bowed to
+Darrell, but with a kind of exaggerated stateliness, not less girlish.
+
+"I never congratulate anybody," she said, shaking her head, "till I know
+them."
+
+Ashe opened his eyes a little.
+
+"How long must I wait?" he said, smiling, as he drew a chair beside her.
+
+"That depends. Are you difficult to know?" She looked up at him
+audaciously, and he on his side could not take his eyes from her, so
+singular was the small, sparkling face. The hair and skin were very
+fair, like her mother's, the eyes dark and full of fire, the neck most
+daintily white and slender, the figure undeveloped, the feet and hands
+extremely small. But what arrested him was, so to speak, the embodied
+contradiction of the personality--as between the wild intelligence of
+the eyes and the extreme youth, almost childishness, of the rest.
+
+He asked her if she had ever known any one confess to being easy, to
+know.
+
+"Well, I'm easy to know," she said, carelessly, leaning back; "but,
+then, I'm not worth knowing."
+
+"Is one allowed to find out?"
+
+"Oh yes--of course! Do you know--when you were over there, I _willed_
+that you should come and talk to me, and you came. Only," she sat up
+with animation, and began to tick off her sentences on her
+fingers--"Don't ask me how long I've been in town. Don't ask where I was
+in Paris. Don't inquire whether I like balls! You see, I warn you at
+once"--she looked up frankly--"that we mayn't lose time."
+
+"Well, then, I don't see how I'm ever to find out," said Ashe, stoutly.
+
+"Whether I'm worth knowing?" She considered, then bent forward eagerly.
+"Look here! I'll just tell you everything in a lump, and then that'll
+do--won't it? Listen. I'm just eighteen. I was sent to the Soeurs
+Blanches when I was thirteen--the year papa died. I _didn't_ like
+papa--I'm very sorry, but I didn't! However, that's by-the-way. In all
+those years I have only seen maman once--she doesn't like children. But
+my aunt Grosville has some French relations--very, _very_ 'comme il
+faut,' you understand--and I used to go and stay with them for the
+holidays. Tell me!--did you ever hunt in France?"
+
+"Never," said Ashe, startled and amused by the sudden glance of
+enthusiasm that lit up the face and expressed itself in the clasped
+hands.
+
+"Oh! it's such heaven," she said, lifting her shoulders with an
+extravagant gesture--"such _heaven_! First there are the old
+dresses--the men look such darlings!--and then the horns, and the old
+ways they have--_si noble!--si distingué!_--not like your stupid English
+hunting. And then the dogs! Ah! the _dogs_"--the shoulders went higher
+still; "do you know my cousin Henri actually gave me a puppy of the
+great breed--_the_ breed, you know--the Dogs of St. Hubert. Or at least
+he _would_ if maman would have let me bring it over. And she wouldn't!
+Just think of that! When there are thousands of people in France who'd
+give the eyes out of their head for one. I cried all one
+night--Allons!--faut pas y penser!"--she shook back the hair from her
+eyes with an impatient gesture. "My cousins have got a château, you
+know, in the Seine-et-Oise. They've promised to ask me next year--when
+the Grand-Duke Paul comes--if I'll promise to behave. You see, I'm not a
+bit like French girls--I had so many affairs!"
+
+Her eyes flashed with laughter.
+
+Ashe laughed too.
+
+"Are you going to tell me about them also?"
+
+She drew herself up.
+
+"No! I play fair, always--ask anybody! Oh, I _do_ want to go back to
+France so badly!" Once more she was all appeal and childishness.
+"Anyway, I won't stay in England! I have made up my mind to that!"
+
+"How long has it taken?"
+
+"A fortnight," she said, slowly--"just a fortnight."
+
+"That hardly seems time enough--does it?" said Ashe. "Give us a little
+longer."
+
+"No--I--I hate you!" said Lady Kitty, with a strange drop in her voice.
+Her little fingers began to drum on the table near her, and to Ashe's
+intense astonishment he saw her eyes fill with tears.
+
+Suddenly a movement towards the other room set in around them. Madame
+d'Estrées could be heard giving directions. A space was made in the
+large drawing-room--a little table appeared in it, and a footman placed
+thereon a glass of water.
+
+Lady Kitty looked up.
+
+"Oh, that _detestable_ man!" she said, drawing back. "No--I can't, I
+can't bear it. Come with me!" and beckoning to Ashe she fled with
+precipitation into the farther part of the inner drawing-room, out of
+her mother's sight. Ashe followed her, and she dropped panting and elate
+into a chair.
+
+Meanwhile the outer room gathered to hear the recitation of some _vers
+de société_, fondly believed by their author to be of a very pretty and
+Praedian make. They certainly amused the company, who laughed and
+clapped as each neat personality emerged. Lady Kitty passed the time
+either in a running commentary on the reciter, which occasionally
+convulsed her companion, or else in holding her small hands over her
+ears.
+
+When it was over, she drew a long breath.
+
+"How maman _can!_ Oh! how _bête_ you English are to applaud such a man!
+You have only _one_ poet, haven't you--one living poet? Ah! I shouldn't
+have laughed if it had been he!"
+
+"I suppose you mean Geoffrey Cliffe?" said Ashe, amused. "Nobody abroad
+seems ever to have heard of any one else."
+
+"Well, of course, I just long to know him! Every one says he is so
+dangerous!--he makes all the women fall in love with him. That's
+_delicious_! He shouldn't make me! Do you know him?"
+
+"I knew him at Eton. We were 'swished' together," said Ashe.
+
+She inquired what the phrase might mean, and when informed, flushed
+hotly, denouncing the English school system as quite unfit for gentlemen
+and men of honor. Her French cousins would sooner die than suffer such a
+thing. Then in the midst of her tirade she suddenly paused, and fixing
+Ashe with her brilliant eyes, she asked him a surprising question, in a
+changed and steady voice:
+
+"Is Lady Tranmore not well?"
+
+Ashe was fairly startled.
+
+"Thank you, I left her quite well. Have you--"
+
+"Did maman ask her to come to-night?"
+
+It was Ashe's turn to redden.
+
+"I don't know. But--we are in mourning, you see, for my brother."
+
+Her face changed and softened instantly.
+
+"Are you? I'm so sorry. I--I always say something stupid. Then--Lady
+Tranmore used to come to maman's parties--before--"
+
+She had grown quite pale; it seemed to him that her hand shook. Ashe
+felt an extraordinary pang of pity and concern.
+
+"It's I, you see, to whom your mother has been kind," he said, gently.
+"We're an independent family; we each make our own friends."
+
+"No--" she said, drawing a deep breath. "No, it's not that. Look at that
+room."
+
+Following her slight gesture, Ashe looked. It was an old, low-ceiled
+room, panelled in white and gold, showing here and there an Italian
+picture--saint, or holy family, agreeable school-work--from which might
+be inferred the tastes if not the _expertise_ of Madame d'Estrées' first
+husband, Lord Blackwater. The floor was held by a plentiful collection
+of seats, neither too easy nor too stiff; arranged by one who understood
+to perfection the physical conditions at least which should surround the
+"great art" of conversation. At this moment every seat was full. A sea
+of black coats overflowed on the farther side, into the staircase
+landing, where through the open door several standing groups could be
+seen; and in the inner room, where they sat, there was but little space
+between its margin and themselves. It was a remarkable sight; and in his
+past visits to the house Ashe had often said to himself that the
+elements of which it was made up were still more remarkable. Ministers
+and Opposition; ambassadors, travellers, journalists; the men of fashion
+and the men of reform; here a French republican official, and beyond
+him, perhaps, a man whose ancestors were already of the most ancient
+_noblesse_ in Saint-Simon's day; artists, great and small, men of
+letters good and indifferent; all these had been among the guests of
+Madame d'Estrées, brought to the house, each of them, for some quality's
+sake, some power of keeping up the social game.
+
+But now, as he looked at the room, not to please himself but to obey
+Lady Kitty, Ashe became aware of a new impression. The crowd was no
+less, numerically, than he had seen it in the early winter; but it
+seemed to him less distinguished, made up of coarser and commoner items.
+He caught the face of a shady financier long since banished from Lady
+Tranmore's parties; beyond him a red-faced colonel, conspicuous alike
+for doubtful money-matters and matrimonial trouble; and in a farther
+corner the sallow profile of a writer whose books were apt to rouse even
+the man of the world to a healthy and contemptuous disgust. Surely these
+persons had never been there of old; he could not remember one of them.
+
+He looked again, more closely. Was it fancy, or was the gathering itself
+aware of the change which had passed over it? As a whole, it was
+certainly noisier than of old; the shouting and laughter were incessant.
+But within the general uproar certain groups had separated from other
+groups, and were talking with a studied quiet. Most of the habitué's
+were still there; but they held themselves apart from their neighbors.
+Were the old intimacy and solidarity beginning to break up?--and with
+them the peculiar charm of these "evenings," a charm which had so far
+defied a social boycott that had been active from the first?
+
+He glanced back uncertainly at Lady Kitty, and she looked at him.
+
+"Why are there no ladies?" she said, abruptly.
+
+He collected his thoughts.
+
+"It--it has always been a men's gathering. Perhaps for some men
+here--I'm sorry there are such barbarians, Lady Kitty!--that makes the
+charm of it. Look at that old fellow there! He is a most famous old
+boy. Everybody invites him--but he never stirs out of his den but to
+come here. My mother can't get him--though she has tried often."
+
+And he pointed to a dishevelled, gray-haired gentleman, short in
+stature, round in figure, something, in short, like an animated egg, who
+was addressing a group not far off.
+
+Lady Kitty's face showed a variety of expressions.
+
+"Are there many parties like this in London? Are the ladies asked, and
+don't come? I--I don't--understand!"
+
+Ashe looked at her kindly.
+
+"There is no other hostess in London as clever as your mother," he
+declared, and then tried to change the subject; but she paid no heed.
+
+"The other day, at Aunt Grosville's," she said, slowly, "I asked if my
+two cousins might come to-night, and they looked at me as though I were
+mad! Oh, _do_ talk to me!" She came impulsively nearer, and Ashe noticed
+that Darrell, standing against the doorway of communication, looked
+round at them in amusement. "I liked your face--the very first moment
+when I saw you across the room. Do you know--you're--you're very
+handsome!" She drew back, her eyes fixed gravely, intently upon him.
+
+For the first time Ashe was conscious of annoyance.
+
+"I hope you won't mind my saying so"--his tone was a little short--"but
+in this country we don't say those things. They're not--quite polite."
+
+"Aren't they?" Her eyebrows arched themselves and her lips fell in
+penitence. "I always called my French cousin, Henri la Fresnay, _beau!_
+I am sure he liked it!" The accent was almost plaintive.
+
+Ashe's natural impulse was to say that if so the French cousin must be
+an ass. But all in a moment he found himself seized with a desire to
+take her little hands in his own and press them--she looked such a
+child, so exquisite, and so forlorn. And he did in fact bend forward
+confidentially, forgetting Darrell.
+
+"I want you to come and see my mother?" he said, smiling at her. "Ask
+Lady Grosville to bring you."
+
+"May I? But--" She searched his face, eager still to pour out the
+impulsive, uncontrolled confidences that were in her mind. But his
+expression stopped her, and she gave a little, resentful sigh.
+
+"Yes--I'll come. _We_--you and I--are a little bit cousins too--aren't
+we? We talked about you at the Grosvilles."
+
+"Was our 'great-great' the same person?" he said, laughing. "Hope it was
+a decent 'great-great.' Some of mine aren't much to boast of. Well, at
+any rate, let's _be_ cousins--whether we are or no, shall we?"
+
+She assented, her whole face lighting up.
+
+"And we're going to meet--the week after next!" she said, triumphantly,
+"in the country."
+
+"Are we?--at Grosville Park. That's delightful."
+
+"And _then_ I'll ask your advice--I'll make you tell me--a hundred
+things! That's a bargain--mind!"
+
+"Kitty! Come and help me with tea--there's a darling!"
+
+Lady Kitty turned. A path had opened through the crowd, and Madame
+d'Estrées, much escorted, a vision of diamonds and pale-pink satin,
+appeared, leading the way to the supper-room, and the light
+"refection," accompanied by much champagne, which always closed these
+evenings.
+
+The girl rose, as did her companion also. Madame d'Estrées threw a
+quick, half-satirical glance at Ashe, but he had eyes only for Lady
+Kitty, and her transformation at the touch of her mother's voice. She
+followed Madame d'Estrées with a singular and conscious dignity, her
+white skirts sweeping, her delicately fine head thrown back on her thin
+neck and shoulders. The black crowd closed about her; and Ashe's eyes
+pursued the slender figure till it disappeared.
+
+Extreme youth--innocence--protest--pain--was it with these touching and
+pleading impressions, after all, that his first talk with Kitty Bristol
+had left him? Yet what a little _étourdie_! How lacking in the reserves,
+the natural instincts and shrinkings of the well-bred English girl!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Darrell and Ashe walked home together, through a windy night which was
+bringing out April scents even from the London grass and lilac-bushes.
+
+"Well," said Darrell, as they stepped into the Green Park, "so you're
+safely in. Congratulate you, old fellow. Anything else?"
+
+"Yes. They've offered me Hickson's place. More fools they, don't you
+think?"
+
+"Good! Upon my word, Bill, you've got your foot in the stirrup now! Hope
+you'll continue to be civil to poor devils like me."
+
+The speaker looked up smiling, but neither the tone nor the smile was
+really cordial. Ashe felt the embarrassment that he had once or twice
+felt before in telling Darrell news of good fortune. There seemed to be
+something in Darrell that resented it--under an outer show of
+felicitation.
+
+However, they went on talking of the political moment and its prospects,
+and of Ashe's personal affairs. As to the last, Darrell questioned, and
+Ashe somewhat reluctantly replied. It appeared that his allowance was to
+be largely raised, that his paralyzed father, in fact, was anxious to
+put him in possession of a substantial share in the income of the
+estates, that one of the country-houses was to be made over to him, and
+so on.
+
+"Which means, of course, that they want you to marry," said Darrell.
+"Well, you've only to throw the handkerchief."
+
+They were passing a lamp as he spoke, and the light shone on his long,
+pale face--a face of discontent--with its large sunken eyes and hollow
+cheeks.
+
+Ashe treated the remark as "rot," and endeavored to get away from his
+own affairs by discussing the party they had just left.
+
+"How does she get all those people together? It's astonishing!"
+
+"Well, I always liked Madame d'Estrées well enough," said Darrell, "but,
+upon my word, she has done a beastly mean thing in bringing that girl
+over."
+
+"You mean?"--Ashe hesitated--"that her own position is too doubtful?"
+
+"Doubtful, my dear fellow!" Darrell laughed unpleasantly. "I never
+really understood what it all meant till the other night when old Lady
+Grosville took and told me--more at any rate than I knew before. The
+Grosvilles are on the war-path, and they regard the coming of this poor
+child as the last straw."
+
+"Why?" said Ashe.
+
+Darrell gave a shrug. "Well, you know the story of Madame d'Estrées'
+step-daughter--old Blackwater's daughter?"
+
+"Ah! by his first marriage? I knew it was something about the
+step-daughter," said Ashe, vaguely.
+
+Darrell began to repeat his conversation with Lady Grosville. The tale
+threatened presently to become a black one indeed; and at last Ashe
+stood still in the broad walk crossing the Green Park.
+
+"Look here," he said, resolutely, "don't tell me any more. I don't want
+to hear any more."
+
+"Why?" asked Darrell, in amazement.
+
+"Because"--Ashe hesitated a moment. "Well, I don't want it to be made
+impossible for me to go to Madame d'Estrées' again. Besides, we've just
+eaten her salt."
+
+"You're a good friend!" said Darrell, not without something of a sneer.
+
+Ashe was ruffled by the tone, but tried not to show it. He merely
+insisted that he knew Lady Grosville to be a bit of an old cat; that of
+course there was something up; but it seemed a shame for those at least
+who accepted Madame d'Estrées' hospitality to believe the worst. There
+was a curious mixture of carelessness and delicacy in his remarks, very
+characteristic of the man. It appeared as though he was at once too
+indolent to go into the matter, and too chivalrous to talk about it.
+
+Darrell presently maintained a rather angry silence. No man likes to be
+checked in his story, especially when the check implies something like
+a snub from his best friend. Suddenly, memory brought before him the
+little picture of Ashe and Lady Kitty together--he bending over her, in
+his large, handsome geniality, and she looking up. Darrell felt a twinge
+of jealousy--then disgust. Really, men like Ashe had the world too
+easily their own way. That they should pose, besides, was too much.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Rather more than a fortnight after the evening at Madame d'Estrées',
+William Ashe found himself in a Midland train on his way to the
+Cambridgeshire house of Lady Grosville. While the April country slipped
+past him--like some blanched face to which life and color are
+returning--Ashe divided his time between an idle skimming of the
+Saturday papers and a no less idle dreaming of Kitty Bristol. He had
+seen her two or three times since his first introduction to her--once at
+a ball to which Lady Grosville had taken her, and once on the terrace of
+the House of Commons, where he had strolled up and down with her for a
+most amusing and stimulating hour, while her mother entertained a group
+of elderly politicians. And the following day she had come alone--her
+own choice--to take tea with Lady Tranmore, on that lady's invitation,
+as prompted by her son. Ashe himself had arrived towards the end of the
+visit, and had found a Lady Kitty in the height of the fashion, stiff
+mannered, and flushed to a deep red by her own consciousness that she
+could not possibly be making a good impression. At sight of him she
+relaxed, and talked a great deal, but not wisely; and when she was gone,
+Ashe could get very little opinion of any kind from his mother, who had,
+however, expressed a wish that she should come and visit them in the
+country.
+
+Since then he frankly confessed to himself that in the intervals of his
+new official and administrative work he had been a good deal haunted by
+memories of this strange child, her eyes, her grace--even in her fits of
+proud shyness--and the way in which, as he had put her into her cab
+after the visit to Lady Tranmore, her tiny hand had lingered in his, a
+mute, astonishing appeal. Haunted, too, by what he heard of her fortunes
+and surroundings. What was the real truth of Madame d'Estrées'
+situation? During the preceding weeks some ugly rumors had reached Ashe
+of financial embarrassment in that quarter, of debts risen to
+mountainous height, of crisis and possible disappearance. Then these
+rumors were met by others, to the effect that Colonel Warington, the old
+friend and support of the d'Estrées' household, had come to the rescue,
+that the crisis had been averted, and that the three weekly evenings, so
+well known and so well attended, would go on; and with this phase of the
+story there mingled, as Ashe was well aware, not the slightest breath of
+scandal, in a case where, so to speak, all was scandal.
+
+And meanwhile what new and dolorous truths had Lady Kitty been learning
+as to her mother's history and her mother's position? By Jove! it _was_
+hard upon the girl. Darrell was right. Why not leave her to her French
+friends and relations?--or relinquish her to Lady Grosville? Madame
+d'Estrées had seen little or nothing of her for years. She could not,
+therefore, be necessary to her mother's happiness, and there was a real
+cruelty in thus claiming her, at the very moment of her entrance into
+society, where Madame d'Estrées could only stand in her way. For
+although many a man whom the girl might profitably marry was to be
+found among the mother's guests, the influences of Madame d'Estrées'
+"evenings" were certainly not matrimonial. Still the unforeseen was
+surely the probable in Lady Kitty's case. What sort of man ought she to
+marry--what sort of man could safely take the risks of marrying
+her--with that mother in the background?
+
+He descended at the way-side station prescribed to him, and looked round
+him for fellow-guests--much as the card-player examines his hand. Mary
+Lyster, a cabinet minister--filling an ornamental office and handed on
+from ministry to ministry as a kind of necessary appendage, the public
+never knew why--the minister's second wife, an attaché from the Austrian
+embassy, two members of Parliament, and a well-known journalist--Ashe
+said to himself flippantly that so far the trumps were not many. But he
+was always reasonably glad to see Mary, and he went up to her, cared for
+her bag, and made her put on her cloak, with cousinly civility. In the
+omnibus on the way to the house he and Mary gossiped in a corner, while
+the cabinet minister and the editor went to sleep, and the two members
+of Parliament practised some courageous French on the Austrian attaché.
+
+"Is it to be a large party?" he asked of his companion.
+
+"Oh! they always fill the house. A good many came down yesterday."
+
+"Well, I'm not curious," said Ashe, "except as to one person."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Lady Kitty Bristol."
+
+Mary Lyster smiled.
+
+"Yes, poor child, I heard from the Grosville girls that she was to be
+here."
+
+"Why 'poor child'?"
+
+"I don't know. Quite the wrong expression, I admit. It should be 'poor
+hostess.'"
+
+"Oh!--the Grosvilles complain?"
+
+"No. They're only on tenter-hooks. They never know what she will do
+next."
+
+"How good for the Grosvilles!"
+
+"You think society is the better for shocks?"
+
+"Lady Grosville can do with them, anyway. What a masterful woman! But
+I'll back Lady Kitty."
+
+"I haven't seen her yet," said Mary. "I hear she is a very odd-looking
+little thing."
+
+"Extremely pretty," said Ashe.
+
+"Really?" Mary lifted incredulous eyebrows. "Well, now I shall know what
+you admire."
+
+"Oh, my tastes are horribly catholic--I admire so many people," said
+Ashe, with a glance at the well-dressed elegance beside him. Mary
+colored a little, unseen; and the rattle of the carriage as it entered
+the covered porch of Grosville Park cut short their conversation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, I'm glad you got in," said Lady Grosville, in her full, loud
+voice, "because we are connections. But of course I regard the loss of a
+seat to our side just now as a great disaster."
+
+"Very grasping, on your part!" said Ashe. "You've had it all your own
+way lately. Think of Portsmouth!"
+
+Lady Grosville, however, as she met his bantering look, did not find
+herself at all inclined to think of Portsmouth. She was much more
+inclined to think of William Ashe. What a good-looking fellow he had
+grown! She heaved an inward sigh, of mingled envy and appreciation,
+directed towards Lady Tranmore.
+
+Poor Susan indeed had suffered terribly in the death of her eldest son.
+But the handsomer and abler of the two brothers still remained to
+her--and the estate was safe. Lady Grosville thought of her own three
+daughters, plain and almost dowerless; and of that conceited young man,
+the heir, whom she could hardly persuade her husband to invite, once a
+year, for appearance sake.
+
+"Why are we so early?" said Ashe, looking at his watch. "I thought I
+should be disgracefully late."
+
+For he and Lady Grosville had the library to themselves. It was a fine,
+book-walled room, with giallo antico columns and Adam decoration; and in
+its richly colored lamp-lit space, the seated figure--stiffly erect--of
+Lady Grosville, her profile, said by some to be like a horse and by
+others to resemble Savonarola, the cap of old Venice point that crowned
+her grizzled hair, her black velvet dress, and the long-fingered, ugly,
+yet distinguished hands which lay upon her lap, told significantly;
+especially when contrasted with the negligent ease and fresh-colored
+youth of her companion.
+
+Grosville Park was rich in second-rate antiques; and there was a
+Greco-Roman head above the bookcase with which Ashe had been often
+compared. As he stood now leaning against the fireplace, the close-piled
+curls, and eyes--somewhat "à fleur de tête"--of the bust were
+undoubtedly repeated with some closeness in the living man. Those whom
+he had offended by some social carelessness or other said of him when
+they wished to run him down, that he was "floridly" handsome; and there
+was some truth in it.
+
+"Didn't you get the message about dinner?" said Lady Grosville. Then, as
+he shook his head: "Very remiss of Parkin. I always tell him he loses
+his head directly the party goes into double figures. We had to put off
+dinner a quarter of an hour because of Kitty Bristol, who missed her
+train at St. Pancras, and only arrived half an hour ago. By-the-way, I
+suppose you have already seen her--at that woman's?"
+
+"I met her a week or two ago, at Madame d'Estrées'," said Ashe,
+apparently preoccupied with something wrong in the set of his white
+waistcoat.
+
+"What did you think of her?"
+
+"A charming young lady," said Ashe, smiling. "What else should I think?"
+
+"A lamb thrown to the wolves," said Lady Grosville, grimly. "How that
+woman _could_ do such a thing!"
+
+"I saw nothing lamblike about Lady Kitty," said Ashe. "And do you
+include me among the wolves?"
+
+Lady Grosville hesitated a moment, then stuck to her colors.
+
+"You shouldn't go to such a house," she said, boldly--"I suppose I may
+say that without offence, William, as I've known you from a boy."
+
+"Say anything you like, my dear Lady Grosville! So you--believe evil
+things--of Madame d'Estrées?"
+
+His tone was light, but his eyes sought the distant door, as though
+invoking some fellow-guest to appear and protect him.
+
+Lady Grosville did not answer. Ashe's look returned to her, and he was
+startled by the expression of her face. He had always known and
+unwillingly admired her for a fine Old Testament Christian, one from
+whom the language of the imprecatory Psalms with regard to her enemies,
+personal and political, might have flowed more naturally than from any
+other person he knew, of the same class and breeding. But this
+loathing--this passion of contempt--this heat of memory!--these were new
+indeed, and the fire of them transfigured the old, gray face.
+
+"I have known a fair number of bad people," said Lady Grosville, in a
+low voice--"and a good many wicked women. But for meanness and vileness
+combined, the things I know of the woman who was Blackwater's wife have
+no equal in my experience!"
+
+There was a moment's pause. Then Ashe said, in a voice as serious as her
+own:
+
+"I am sorry to hear you say that, partly because I like Madame
+d'Estrées, and partly--because--I was particularly attracted by Lady
+Kitty."
+
+Lady Grosville looked up sharply. "Don't marry her, William!--don't
+marry her! She comes of a bad stock."
+
+Ashe recovered his gayety.
+
+"She is your own niece. Mightn't a man dare--on that guarantee?"
+
+"Not at all," said Lady Grosville, unappeased. "I was a hop out of kin.
+Besides--a Methodist governess saved me; she converted me, at eighteen,
+and I owe her everything. But my brothers--and all the rest of us!" She
+threw up her eyes and hands. "What's the good of being mealy mouthed
+about it? All the world knows it. A good many of us were mad--and I
+sometimes think I see more than eccentricity in Kitty."
+
+"Who was Madame d'Estrées?" said Ashe. Why should he wince so at the
+girl's name?--in that hard mouth?
+
+Lady Grosville smiled.
+
+"Well, I can tell you a good deal about that," she said. "Ah!--another
+time!"
+
+For the door opened, and in came a group of guests, with a gush of talk
+and a rustling of silks and satins.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everybody was gathered; dinner had been announced; and the white-haired
+and gouty Lord Grosville was in a state of seething impatience that not
+even the mild-voiced Dean of the neighboring cathedral, engaged in
+complimenting him on his speech at the Diocesan Conference, could
+restrain.
+
+"Adelina, need we wait any longer?" said the master of the house,
+turning an angry eye upon his wife.
+
+"Certainly not--she has had ample time," said Lady Grosville, and rang
+the bell beside her.
+
+Suddenly there was a whirlwind of noise in the hall, the angry barking
+of a small dog, the sound of a girl's voice laughing and scolding, the
+swish of silk skirts. A scandalized butler, obeying Lady Grosville's
+summons, threw the door open, and in burst Lady Kitty.
+
+"Oh! I'm so sorry," said the new-comer, in a tone of despair. "But I
+couldn't leave him up-stairs, Aunt Lina! He'd eaten one of my shoes, and
+begun upon the other. And Julie's afraid of him. He bit her last week.
+_May_ he sit on my knee? I know I can keep him quiet!"
+
+[Illustration: "A SLIM GIRL IN WHITE AT THE FAR END OF THE LARGE ROOM"]
+
+Every conversation in the library stopped. Twenty amazed persons turned
+to look. They beheld a slim girl in white at the far end of the large
+room struggling with a gray terrier puppy which she held under her
+left arm, and turning appealing eyes towards Lady Grosville. The dog,
+half frightened, half fierce, was barking furiously. Lady Kitty's voice
+could hardly be heard through the din, and she was crimson with the
+effort to control her charge. Her lips laughed; her eyes implored. And
+to add to the effect of the apparition, a marked strangeness of dress
+was at once perceived by all the English eyes turned upon her. Lady
+Kitty was robed in the extreme of French fashion, which at that moment
+was a fashion of flounces; she was much _décolletée;_ and her fair,
+abundant hair, carried to a great height, and arranged with a certain
+calculated wildness around her small face, was surmounted by a large
+scarlet butterfly which shone defiantly against the dark background of
+books.
+
+"Kitty!" said Lady Grosville, advancing indignantly, "what a dreadful
+noise! Pray give the dog to Parkin at once."
+
+Lady Kitty only held the struggling animal tighter.
+
+"_Please_, Aunt Lina!--I'm afraid he'll bite! But he'll be quite good
+with me."
+
+"Why _did_ you bring him, Kitty? We can't have such a creature at
+dinner!" said Lady Grosville, angrily.
+
+Lord Grosville advanced behind his wife.
+
+"How do you do, Kitty? Hadn't you better put down the dog and come and
+be introduced to Mr. Rankine, who is to take you in to dinner?"
+
+Lady Kitty shook her fair head, but advanced, still clinging to the dog,
+gave a smile and a nod to Ashe, and a bow to the young Tory member
+presented to her.
+
+"You don't mind him?" she said, a flash of laughter in her dark eyes.
+"We'll manage him between us, won't we?"
+
+The young man, dazzled by her prettiness and her strangeness, murmured a
+hopeful assent. Lord Grosville, with the air of a man determined on
+dinner though the skies fall, offered his arm to Lady Edith Manley, the
+wife of the cabinet minister, and made for the dining-room. The stream
+of guests followed; when suddenly the puppy, perceiving on the floor a
+ball of wool which had rolled out of Lady Grosville's work-table,
+escaped in an ecstasy of mischief from his mistress's arm and flew upon
+the ball. Kitty rushed after him; the wool first unrolled, then caught;
+the table overturned and all its contents were flung pell-mell in the
+path of Lady Grosville, who, on the arm of the amused and astonished
+minister, was waiting in restrained fury till her guests should pass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I shall never get over this," said Lady Kitty, as she leaned back in
+her chair, still panting, and quite incapable of eating any of the foods
+that were being offered to her in quick succession.
+
+"I don't know that you deserve to," said Ashe, turning a face upon her
+which was as grave as he could make it. The attention of every one else
+round the room was also in truth occupied with his companion. There was,
+indeed, a general buzz of conversation and a general pretence that Lady
+Kitty's proceedings might now be ignored. But in reality every guest,
+male or female, kept a stealthy watch on the red butterfly and the
+sparkling face beneath it; and Ashe was well aware of it.
+
+"I vow it was not my fault," said Kitty, with dignity. "I was not
+allowed to have the dog I should have had. You'd never have found a dog
+of St. Hubert condescending to bedroom slippers! But as I had to have a
+dog--and Colonel Warington gave me this one three days ago--and he has
+already ruined half maman's things, and no one could manage him but me,
+I just had to bring him, and trust to Providence."
+
+"I have been here a good many times," said Ashe, "and I never yet saw a
+dog in the sanctuary. Do you know that Pitt once wrote a speech in the
+library?"
+
+"Did he? I'm sure it never made such a stir as Ponto did." Kitty's face
+suddenly broke into laughter, and she hid it a moment in her hands.
+
+"You brazen it out," said Ashe; "but how are you going to appease Lady
+Grosville?"
+
+Kitty ceased to laugh. She drew herself up, and looked seriously,
+observantly at her aunt.
+
+"I don't know. But I must do it somehow. I don't want any more worries."
+
+So changed were her tone and aspect that Ashe turned a friendly
+examining look upon her.
+
+"Have you been worried?" he said, in a lower voice.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. But presently she
+impatiently reclaimed his attention, snatching him from the lady he had
+taken in to dinner, with no scruple at all.
+
+"Will you come a walk with me to-morrow morning?"
+
+"Proud," said Ashe. "What time?"
+
+"As soon as we can get rid of these people," she said, her eye running
+round the table. Then as it paused and lingered on the face of Mary
+Lyster opposite, she abruptly asked him who that lady might be.
+
+Ashe informed her.
+
+"Your cousin?" she said, looking at him with a slight frown. "Your
+cousin? I don't--well, I don't think I shall like her."
+
+"That's a great pity," said Ashe.
+
+"For me?" she said, distrustfully.
+
+"For both, of course! My mother's very fond of Miss Lyster. She's often
+with us."
+
+"Oh!" said Kitty, and looked again at the face opposite. Then he heard
+her say behind her fan, half to herself and half to him:
+
+"She does not interest me in the least! She has no ideas! I'm sure she
+has no ideas. Has she?"
+
+She turned abruptly to Ashe.
+
+"Every one calls her very clever."
+
+Kitty looked contempt.
+
+"That's nothing to do with it. It's not the clever people who have
+ideas."
+
+Ashe bantered her a little on the meaning of her words, till he
+presently found that she was too young and unpractised to be able to
+take his thrusts and return them, with equanimity. She could make a
+daring sally or reply; but it was still the raw material of
+conversation; it wanted ease and polish. And she was evidently conscious
+of it herself, for presently her cheek flushed and her manner wavered.
+
+"I suppose you--everybody--thinks her very agreeable?" she said,
+sharply, her eyes returning to Miss Lyster.
+
+"She is a most excellent gossip," said Ashe. "I always go to her for the
+news."
+
+Kitty glanced again.
+
+"I can see that already she detests me."
+
+"In half an hour?"
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"She has looked at me twice--about. But she has made up her mind--and
+she never changes." Then with an abrupt alteration of note she looked
+round the room. "I suppose your English dining-rooms are all like this?
+One might be sitting in a hearse. And the pictures--no! _Quelles
+horreurs_!"
+
+She raised her shoulders again impetuously, frowning at a huge
+full-length opposite of Lord Grosville as M.F.H., a masterpiece indeed
+of early Victorian vulgarity.
+
+Then suddenly, hastily, with that flashing softness which so often
+transformed her expression, she turned towards him, trying to make
+amends.
+
+"But the library--that was _bien_--ah! _tr-rès, tr-rès_ bien_!"
+
+Her r's rolled a little as she spoke, with a charming effect, and she
+looked at him radiantly, as though to strike and to make amends were
+equally her prerogative, and she asked no man's leave.
+
+"You've not yet seen what there is to see here," said Ashe, smiling.
+"Look behind you."
+
+The girl turned her slim neck and exclaimed. For behind Ashe's chair was
+the treasure of the house. It was a "Dance of Children," by one of the
+most famous of the eighteenth-century masters. From the dark wall it
+shone out with a flower-like brilliance, a vision of color and of grace.
+The children danced through a golden air, their bodies swaying to one of
+those "unheard melodies" of art, sweeter than all mortal tunes; their
+delicate faces alive with joy. The sky and grass and trees seemed to
+caress them; a soft sunlight clothed them; and flowers brushed their
+feet.
+
+Kitty turned back again and was silent. Was it Ashe's fancy, or had she
+grown pale?
+
+"Did you like it?" he asked her. She turned to him, and for the second
+time in their acquaintance he saw her eyes floating in tears.
+
+"It is too beautiful!" she said, with an effort--almost an angry effort.
+"I don't want to see it again."
+
+"I thought it would give you pleasure," said Ashe, gently, suddenly
+conscious of a hope that she was not aware of the slight look of
+amusement with which Mary Lyster was contemplating them both.
+
+"So it did," said Kitty, furtively applying her lace handkerchief to her
+tears; "but"--her voice dropped--"when one's unhappy--very
+unhappy--things like that--things like _Heaven_--hurt! Oh, what a _fool_
+I am!" And she sat straightly up, looking round her.
+
+There was a pause; then Ashe said, in another voice:
+
+"Look here, you know this won't do. I thought we were to be cousins."
+
+"Well?" said Kitty, indifferently, not looking at him.
+
+"And I understood that I was to be taken into respectable cousinly
+counsel?"
+
+"Well?" said Kitty again, crumbling her bread. "I can't do it here, can
+I?"
+
+Ashe laughed.
+
+"Well, anyhow, we're going to sample the garden to-morrow morning,
+aren't we?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Kitty. Then, after a moment, she looked at her
+right-hand neighbor, the young politician to whom as yet she had
+scarcely vouchsafed a word.
+
+"What's his name?" she asked, under her breath. Ashe repeated it.
+
+"Perhaps I ought to talk to him?"
+
+"Of course you ought," said Ashe, with smiling decision, and turning to
+the lady whom he had brought in he left her free.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the ladies rose, Lady Grosville led the way to the large
+drawing-room, a room which, like the library, had some character, and a
+thin elegance of style, not, however, warmed and harmonized by the
+delightful presence of books. The walls, blue and white in color, were
+panelled in stucco relief. A few family portraits, stiff handlings of
+stiff people, were placed each in the exact centre of its respective
+panel. There were a few cases of china and a few polished tables. A
+crimson Brussels carpet, chosen by Lady Grosville for its
+"cheerfulness," covered the floor, and there was a large white sheepskin
+rug before the fireplace. A few hyacinths in pots, and the bright fire
+supplied the only gay and living notes--before the ladies arrived.
+
+Still, for an English eye, the room had a certain cold charm, was
+moreover full of _history_. It hardly deserved at any rate the shiver
+with which Kitty Bristol looked round it.
+
+But she had little time to dwell upon the room and its meanings, for
+Lady Grosville approached her with a manner which still showed signs of
+the catastrophe before dinner.
+
+"Kitty, I think you don't know Miss Lyster yet--Mary Lyster--she wants
+to be introduced to you."
+
+Mary advanced smiling; Kitty held out a limp hand, and they exchanged a
+few words standing in the centre of the floor, while the other guests
+found seats.
+
+"What a charming contrast!" said Lady Edith Manley in Lady Grosville's
+ear. She nodded smiling towards the standing pair--struck by the fine
+straight lines of Mary's satin dress, the roundness of her fine figure,
+the oval of her head and face, and then by the little, vibrating,
+tempestuous creature beside her, so distinguished, in spite of the
+billowing flounces and ribbons, so direct and significant, amid all the
+elaboration.
+
+"Kitty is ridiculously overdressed," said Lady Grosville. "I hope we
+shall soon change that. My girls are going to take her to their woman."
+
+Lady Edith put up her eye-glass slowly and looked at the two Grosville
+girls; then back at Kitty.
+
+Meanwhile a few perfunctory questions and answers were passing between
+Miss Lyster and her companion. Mary's aspect as she talked was extremely
+amiable; one might have called it indulgent, perhaps even by an
+adjective that implied a yet further shade of delicate superiority.
+Kitty met it by the same "grand manner" that Ashe had several times
+observed in her, a manner caught perhaps from some French model, and
+caricatured in the taking. Her eyes meanwhile took note of Mary's face
+and dress, and while she listened her small teeth tormented her
+under-lip, as though she restrained impatience. All at once in the midst
+of some information that Miss Lyster was lucidly giving, Kitty made an
+impetuous turn. She had caught some words on the farther side of the
+room; and she looked hard, eagerly, at the speaker.
+
+"Who is that?" she inquired.
+
+Mary Lyster, with a sharp sense of interruption, replied that she
+believed the lady in question was the Grosville's French governess. But
+in the very midst of her sentence Kitty deserted her, left her standing
+in the centre of the drawing-room, while the deserter fled across it,
+and sinking down beside the astonished mademoiselle took the
+Frenchwoman's hand by assault and held it in both her own.
+
+"Vous parlez Français?--vous êtes Française? Ah! ça me fait tant de
+bien! Voyons! voyons!--causons un peu!"
+
+And bending forward, she broke into a cataract of French, all the
+elements of her strange, small beauty rushing, as it were, into flame
+and movement at the swift sound and cadence of the words, like a dancer
+kindled by music. The occasion was of the slightest; the Frenchwoman
+might well show a natural bewilderment. But into the slight occasion the
+girl threw an animation, a passion, that glorified it. It was like the
+leap of a wild rain-stream on the mountains, that pours into the first
+channel which presents itself.
+
+"What beautiful French!" said Lady Edith, softly, to Mary Lyster, who
+had found a seat beside her.
+
+Mary Lyster smiled.
+
+"She has been at school, of course, in a French convent." Somehow the
+tone implied that the explanation disposed of all merit in the
+performance.
+
+"I am afraid these French convent schools are not at all what they
+should be," said Lady Grosville.
+
+And rising to a pyramidal height, her ample moiré dress swelling behind
+her, her gray head magnificently crowned by its lace cap and black
+velvet _bandeau_, she swept across the room to where the Dean's wife,
+Mrs. Winston, sat in fascinated silence observing Lady Kitty. The
+silence and the attention annoyed her hostess. The first thing to be
+done with girls of this type, it seemed to Lady Grosville, was to prove
+to them that they would _not_ be allowed to monopolize society.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are natural monopolies, however, and they are not easy to deal
+with.
+
+As soon as the gentlemen returned, Mr. Rankine, whom she had treated so
+badly at dinner, the young agent of the estate, the clergyman of the
+parish, the Austrian attaché, the cabinet minister, and the Dean, all
+showed a strong inclination to that side of the room which seemed to be
+held in force by Lady Kitty. The Dean especially was not to be gainsaid.
+He placed himself in the seat shyly vacated by the French governess, and
+crossed his thin, stockinged legs with the air of one who means to take
+his ease. There was even a certain curious resemblance between him and
+Kitty, as was noticed from a distance by Ashe. The Dean, who was very
+much a man of the world, and came of an historic family, was, in his
+masculine degree, planned on the same miniature scale and with the same
+fine finish as the girl of eighteen. And he carried his knee-breeches,
+his apron, and his exquisite white head with a natural charm and energy
+akin to hers--mellowed though it were by time, and dignified by office.
+He began eagerly to talk to her of Paris. His father had been
+ambassador for a time under Louis Philippe, and he had boyish memories
+of the great house in the Faubourg St. Honoré, and of the Orleanist
+ministers and men of letters. And lo! Kitty met him at once, in a glow
+and sparkle that enchanted the old man. Moreover, it appeared that this
+much-beflounced young lady could talk; that she had heard of the famous
+names and the great affairs to which the Dean made allusion; that she
+possessed indeed a native and surprising interest in matter of the sort;
+and a manner, above all, with the old, alternately soft and daring,
+calculated, as Lady Grosville would no doubt have put it, merely to make
+fools of them.
+
+In her cousins' house, it seemed, she had talked with old people,
+survivors of the Orleanist and Bourbon régimes--even of the Empire; had
+sat at their feet, a small, excited hero-worshipper; and had then rushed
+blindly into the memoirs and books that concerned them. So, in this
+French world the child had found time for other things than hunting, and
+the flattery of her cousin Henri? Ashe was supposed to be devoting
+himself to the Dean's wife; but both he and she listened most of the
+time to the sallies and the laughter of the circle where Kitty presided.
+
+"My dear young lady," cried the delighted Dean, "I never find anybody
+who can talk of these things--it is really astonishing. Ah, _now_, we
+English know nothing of France--nor they of us. Why, I was a mere
+school-boy then, and I had a passion for their society, and their
+books--for their _plays_--dare I confess it?"--he lowered his voice and
+glanced at his hostess--"their plays, above all!"
+
+Kitty clapped her hands. The Dean looked at her, and ran on:
+
+"My mother shared it. When I came over for my Eton holidays, she and I
+lived at the Théâtre-Français. Ah, those were days! _I_ remember
+Mademoiselle Mars in 'Hernani.'"
+
+Kitty bounded in her seat. Whereupon it appeared that just before she
+left Paris she had been taken by a friend to see the reigning idol of
+the Comédie-Française, the young and astonishing actress, Sarah
+Bernhardt, as Doña Sol. And there began straightway an excited duet
+between her and the Dean; a comparison of old and new, a rivalry of
+heroines, a hot and critical debate that presently silenced all other
+conversation in the room, and brought Lord Grosville to stand gaping and
+astounded behind the Dean, reflecting no doubt that this was not
+precisely the Dean of the Diocesan Conference.
+
+The old man indeed forgot his age, the girl her youth; they met as
+equals, on poetic ground, till suddenly Kitty, springing up, and to
+prove her point, began an imitation of Sarah in the great love-scene of
+the last act, before arresting fate, in the person of Don Ruy, breaks in
+upon the rapture of the lovers. She absolutely forgot the Grosville
+drawing-room, the staring Grosville girls, the other faces, astonished
+or severe, neutral or friendly. Out rolled the tide of tragic verse,
+fine poetry, and high passion; and though it be not very much to say, it
+must at least be said that never had such recitation, in such French,
+been heard before within the walls of Grosville Park. Nor had the lips
+of any English girl ever dealt there with a poetic diction so
+unchastened and unashamed. Lady Grosville might well feel as though the
+solid frame of things were melting and cracking round her.
+
+Kitty ceased. She fell back upon her chair, smitten with a sudden
+perception.
+
+"You made me!" she said, reproachfully, to the Dean.
+
+The Dean said another "Brava!" and gave another clap. Then, becoming
+aware of Lord Grosville's open mouth and eye, he sat up, caught his
+wife's expression, and came back to prose and the present.
+
+"My dear young lady," he began, "you have the most extraordinary
+talent--" when Lady Grosville advanced upon him. Standing before him,
+she majestically signalled to her husband across his small person.
+
+"William, kindly order Mrs. Wilson's carriage."
+
+Lord Grosville awoke from his stupor with a jerk, and did as he was
+told. Mrs. Wilson, the agent's timid wife, who was not at all aware that
+she had asked for her carriage, rose obediently. Then the mistress of
+the house turned to Lady Kitty.
+
+"You recite very well, Kitty," she said, with cold and stately emphasis,
+"but another time I will ask you to confine yourself to Racine and
+Corneille. In England we have to be very careful about French writers.
+There are, however, if I remember right, some fine passages in
+'Athalie.'"
+
+Kitty said nothing. The Austrian attaché who had been following the
+little incident with the liveliest interest, retired to a close
+inspection of the china. But the Dean, whose temper was of the quick and
+chivalrous kind, was roused.
+
+"She recites wonderfully! And Victor Hugo is a classic, please, my
+lady--just as much as the rest of them. Ah, well, no doubt, no doubt,
+there might be things more suitable." And the old man came wavering down
+to earth, as the enthusiasm which Kitty had breathed into him escaped,
+like the gas from a balloon. "But, do you know, Lady Kitty "--he struck
+into a new subject with eagerness, partly to cover the girl, partly to
+silence Lady Grosville--"you reminded me all the time so remarkably--in
+your voice--certain inflections--of your sister--your step-sister, isn't
+it?--Lady Alice? You know, of course, she is close to you to-day--just
+the other side the park--with the Sowerbys?"
+
+The Dean's wife sprang to her feet in despair. In general it was to her
+a matter for fond complacency that her husband had no memory for gossip,
+and was in such matters as innocent and as dangerous as a child. But
+this was too much. At the same moment Ashe came quickly forward.
+
+"My sister?" said Kitty. "My sister?"
+
+She spoke low and uncertainly, her eyes fixed upon the Dean.
+
+He looked at her with a sudden odd sense of something unusual, then went
+on, still floundering:
+
+"We met her at St. Pancras on our way down. If I had only known we were
+to have had the pleasure of meeting you--Do you know, I think she is
+looking decidedly better?"
+
+His kindly expression as he rose expected a word of sisterly assent.
+Meanwhile even Lady Grosville was paralyzed, and the words with which
+she had meant to interpose failed on her lips.
+
+Kitty, too, rose, looking round for something, which she seemed to find
+in the face of William Ashe, for her eyes clung there.
+
+"My sister," she repeated, in the same low, strained voice. "My sister
+Alice? I--I don't know. I have never seen her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ashe could not remember afterwards precisely how the incident closed.
+There was a bustle of departing guests, and from the midst of it Lady
+Kitty slipped away. But as he came down-stairs in smoking trim, ten
+minutes later, he overheard the injured Dean wrestling with his wife, as
+she lit a candle for him on the landing.
+
+"My dear, what did you look at me like that for? What did the child
+mean? And what on _earth_ is the matter?"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+After the ladies had gone to bed, on the night of Lady Kitty's
+recitation, William Ashe stayed up till past midnight talking with old
+Lord Grosville. When relieved of the presence of his women-kind, who
+were apt either to oppress him, in the person of his wife, or to puzzle
+him, in the persons of his daughters, Lord Grosville was not by any
+means without value as a talker. He possessed that narrow but still most
+serviceable fund of human experience which the English land-owner, while
+our English tradition subsists, can hardly escape, if he will. As
+guardsman, volunteer, magistrate, lord-lieutenant, member--for the sake
+of his name and his acres--of various important commissions, as military
+_attaché_ even, for a short space, to an important embassy, he had
+acquired, by mere living, that for which his intellectual betters had
+often envied him--a certain shrewdness, a certain instinct, as to both
+men and affairs, which were often of more service to him than finer
+brains to other persons. But, like most accomplishments, these also
+brought their own conceit with them. Lord Grosville having, in his own
+opinion, done extremely well without much book education himself, had
+but little appreciation for it in others.
+
+Nevertheless he rarely missed a chance of conversation with William
+Ashe, not because the younger man, in spite of his past indolence, was
+generally held to be both able and accomplished, but because the elder
+found in him an invincible taste for men and women, their fortunes,
+oddities, catastrophes--especially the latter--similar to his own.
+
+Like Mary Lyster, both were good gossips; but of a much more
+disinterested type than she. Women indeed as gossips are too apt to
+pursue either the damnation of some one else or the apotheosis of
+themselves. But here the stupider no less than the abler man showed a
+certain broad detachment not very common in women--amused by the human
+comedy itself, making no profit out of it, either for themselves or
+morals, but asking only that the play should go on.
+
+The incident, or rather the heroine of the evening, had given Lord
+Grosville a topic which in the case of William Ashe he saw no reason for
+avoiding; and in the peace of the smoking-room, when he was no longer
+either hungry for his dinner or worried by his responsibilities as host,
+he fell upon his wife's family, and, as though he had been the manager
+of a puppet-show, unpacked the whole box of them for Ashe's
+entertainment.
+
+Figure after figure emerged, one more besmirched than another, till
+finally the most beflecked of all was shaken out and displayed--Lady
+Grosville's brother and Kitty's father, the late Lord Blackwater. And on
+this occasion Ashe did not try to escape the story which was thus a
+second time brought across him. Lord Grosville, if he pleased, had a
+right to tell it, and there was now a curious feeling in Ashe's mind
+which had been entirely absent before, that he had, in some sort, a
+right to hear it.
+
+Briefly, the outlines of it fell into something like this shape: Henry,
+fifth Earl of Blackwater, had begun life as an Irish peer, with more
+money than the majority of his class; an initial advantage soon undone
+by an insane and unscrupulous extravagance. He was, however, a fine,
+handsome, voracious gentleman, born to prey upon his kind, and when he
+looked for an heiress he was not long in finding her. His first wife, a
+very rich woman, bore him one daughter. Before the daughter was three
+years old, Lord Blackwater had developed a sturdy hatred of the mother,
+chiefly because she failed to present him with a son; and he could not
+even appease himself by the free spending of her money, which, so far as
+the capital was concerned, was sharply looked after by a pair of
+trustees, Belfast manufacturers and Presbyterians, to whom the
+Blackwater type was not at all congenial.
+
+These restrictions presently wore out Lord Blackwater's patience. He
+left his wife, with a small allowance, to bring up her daughter in one
+of his Irish houses, while he generously spent the rest of her large
+income, and his own, and a great deal besides, in London and on the
+Continent.
+
+Lady Blackwater, however, was not long before she obliged him by dying.
+Her girl, then twelve years old, lived for a time with one of her
+mother's trustees. But when she had reached the age of seventeen her
+father suddenly commanded her presence in Paris, that she might make
+acquaintance with his second wife.
+
+The new Lady Blackwater was an extremely beautiful woman, Irish, as the
+first had been, but like her in no other respect. Margaret Fitzgerald
+was the daughter of a cosmopolitan pair, who after many shifts for a
+living, had settled in Paris, where the father acted as correspondent
+for various English papers. Her beauty, her caprices, and her "affairs"
+were all well known in Paris. As to what the relations between her and
+Lord Blackwater might have been before the death of the wife, Lord
+Grosville took a frankly uncharitable view. But when that event
+occurred, Blackwater was beginning to get old, and Miss Fitzgerald had
+become necessary to him. She pressed all her advantages, and it ended in
+his marrying her. The new Lady Blackwater presented him with one child,
+a daughter; and about two years after its birth he sent for his elder
+daughter, Lady Alice, to join them in the sumptuous apartment in the
+Place Vendôme which he had furnished for his new wife, in defiance both
+of his English and Irish creditors.
+
+Lady Alice arrived--a fair slip of a girl, possessed, it was plain to
+see, by a nervous terror both of her father and step-mother. But Lady
+Blackwater received her with effusion, caressed her in public, dressed
+her to perfection, and made all possible use of the girl's presence in
+the house for the advancement of her own social position. Within a year
+the Belfast trustees, watching uneasily from a distance, received a
+letter from Lord Blackwater, announcing Lady Alice's runaway marriage
+with a certain Colonel Wensleydale, formerly of the Grenadier Guards.
+Lord Blackwater professed himself vastly annoyed and displeased. The
+young people, furiously in love, had managed the affair, however, with a
+skill that baffled all vigilance. Married they were, and without any
+settlements, Colonel Wensleydale having nothing to settle, and Lady
+Alice, like a little fool, being only anxious to pour all that she
+possessed into the lap of her beloved. The father threw himself on the
+mercy of the trustees, reminding them that in little more than three
+years Lady Alice would become unfettered mistress of her own fortune,
+and begging them meanwhile to make proper provision for the rash but
+happy pair. Harry Wensleydale, after all, was a rattling good fellow,
+with whom all the young women were in love. The thing, though naughty,
+was natural; and the colonel would make an excellent husband.
+
+One Presbyterian trustee left his business in Belfast and ventured
+himself among the abominations of Paris. He was much befooled and
+befeasted. He found a shy young wife tremulously in love; a handsome
+husband; an amiable step-mother. He knew no one in Paris who could
+enlighten him, and was not clever enough to invent means of getting
+information for himself. He was induced to promise a sufficient income
+for the moment on behalf of himself and his co-trustee; and for the rest
+was obliged to be content with vague assurances from Colonel Wensleydale
+that as soon as his wife came into her property fitting settlements
+should be made.
+
+Four years passed by. The young people lived with the Blackwaters, and
+their income kept the establishment going. Lady Alice had a child, and
+was at first not altogether unhappy. She was little more than a timid
+child herself; and no doubt, to begin with, she was in love. Then came
+her majority. In defiance of all her trustees, she gave her whole
+fortune to her husband, and no power could prevent her from so doing.
+
+The Blackwater ménage blazed up into a sudden splendor. Lady
+Blackwater's carriage and Lady Blackwater's jewels had never been finer;
+and amid the crowds who frequented the house, the slight figure, the
+sallow face, and absent eyes of her step-daughter attracted little
+remark. Lady Alice Wensleydale was said to be delicate and reserved; she
+made no friends, explained herself to no one; and it was supposed that
+she occupied herself with her little boy.
+
+Then one December she disappeared from the apartment in the Place
+Vendôme. It was said that she and the boy found the climate of Paris too
+cold in winter, and had gone for a time to Italy. Colonel Wensleydale
+continued to live with the Blackwaters, and their apartment was no less
+sumptuous, their dinners no less talked of, their extravagance no less
+noisy than before. But Lady Alice did not come back with the spring; and
+some ugly rumors began to creep about. They were checked, however, by
+the death of Lord Blackwater, which occurred within a year of his
+daughter's departure; by the monstrous debts he left behind him; and by
+the sale of the contents of the famous apartment, matters, all of them,
+sufficiently ugly or scandalous in themselves to keep the tongues of
+fame busy. Lady Blackwater left Paris, and when she reappeared, it was
+in Rome as the Comtesse d'Estrées, the wife of yet another old man,
+whose health obliged them to winter in the south and to spend the summer
+in yachting. Her _salon_ in Rome under Pio Nono became a great
+rendezvous for English and Americans, attracted by the historic names
+and titles that M. d'Estrées' connections among the Black nobility, his
+wealth, and his interest in several of the Catholic banking-houses of
+Rome and Naples enabled his wife to command.
+
+Colonel Wensleydale did not appear. Madame d'Estrées let it be
+understood that her step-daughter was of a difficult temper, and now
+spent most of her time in Ireland. Her own daughter, her "darling
+Kitty," was being educated in Paris by the Soeurs Blanches, and she
+pined for the day when the "little sweet" should join her, ready to
+spread her wings in the great world. But mothers must not be impatient,
+Kitty must have all the advantages that befitted her rank; and to what
+better hands could the most anxious mother intrust her than to those
+charming, aristocratic, accomplished nuns of the Soeurs Blanches?
+
+Then one January day M. d'Estrées drove out to San Paolo fuori le Mura,
+and caught a blast from the snowy Sabines coming back. In three days he
+was dead, and his well-provided widow had snatched the bulk of his
+fortune from the hands of his needy and embittered kindred.
+
+Within six months of his death she had bought a house in St. James's
+Place, and her London career had begun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It is here that we come in," said Lord Grosville, when, with more
+digressions and more plainness of speech with regard to his quondam
+sister-in-law than can be here reproduced, he had brought his story to
+this point. "Blackwater--the old ruffian--when he was dying had a moment
+of remorse. He wrote to my wife and asked her to look after his girls,
+'For God's sake, Lina, see if you can help Alice--Wensleydale's a
+perfect brute.' That was the first light we had on the situation, for
+Adelina had long before washed her hands of him; and we knew that _she_
+hated us. Well, we tried; of course we tried. But so long as her
+husband lived Alice would have nothing to say to any of us. I suppose
+she thought that for her boy's sake she'd better keep a bad business to
+herself as much as possible--"
+
+"Wensleydale--Wensleydale?" said Ashe, who had been smoking hard and
+silently beside his host. "You mean the man who distinguished himself in
+the Crimea? He died last year--at Naples, wasn't it?"
+
+Lord Grosville assented.
+
+It appeared that during the last year of his life Lady Alice had nursed
+her husband faithfully through disease and poverty; for scarcely a
+vestige of her fortune remained, and an application for money made by
+Wensleydale to Madame d'Estrées, unknown to his wife, had been
+peremptorily refused. The colonel died, and within three months of his
+death Lady Alice had also lost her son and only child, of
+blood-poisoning developed in Naples, whither he had been summoned from
+school that his father might see him for the last time.
+
+Then, after seventeen years, Lady Alice came back to her kindred, who
+had last seen her as a young girl--gentle, undeveloped, easily led, and
+rather stupid. She returned a gray-haired woman of thirty-four, who had
+lost youth, fortune, child, and husband; whose aspect, moreover,
+suggested losses still deeper and more drear. At first she wrapped
+herself in what seemed to some a dull and to others a tragic silence.
+But suddenly a flame leaped up in her. She became aware of the position
+of Madame d'Estrées in London; and one day, at a private view of the
+Academy, her former step-mother went up to her smiling, with
+out-stretched hand. Lady Alice turned very pale; the hand dropped, and
+Alice Wensleydale walked rapidly away. But that night, in the Grosville
+house, she spoke out.
+
+"She told Lina and myself the whole story. You'd have thought the woman
+was possessed. My wife--she's not of the crying sort, nor am I. But she
+cried, and I believe--well, I can tell you it was enough to move a
+stone. And when she'd done, she just went away, and locked her door, and
+let no one say a word to her. She has told one or two other relations
+and friends, and--"
+
+"And the relations and friends have told others?"
+
+"Well, I can answer for myself," said Grosville after a pause. "This
+happened three months ago. I never have told, and never shall tell, all
+the details as she told them to us. But we have let enough be known--"
+
+"Enough?--enough to damn Madame d'Estrées?"
+
+"Oh, well, as far as the women were concerned, she was mostly that
+already. There are other tales going about. I expect you know them."
+
+"No, I don't know them," said Ashe.
+
+Lord Grosville's face expressed surprise. "Well, this finished it," he
+said.
+
+"Poor child!" said Ashe, slowly, putting down his cigarette and turning
+a thoughtful look on the carpet.
+
+"Alice?" said Lord Grosville.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! you mean Kitty? Yes, I had forgotten her for the moment. Yes, poor
+child."
+
+There was silence a moment, then Lord Grosville inquired:
+
+"What do you think of her?"
+
+"I?" said Ashe, with a laugh. "I don't know. She's obviously very
+pretty--"
+
+"And a handful!" said Lord Grosville.
+
+"Oh, quite plainly a handful," said Ashe, rather absently. Then the
+memory of Kitty's entry recurred to them both, and they laughed.
+
+"Not much shyness left in that young woman--eh?" said the old man. "She
+tells my girls such stories of her French doings--my wife's had to stop
+it. She seems to have had all sorts of love-affairs already. And, of
+course, she'll have any number over here--sure to. Some unscrupulous
+fellow'll get hold of her, for naturally the right sort won't marry her.
+I don't know what we can do. Adelina offered to take her altogether. But
+that woman wouldn't hear of it. She wrote Lina rather a good letter--on
+her dignity--and that kind of thing. We gave her an opening, and, by
+Jove! she took it."
+
+"And meanwhile Lady Kitty has no dealings with her step-sister?"
+
+"You heard what she said. Extraordinary girl! to let the thing out plump
+like that. Just like the blood. They say anything that comes into their
+heads. If we had known that Alice was to be with the Sowerbys this
+week-end, my wife would certainly have put Kitty off. It would be
+uncommonly awkward if they were to meet--here for instance. Hullo! Is it
+getting late?"
+
+For the whist-players at the end of the library had pushed back their
+chairs, and men were strolling back from the billiard-room.
+
+"I am afraid Lady Kitty understands there is something wrong with her
+mother's position," said Ashe, as they rose.
+
+"I dare say. Brought up in Paris, you see," said the white-haired
+Englishman, with a shrug. "Of course, she knows everything she
+shouldn't."
+
+"Brought up in a convent, please," said Ashe, smiling. "And I thought
+the French _girl_ was the most innocent and ignorant thing alive."
+
+Lord Grosville received the remark with derision.
+
+"You ask my wife what she thinks about French convents. She knows--she's
+had lots of Catholic relations. She'll tell you tales."
+
+Ashe thought, however, that he could trust himself to see that she did
+nothing of the sort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The smoking-room broke up late, but the new Under-secretary sat up still
+later, reading and smoking in his bedroom. A box of Foreign Office
+papers lay on his table. He went through them with a keen sense of
+pleasure, enjoying his new work and his own competence to do it, of
+which, notwithstanding his remarks to Mary Lyster, he was not really at
+all in doubt. Then when his comments were done, and the papers replaced
+in the order in which they would now go up to the Secretary of State, he
+felt the spring night oppressively mild, and walking to the window, he
+threw it wide open.
+
+He looked out upon a Dutch garden, full of spring flowers in bloom. In
+the midst was a small fountain, which murmured to itself through the
+night. An orangery or conservatory, of a charming eighteenth-century
+design, ran round the garden in a semicircle, its flat pilasters and
+mouldings of yellow stone taking under the moonlight the color and the
+delicacy of ivory. Beyond the terrace which bordered the garden, the
+ground fell to a river, of which the reaches, now dazzling, now sombre,
+now slipping secret under woods, and now silverly open to the gentle
+slopes of the park, brought wildness and romance into a scene that had
+else been tame. Beyond the river on a rising ground was a village church
+with a spire. The formal garden, the Georgian conservatory, the park,
+the river, the church--they breathed England and the traditional English
+life. All that they implied, of custom and inheritance, of strength and
+narrowness, of cramping prejudice and stubborn force, was very familiar
+to Ashe, and on the whole very congenial. He was glad to be an
+Englishman and a member of an English government. The ironic mood which
+was tolerably constant in him did not in the least interfere with his
+normal enjoyment of normal goods. He saw himself often as a shade among
+shadows, as an actor among actors; but the play was good all the same.
+That a man should know himself to be a fool was in his eyes, as it was
+in Lord Melbourne's, the first of necessities. But fool or no fool, let
+him find the occupations that suited him, and pursue them. On those
+terms life was still amply worth living, and ginger was still hot in the
+mouth.
+
+This was his usual philosophy. Religiously he was a sceptic, enormously
+interested in religion. Should he ever become Prime Minister, as Lady
+Tranmore prophesied, he would know much more theology than the bishops
+he might be called on to appoint. Politically, at the same time, he was
+an aristocrat, enormously interested in liberty. The absurdities of his
+own class were still more plain to him perhaps than the absurdities of
+the populace. But had he lived a couple of generations earlier he would
+have gone with passion for Catholic emancipation, and boggled at the
+Reform Bill. And if fate had thrown him on earlier days still, he would
+not, like Falkland, have died ingeminating peace; he would have fought;
+but on which side, no friend of his--up till now--could have been quite
+sure. To have the reputation of an idler, and to be in truth a plodding
+and unwearied student; this, at any rate, pleased him. To avow an
+enthusiasm, or an affection, generally seemed to him an indelicacy; only
+two or three people in the world knew what was the real quality of his
+heart. Yet no man feigns shirking without in some measure learning to
+shirk; and there were certain true indolences and sybaritisms in Ashe of
+which he was fully and contemptuously aware, without either wishing or
+feeling himself able to break the yoke of them.
+
+At the present moment, however, he was rather conscious of much unusual
+stirring and exaltation of personality. As he stood looking out into the
+English night the currents of his blood ran free and fast. Never had he
+felt the natural appetite for living so strong in him, combined with
+what seemed to be at once a divination of coming change, and a thirst
+for it. Was it the mere advancement of his fortunes--or something
+infinitely subtler and sweeter? It was as though waves of softness and
+of yearning welled up from some unknown source, seeking an object and an
+outlet.
+
+As he stood there dreaming, he suddenly became conscious of sounds in
+the room overhead. Or rather in the now absolute stillness of the rest
+of the house he realized that the movements and voices above him, which
+had really been going on since he entered his room, persisted when
+everything else had died away.
+
+Two people were talking; or rather one voice ran on perpetually, broken
+at intervals by the other. He began to suspect to whom the voice
+belonged; and as he did so, the window above his own was thrown open. He
+stepped back involuntarily, but not before he had caught a few words in
+French, spoken apparently by Lady Kitty.
+
+"Ciel! what a night!--and how the flowers smell! And the stars--I adore
+the stars! Mademoiselle--come here! Mademoiselle! answer me--I won't
+tell tales--now do you--_really and truly_--believe in God?"
+
+A laugh, which was a laugh of pleasure, ran through Ashe, as he
+hurriedly put out his lights.
+
+"Tormentor!" he said to himself--"must you put a woman through her
+theological paces at this time of night? Can't you go to sleep, you
+little whirlwind?--What's to be done? If I shut my window the noise will
+scare her. But I can't stand eavesdropping here."
+
+He withdrew softly from the window and began to undress. But Lady Kitty
+was leaning out, and her voice carried amazingly. Heard in this way
+also, apart from form and face, it became a separate living thing. Ashe
+stood arrested, his watch that he was winding up in his hand. He had
+known the voice till now as something sharp and light, the sign surely
+of a chatterer and a flirt. To-night, as Kitty made use of it to expound
+her own peculiar theology to the French governess--whereof a few
+fragments now and then floated down to Ashe--nothing could have been
+more musical, melancholy, caressing. A voice full of sex, and the spell
+of sex.
+
+What had she been talking of all these hours to mademoiselle? A lady
+whom she could never have set eyes on before this visit. He thought of
+her face, in the drawing-room, as she had spoken of her sister--of her
+eyes, so full of a bright feverish pain, which had hung upon his own.
+
+Had she, indeed, been confiding all her home secrets to this stranger?
+Ashe felt a movement of distaste, almost of disgust. Yet he remembered
+that it was by her unconventionality, her lack of all proper reticence,
+or, as many would have said, all delicate feeling, that she had made her
+first impression upon him. Ay, that had been an impression--an
+impression indeed! He realized the fact profoundly, as he stood
+lingering in the darkness, trying not to hear the voice that thrilled
+him.
+
+At last!--was she going to bed?
+
+"Ah!--but I am a pig, to keep you up like this! Allez dormir!" (The
+sound of a kiss.) "I? Oh no! Why should one go to bed? It is in the
+night one begins to live."
+
+She fell to humming a little French tune, then broke off.
+
+"You remember? You promise? You have the letter?"
+
+Asseverations apparently from mademoiselle, and a mention of eight
+o'clock, followed by remorse from Kitty.
+
+"Eight o'clock! And I keep you like this. I am a brute beast!
+Allez--allez vite!" And quick steps scudded across the floor above,
+followed by the shutting of a door.
+
+Kitty, however, came back to the window, and Ashe could still hear her
+sighing and talking to herself.
+
+What had she been plotting? A letter? Conveyed by mademoiselle? To whom?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long after all sounds above had ceased Ashe still lay awake, thinking of
+the story he had heard from Lord Grosville. Certainly, if he had known
+it, he would never have gone familiarly to Madame d'Estrées' house.
+Laxity, for a man of his type, is one thing; lying, meanness, and
+cruelty are another. What could be done for this poor child in her
+strange and sinister position? He was ironically conscious of a sudden
+heat of missionary zeal. For if the creature to be saved had not
+possessed such a pair of eyes--so slim a neck--such a haunting and
+teasing personality--what then?
+
+The question presently plunged with him into sleep. But he had not
+forgotten it when he awoke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had just finished dressing next morning, when he chanced to see from
+the front window of his room, which commanded the main stretch of the
+park, the figure of a lady on one of the paths. She seemed to be
+returning from the farther end of a long avenue, and was evidently
+hurrying to reach the house. As she approached, however, she turned
+aside into a shrubbery walk and was soon lost to view. But Ashe had
+recognized Mademoiselle D. The matter of the letter recurred to him. He
+guessed that she had already delivered it. But where?
+
+At breakfast Lady Kitty did not appear. Ashe made inquiries of the
+younger Miss Grosville, who replied with some tartness that she supposed
+Kitty had a cold, and hurried off herself to dress for Sunday-school. It
+was not at all the custom for young ladies to breakfast in bed on
+Sundays at Grosville Park, and Lady Grosville's brow was clouded. Ashe
+felt it a positive effort to tell her that he was not going to church,
+and when she had marshalled her flock and carried them off, those left
+behind knew themselves, indeed, as heathens and publicans.
+
+Ashe wandered out with some official papers and a pipe into the spring
+sunshine. Mr. Kershaw, the editor, would gladly have caught him for a
+political talk. But Ashe would not be caught. As to the interests of
+England in the Persian Gulf, both they and Mr. Kershaw might for the
+moment go hang. Would Lady Kitty meet him in the old garden at
+eleven-thirty, or would she not? That was the only thing that mattered.
+
+However, it was still more than an hour to the time mentioned. Ashe
+spent a while in roaming a wood delicately pied with primroses and
+anemones, and then sauntered back into the gardens, which were old and
+famous.
+
+Suddenly, as he came upon a terrace bordered by a thick yew hedge, and
+descending by steps to a lower terrace, he became aware of voices in a
+strange tone and key--not loud, but, as it were, intensified far beyond
+the note of ordinary talk. Ashe stood still; for he had recognized the
+voice of Lady Kitty. But before he had made up his mind what to do a
+lady began to ascend the steps which connected the upper terrace with
+the lower. She came straight towards him, and Ashe looked at her with
+astonishment. She was not a member of the Grosville house party, and
+Ashe had never seen her before. Yet in her pale, unhappy face there was
+something that recalled another person; something, too, in her gait and
+her passionate energy of movement. She swept past him, and he saw that
+she was tall and thin, and dressed in deep mourning. Her eyes were set
+on some inner vision; he felt that she scarcely saw him. She passed like
+an embodied grief--menacing and lamentable.
+
+Something like a cry pursued her up the steps. But she did not turn. She
+walked swiftly on, and was soon lost to sight in the trees.
+
+Ashe hesitated a moment, then hurried down the steps.
+
+On a stone seat beneath the yew hedge, Kitty Bristol lay prone. He heard
+her sobs, and they went most strangely through his heart.
+
+"Lady Kitty!" he said, as he stood beside her and bent over her.
+
+She looked up, and showed no surprise. Her face was bathed in tears, but
+her hand sought his piteously and drew him towards her.
+
+"I have seen my sister," she said, "and she hates me. What have I done?
+I think I shall die of despair!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+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.
+
+"Why should you torment yourself so?" he asked her, kindly. Her hand had
+dropped and lay beside her on the bench. To his own amazement he found
+himself clasping it. "Isn't it better to forget old griefs? You can't
+help what happened years ago--you can't undo it. You've got to live your
+own life--_happily_! And I just wish you'd set about it."
+
+He smiled at her, and there were few faces more attractive than his when
+he let his natural softness have its way, without irony. She let her
+eyes be drawn to his, and as they met he saw a flush rise in her clear
+skin and spread to the pale gold of her hair. The man in him was
+marvellously pleased by that flush--fascinated, indeed. But she gave him
+small time to observe it; she drew herself impatiently away.
+
+"Of course, you don't understand a word about it," she said, "or you
+couldn't talk like that. But I'll tell you." Her eyes, half miserable,
+half audacious, returned to him. "My sister--came here--because I sent
+for her. I made mademoiselle go with a letter. Of course, I knew there
+was a mystery--I knew the Grosvilles did not want us to meet--I knew
+that she and maman hated each other. But maman will tell me nothing--and
+I have a _right_ to know."
+
+"No, you have no right to know," said Ashe, gravely.
+
+She looked at him wildly.
+
+"I have--I have!" she repeated, passionately. "Well, I told my sister to
+meet me here--I had forgotten, you see, all about you! My mind was so
+full of Alice. And when she came I felt as if it was a dream--a
+horrible, tragic dream. You know--she is _so_ like me--which means, I
+suppose, that we are both like papa. Only her face--it's not handsome,
+oh no--but it's stern--and--yes, noble! I was proud of her. I would like
+to have gone on my knee and kissed her dress. But she would not take my
+hand--she would hardly speak to me. She said she had come, because it
+was best, now that I was in England, that we should meet once, and
+understand that we _couldn't_ meet--that we could never, never be
+friends. She said that she hated my mother--that for years she had kept
+silence, but that now she meant to punish maman--to drive her from
+London. And then"--the girl's lips trembled under the memory--"she came
+close to me, and she looked into my eyes, and she said, 'Yes, we're like
+each other---we're like our father--and it would be better for us both
+if we had never been born--'"
+
+"Ah, cruel!" cried Ashe, involuntarily, and once more his hand found
+Kitty's small fingers and pressed them in his.
+
+Kitty looked at him with a strange, exalted look.
+
+"No. I think it's true. I often think I'm not made to be happy. I can't
+ever be happy--it's not in me."
+
+"It's in you to say foolish things then!" said Ashe, lightly, and
+crossing his arms he tried to assume the practical elder-brotherly air,
+which he felt befitted the situation--if anything befitted it. For in
+truth it seemed to him one singularly confused and ugly. Their talk
+floated above tragic depths, guessed at by him, wholly unknown to her.
+And yet her youth shrank from it knew not what--"as an animal shrinks
+from shadows in the twilight." She seemed to him to sit enwrapped in a
+vague cloud of shame, resenting and hating it, yet not able to escape
+from thinking and talking of it. But she must not talk of it.
+
+She did not answer his last remark for a little while. She sat looking
+before her, overwhelmed, it seemed, by an inward rush of images and
+sensations. Till, with a sudden movement, she turned to him and said,
+smiling, quite in her ordinary voice:
+
+"Do you know why I shall never be happy? It is because I have such a bad
+temper."
+
+"Have you?" said Ashe, smiling.
+
+She gave him a curious look.
+
+"You don't believe it? If you had been in the convent, you would have
+believed it. I'm mad sometimes--quite mad; with pride, I suppose, and
+vanity. The Soeurs said it was that."
+
+"They had to explain it somehow," said Ashe. "But I am quite sure that
+if I lived in a convent I should have a furious temper."
+
+"You!" she said, half contemptuously. "You couldn't be ill-tempered
+anywhere. That's the one thing I don't like about you--you're too
+calm--too--too satisfied. It's--Well! you said a sharp thing to me, so I
+don't see why I shouldn't say one to you. You shouldn't look as though
+you enjoyed your life so much. It's _bourgeois_! It is, indeed." And she
+frowned upon him with a little extravagant air that amused him.
+
+By some prescience, she had put on that morning a black dress of thin
+material, made with extreme simplicity. No flounces, no fanfaronnade. A
+little girlish dress, that made the girlish figure seem even frailer and
+lighter than he remembered it the night before in the splendors of her
+Paris gown. Her large black hat emphasized the whiteness of her brow,
+the brilliance of her most beautiful eyes; and then all the rest was
+insubstantial sprite and airy nothing, to be crushed in one hand. And
+yet what untamed, indomitable things breathed from it--a self surely
+more self, more intensely, obstinately alive than any he had yet known.
+
+Her attack had brought the involuntary blood to his cheeks, which
+annoyed him. But he invited her to say why cheerfulness was a vice. She
+replied that no one should look success--as much as he did.
+
+"And you scorn success?"
+
+"Scorn it!" She drew a long breath, clasped both her hands above her
+head, then slowly let the thin arms fall again. "Scorn it! What
+nonsense! But everybody who hasn't got it hates those who have."
+
+"Don't hate me!" said Ashe, quickly.
+
+"Yes," she said, with stubbornness, "I must. Do you know why I was such
+a wild-cat at school? Because some of the other girls were more
+important than I--much more important--and richer--and more
+beautiful--and people paid them more attention. And that seemed to
+_burn_ the heart in me." She pressed her hands to her breast with a
+passionate gesture. "You know the French word _panache_? Well, that's
+what I care for --that's what I _adore_! To be the first--the best--the
+most distinguished. To be envied--and pointed at--obeyed when I lift my
+finger--and then to come to some great, glorious, tragic end!"
+
+Ashe moved impatiently.
+
+"Lady Kitty, I don't like to hear you talk like this. It's wild, and
+it's also--I beg your pardon--"
+
+"In bad taste?" she said, catching him up breathlessly. "That's what you
+meant, isn't it? You said it to me before, when I called you handsome."
+
+"Pshaw!" he said, in vexation. She watched him throw himself back and
+feel for his cigarette-case; a gesture of her hand gave him leave; she
+waited, smiling, till he had taken a few calming whiffs. Then she gently
+moved towards him.
+
+"Don't be angry with me!" she said, in a sweet, low voice. "Don't you
+understand how hard it is--to have that nature--and then to come here
+out of the convent--where one had lived on dreams--and find one's
+self--"
+
+She turned her head away. Ashe put down his new-lit cigarette.
+
+"Find yourself?" he repeated.
+
+"Everybody scorns me!" she said, her brow drooping.
+
+Ashe exclaimed.
+
+"You know it's true. My mother is not received. Can you deny that?"
+
+"She has many friends," said Ashe.
+
+"She is _not received_. When I speak of her no one answers me. Lady
+Grosville asked me here--_me_--out of charity. It would be thought a
+disgrace to marry me--"
+
+"Look here, Lady Kitty!--"
+
+"And I"--she wrung her small hands, as though she clasped the necks of
+her enemies--"I would never _look_ at a man who did not think it the
+glory of his life to win me. So you see, I shall never marry. But then
+the dreadful thing is--"
+
+She let him see a white, stormy face.
+
+"That I have no loyalty to maman--I--I don't think I even love her."
+
+Ashe surveyed her gravely.
+
+"You don't mean that," he said.
+
+"I think I do," she persisted. "I had a horrid childhood. I won't tell
+tales; but, you see, I don't _know_ maman. I know the Soeurs much
+better. And then for some one you don't know--to have to--to have to
+bear--this horrible thing--"
+
+She buried her face in her hands. Ashe looked at her in perplexity.
+
+"You sha'n't bear anything horrible," he said, with energy. "There are
+plenty of people who will take care of that. Do you mind telling
+me--have there been special difficulties just lately?"
+
+"Oh yes," she said, calmly, looking up, "awful! Maman's debts
+are--well--ridiculous. For that alone I don't think she'll be able to
+stay in London--apart from--Alice."
+
+The name recalled all she had just passed through, and her face
+quivered. "What will she do?" she said, under her breath. "How will she
+punish us?--and why?--for what?"
+
+Her dread, her ignorance, her fierce, bruised vanity, her struggling
+pride, her helplessness, appealed amazingly to the man beside her. He
+began to talk to her very gently and wisely, begging her to let the past
+alone, to think only what could be done to help the present. In the
+first place, would she not let his mother be of use to her?
+
+He could answer for Lady Tranmore. Why shouldn't Lady Kitty spend the
+summer with her in Scotland? No doubt Madame d'Estrées would be abroad.
+
+"Then I must go with her," said Kitty.
+
+Ashe hesitated.
+
+"Of course, if she wishes it."
+
+"But I don't know that she will wish it. She is not very fond of me,"
+said Kitty, doubtfully. "Yes, I would like to stay with Lady Tranmore.
+But will your cousin be there?"
+
+"Miss Lyster?"
+
+Kitty nodded.
+
+"How can I tell? Of course, she is often there."
+
+"It is quite curious," said Kitty, after reflection, "how we dislike
+each other. And it is so odd. You know most people like me!"
+
+She looked up at him without a trace of coquetry, rather with a certain
+timidity that feared possible rebuff. "That's always been my
+difficulty," she went on, "till now. Everybody spoils me. I always get
+my own way. In the convent I was indulged and flattered, and then they
+wondered that I made all sorts of follies. I want a guide--that's quite
+certain--somebody to tell me what to do."
+
+"I would offer myself for the post," said Ashe, "but that I feel
+perfectly sure that you would never follow anybody's advice in
+anything."
+
+"Yes, I would," she said, wistfully. "I would--"
+
+Ashe's face changed.
+
+"Ah, if you would--"
+
+She sprang up. "Do you see "--she pointed to some figures on a distant
+path--"they are coming back from church. You understand?--_nobody_ must
+know about my sister. It will come round to Aunt Lina, of course; but I
+hope it'll be when I'm gone. If she knew now, I should go back to London
+to-day."
+
+Ashe made it clear to her that he would be discretion itself. They left
+the bench, but, as they began to ascend the steps, Kitty turned back.
+
+"I wish I hadn't seen her," she said, in a miserable tone, the tears
+flooding once more into her eyes.
+
+Ashe looked at her with great kindness, but without speaking. The moment
+of sharp pain passed, and she moved on languidly beside him. But there
+was an infection in his strong, handsome presence, and her smiles soon
+came back. By the time they neared the house, indeed, she seemed to be
+in wild spirits again.
+
+Did he know, she asked him, that three more guests were coming that
+afternoon--Mr. Darrell, Mr. Louis Harman, _and_--Mr. Geoffrey Cliffe?
+She laid an emphasis on the last name, which made Ashe say, carelessly:
+
+"You want to meet him so much?"
+
+"Of course. Doesn't all the world?"
+
+Ashe replied that he could only answer for himself, and as far as he was
+concerned he could do very well without Cliffe's company at all times.
+
+Whereupon Kitty protested with fire that other men were jealous of such
+a famous person because women liked him--because--
+
+"Because the man's a coxcomb and the women spoil him?"
+
+"A coxcomb!"
+
+Kitty was up in arms.
+
+"Pray, is he not a great traveller?--_a very_ great traveller?" she
+asked, with indignation.
+
+"Certainly, by his own account."
+
+"And a most brilliant writer?"
+
+"Macaulayese," said Ashe, perversely, "and not very good at that."
+
+Kitty was at first struck dumb, and then began a voluble protest against
+unfairness so monstrous. Did not all intelligent people read and admire?
+It was mere jealousy, she repeated, to deny the gentleman's claims.
+
+Ashe let her talk and quote and excite herself, applying every now and
+then a little sly touch of the goad, to make her still run on, and so
+forget the tragic hour which had overshadowed her. And meanwhile all he
+cared for was to watch the flashing of her face and eyes, and the play
+of the wind in her hair, and the springing grace with which she moved.
+Poor child!--it all came back to that--poor child!--what was to be done
+with her?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At luncheon--the Sunday luncheon--which still, at Grosville Park, as in
+the early Victorian days of Lord Grosville's mother, consisted of a huge
+baronial sirloin to which all else upon the varied table appeared as
+appurtenance and appendage, Ashe allowed himself the inward reflection
+that the Grosville Park Sundays were degenerating. Both Lord and Lady
+Grosville had been good hosts in their day; and the downrightness of the
+wife had been as much to the taste of many as the agreeable gossip of
+the husband. But on this occasion both were silent and absent-minded.
+Lady Grosville showed no generalship in placing her guests; the wrong
+people sat next to each other, and the whole party dragged--without a
+leader.
+
+And certainly Kitty Bristol did nothing to enliven it. She sat very
+silent, her black dress changing her a good deal, to Ashe's thinking,
+bringing back, as he chose to fancy, the pale convent girl. Was it so
+that she went through her pious exercises?--by-the-way, she was, of
+course, a Catholic?--said her lessons, and went to her confessor? Had
+the French cousin with whom she rode stag-hunting ever seen her like
+this? No; Ashe felt certain that "Henri" had never seen her, except as a
+fashion-plate, or _en amazone_. He could have made nothing of this ghost
+in black--this distinguished, piteous, little ghost.
+
+After luncheon it became tolerably clear to Ashe that Lady Grosville's
+preoccupation had a cause. And presently catching him alone in the
+library, whither he had retired with some official papers, she closed
+the door with deliberate care, and stood before him.
+
+"I see you are interested in Kitty, and I feel as if I must tell you,
+and ask your opinion. William, do you know what that child has been
+doing?"
+
+He looked up from his writing.
+
+"Ah!--what have you been discovering?"
+
+"Grosville told you the story last night."
+
+Ashe nodded.
+
+"Well--Kitty wrote to Alice this morning--and they met. Alice has kept
+her room since--prostrate--so the Sowerbys tell me. I have just had a
+note from Mrs. Sowerby. Wasn't it an extraordinary, an indelicate thing
+to do?"
+
+Ashe studied the frowning lady a moment--so large and daunting in her
+black silk and white lace. She seemed to suggest all those aspects of
+the English Sunday for which he had most secret dislike--its Pharisaism
+and dulness and heavy meals. He felt himself through and through Lady
+Kitty's champion.
+
+"I should have thought it very natural," was his reply.
+
+Lady Grosville threw up her hands.
+
+"Natural!--when she knows--"
+
+"How can she know?" cried Ashe, hotly. "How can such a child know or
+guess anything? She only knows that there is some black charge against
+her mother, on which no one will enlighten her. How can they? But
+meanwhile her mother is ostracized, and she feels herself dragged into
+the disgrace, not understanding why or wherefore. Could anything be more
+pathetic--more touching?"
+
+In his heat of feeling he got up, and began to pace up and down. Lady
+Grosville's countenance expressed first astonishment--then wavering.
+
+"Oh--of course, it's very sad," she said--"extremely sad. But I should
+have thought Kitty was clever enough to understand at least that Alice
+must have some grave reason for breaking with her mother--"
+
+"Don't you all forget what a child she is," said Ashe, indignantly--"not
+yet nineteen!"
+
+"Yes, that's true," said Lady Grosville, grudgingly. "I must confess I
+find it difficult to judge her fairly. She's so different from my own
+girls."
+
+Ashe hastily agreed. Then it struck him as odd that he should have
+fallen so quickly into this position of Kitty's defender with her
+father's family; and he drew in his horns. He resumed his work, and Lady
+Grosville sat for a while, her hands in her lap, quietly observing him.
+
+At last she said:
+
+"So you think, William, I had better leave Kitty alone?"
+
+"About what?" Ashe raised his curly head with a laugh. "Don't put too
+much responsibility on me. I know nothing about young ladies."
+
+"I don't know that I do--much," said Lady Grosville, candidly. "My own
+daughters are so exceptional."
+
+Ashe held his peace. Distant cousins as they were, he hardly knew the
+Grosville girls apart, and had never yet grasped any reason why he
+should.
+
+"At any rate, I see clearly," said Lady Grosville, after another pause,
+"that you're very sorry for Kitty. Of course, it's very nice of you, and
+I find it's what most people feel."
+
+"Hang it! dear Lady Grosville, why shouldn't they?" said Ashe, turning
+round on his chair. "If ever there was a forlorn little person on earth,
+I thought Lady Kitty was that person at lunch to-day."
+
+"And after that absurd exhibition last night!" said Lady Grosville, with
+a shrug. "You never know where to have her. You think she looked ill?"
+
+"I am sure she has got a splitting headache," said Ashe, boldly. "And
+why you and Grosville shouldn't be as sorry for her as for Lady Alice I
+can't imagine. _She's_ done nothing."
+
+"No, that's true," said Lady Grosville, as she rose. Then she added:
+"I'll go and see if she has a headache. You must consult with us,
+William; you know the mother so well."
+
+"Oh, I'm no good!" said Ashe, with energy. "But I'm sure that kindness
+would pay with Lady Kitty."
+
+He smiled at her, wishing to Heaven she would go.
+
+Lady Grosville stared.
+
+"I hope we are always kind to her," she said, with a touch of
+haughtiness. And then the library door closed behind her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Kindness" was indeed, that afternoon, the order of the day, as from the
+Grosvilles to Lady Kitty. Ashe wondered how she liked it. The girls
+followed her about with shawls. Lady Grosville installed her on a sofa
+in the back drawing-room. A bottle of sal-volatile appeared, and
+Caroline Grosville, instead of going twice to Sunday-school, devoted
+herself to fanning Kitty, though the weather--which was sunny, with a
+sharp east wind--suggested, to Ashe's thinking, fires rather than fans.
+
+He was himself carried off for the customary Sunday walk, Mr. Kershaw
+being now determined to claim the sacred rights of the press. The
+walkers left the house by a garden door, to reach which they had to pass
+through the farther drawing-room. Kitty, a picturesque figure on the
+sofa, nodded farewell to Ashe, and then, unseen by Caroline Grosville,
+who sat behind her, shot him a last look which drove him to a
+precipitate exit lest the inward laugh should out.
+
+The walk through the flat Cambridgeshire country was long and strenuous.
+Though for at least half of it the active journalist who was Ashe's
+companion conceived the poorest opinion of the new minister. Ashe knew
+nothing; had no opinions; cared for nothing, except now and then for the
+stalking of an unfamiliar bird, or the antics of the dogs, or tales of
+horse-racing, of which he talked with a fervor entirely denied to those
+high political topics of which Kershaw's ardent soul was full.
+
+Again and again did the journalist put them under his nose in their most
+attractive guise. In vain; Ashe would have none of them. Till suddenly a
+chance word started an Indian frontier question, vastly important, and
+totally unknown to the English public. Ashe casually began to talk; the
+trickle became a stream, and presently he was holding forth with an
+impetuosity, a knowledge, a matured and careful judgment that fairly
+amazed the man beside him.
+
+The long road, bordered by the flat fen meadows, the wide silver sky,
+the gently lengthening day, all passed unnoticed. The journalist found
+himself in the grip of a _mind_--strong, active, rich. He gave himself
+up with docility, yet with a growing astonishment, and when they stood
+once more on the steps of the house he said to his companion:
+
+"You must have followed these matters for years. Why have you never
+spoken in the House, or written anything?"
+
+Ashe's aspect changed at once.
+
+"What would have been the good?" he said, with his easy smile. "The
+fellows who didn't know wouldn't have believed me; and the fellows who
+knew didn't want telling."
+
+A shade of impatience showed in Kershaw's aspect.
+
+"I thought," he said, "ours was government by discussion."
+
+Ashe laughed, and, turning on the steps, he pointed to the splendid
+gardens and finely wooded park.
+
+"Or government by country-houses--which? If you support us in this--as I
+gather you will--this walk will have been worth a debate--now won't it?"
+
+The flattered journalist smiled, and they entered the house. From the
+inner hall Lord Grosville perceived them.
+
+"Geoffrey Cliffe's arrived," he said to Ashe, as they reached him.
+
+"Has he?" said Ashe, and turned to go up-stairs.
+
+But Kershaw showed a lively interest. "You mean the traveller?" he asked
+of his host.
+
+"I do. As mad as usual," said the old man. "He and my niece Kitty make a
+pair."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+When Ashe returned to the drawing-room he found it filled with the sound
+of talk and laughter. But it was a talk and laughter in which the
+Grosville family seemed to have itself but little part. Lady Grosville
+sat stiffly on an early Victorian sofa, her spectacles on her nose,
+reading the _Times_ of the preceding day, or appearing to read it. Amy
+Grosville, the eldest girl, was busy in a corner, putting the finishing
+touches to a piece of illumination; while Caroline, seated on the floor,
+was showing the small child of a neighbor how to put a picture-puzzle
+together. Lord Grosville was professedly in a farther room, talking with
+the Austrian count; but every other minute he strolled restlessly into
+the big drawing-room, and stood at the edge of the talk and laughter,
+only to turn on his heel again and go back to the count--who meanwhile
+appeared in the opening between the two rooms, his hands on his hips,
+eagerly watching Kitty Bristol and her companions, while waiting, as
+courtesy bade him, for the return of his host.
+
+Ashe at once divined that the Grosville family were in revolt. Nor had
+he to look far to discover the cause.
+
+Was that astonishing young lady in truth identical with the pensive
+figure of the morning? Kitty had doffed her black, and she wore a
+"demi-toilette" gown of the utmost elegance, of which the expensiveness
+had, no doubt, already sunk deep into Lady Grosville's soul. At
+Grosville Park the new fashion of "tea-gowns" was not favorably
+regarded. It was thought to be a mere device of silly and extravagant
+women, and an "afternoon dress," though of greater pretensions than a
+morning gown, was still a sober affair, not in any way to be confounded
+with those decorative effects that nature and sound sense reserved for
+the evening.
+
+But Kitty's dress was of some white silky material; and it displayed her
+slender throat and some portion of her thin white arms. The Dean's wife,
+Mrs. Winston, as she secretly studied it, felt an inward satisfaction;
+for here at last was one of those gowns she had once or twice gazed on
+with a covetous awe in the shop-windows of the Rue de la Paix, brought
+down to earth, and clothing a simple mortal. They were then real, and
+they could be worn by real women; which till now the Dean's wife had
+scarcely believed.
+
+Alack! how becoming were these concoctions to minxes with fair hair and
+sylphlike frames! Kitty was radiant, triumphant; and Ashe was certain
+that Lady Grosville knew it, however she might barricade herself behind
+the _Times_. The girl's slim fingers gesticulated in aid of her tongue;
+one tiny foot swung lightly over the other; the glistening folds of the
+silk wrapped her in a shimmering whiteness, above which the fair
+head--negligently thrown back--shone out on a red background, made by
+the velvet chair in which she sat.
+
+The Dean was placed close beside her, and was clearly enjoying himself
+enormously. And in front of her, absorbed in her, engaged, indeed, in
+hot and furious debate with her, stood the great man who had just
+arrived.
+
+"How do you do, Cliffe?" said Ashe, as he approached.
+
+Geoffrey Cliffe turned sharply, and a perfunctory greeting passed
+between the two men.
+
+"When did you arrive?" said Ashe, as he threw himself into an arm-chair.
+
+"Last Tuesday. But that don't matter," said Cliffe,
+impatiently--"nothing matters--except that I must somehow defeat Lady
+Kitty!"
+
+And he stood, looking down upon the girl in front of him, his hands on
+his sides, his queer countenance twitching with suppressed laughter. An
+odd figure, tall, spare, loosely jointed, surmounted by a pale parchment
+face, which showed a somewhat protruding chin, a long and delicate nose,
+and fine brows under a strange overhanging mass of fair hair. He had the
+dissipated, battered look of certain Vandyck cavaliers, and certainly no
+handsomeness of any accepted kind. But as Ashe well knew, the aspect and
+personality of Geoffrey Cliffe possessed for innumerable men and women,
+in English "society" and out of it, a fascination it was easier to laugh
+at than to explain.
+
+Lady Kitty had eyes certainly for no one else. When he spoke of
+"defeating" her, she laughed her defiance, and a glance of battle passed
+between her and Cliffe. Cliffe, still holding her with his look,
+considered what new ground to break.
+
+"What is the subject?" said Ashe.
+
+"That men are vainer than women," said Kitty. "It's so true, it's hardly
+worth saying--isn't it? Mr. Cliffe talks nonsense about our love of
+clothes--and of being admired. As if that were vanity! Of course it's
+only our sense of duty."
+
+"Duty?" cried Cliffe, twisting his mustache. "To whom?"
+
+"To the men, of course! If we didn't like clothes, if we didn't like
+being admired--where would you be?"
+
+"Personally, I could get on," said Cliffe. "You expect us to be too much
+on our knees."
+
+"As if we should ever get you there if it didn't amuse you!" said Kitty.
+"Hypocrites! If we don't dress, paint, chatter, and tell lies for you,
+you won't look at us--and if we do--"
+
+"Of course, it all depends on how well it's done," threw in Cliffe.
+
+Kitty laughed.
+
+"That's judging by results. I look to the motive. I repeat, if I powder
+and paint, it's not because I'm vain, but because it's my painful duty
+to give you pleasure."
+
+"And if it doesn't give me pleasure?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Call me stupid then--not vain. I ought to have done it better."
+
+"In any case," said Ashe, "it's your duty to please us?"
+
+"Yes--" sighed Kitty. "Worse luck!"
+
+And she sank softly back in her chair, her eyes shining under the
+stimulus of the laugh that ran through her circle. The Dean joined in it
+uneasily, conscious, no doubt, of the sharp, crackling movements by
+which in the distance Lady Grosville was dumbly expressing
+herself--through the _Times_. Cliffe looked at the small figure a
+moment, then seized a chair and sat down in front of her, astride.
+
+"I wonder why you want to please us?" he said, abruptly, his magnificent
+blue eyes upon her.
+
+"Ah!" said Kitty, throwing up her hands, "if we only knew!"
+
+"You find it in the tragedy of your sex?"
+
+"Or comedy," said the Dean, rising. "I take you at your word, Lady
+Kitty. To-night it will be your duty to please _me_. Remember, you
+promised to say us some more French." He lifted an admonitory finger.
+
+"I don't know any 'Athalie,'" said Kitty, demurely, crossing her hands
+upon her knee.
+
+The Dean smiled to himself as he crossed the room to Lady Grosville, and
+endeavored by an impartial criticism of the new curate's manner and
+voice, as they had revealed themselves in church that morning, to
+distract her attention from her niece.
+
+A hopeless task--for Kitty's personality was of the kind which absorbs,
+engulfs attention, do what the by-stander will. Eyes and ears were drawn
+perforce into the little whirlpool that she made, their owners yielding
+them, now with delight, now with repulsion.
+
+Mary Lyster, for instance, came in presently, fresh from a walk with
+Lady Edith Manley. She, too, had changed her dress. But it was a
+discreet and reasonable change, and Lady Grosville looked at her soft
+gray gown with its muslin collar and cuffs--delicately embroidered, yet
+of a nunlike cut and air notwithstanding--with a hot energy of approval,
+provoked entirely by Kitty's audacities. Mary meanwhile raised her
+eyebrows gently at the sight of Kitty. She swept past the group, giving
+a cool greeting to Geoffrey Cliffe, and presently settled herself in the
+farther room, attended by Louis Harman and Darrell, who had just arrived
+by the afternoon train. Clearly she observed Kitty and observed her with
+dislike. The attitude of her companions was not so simple.
+
+"What an amazing young woman!" said Harman, presently, under his breath,
+yet open-mouthed. "I suppose she and Cliffe are old friends."
+
+"I believe they never met before," said Mary.
+
+Darrell laughed.
+
+"Lady Kitty makes short work of the preliminaries," he said; "she told
+me the other night life wasn't long enough to begin with talk about the
+weather."
+
+"The weather?" said Harman. "At the present moment she and Cliffe seem
+to be discussing the 'Dame aux Camélias.' Since when do they take young
+girls to see that kind of thing in Paris?"
+
+Miss Lyster gave a little cough, and bending forward said to Harman:
+"Lady Tranmore has shown me your picture. It is a dear, delicious thing!
+I never saw anything more heavenly than the angel."
+
+Harman smiled a flattered smile. Mary Lyster referred to a copy of a
+"Filippo Lippi Annunciation" which he had just executed in water-color
+for Lady Tranmore, to whom he was devoted. He was, however, devoted to a
+good many peeresses, with whom he took tea, and for whom he undertook
+many harmless and elegant services. He painted their portraits, in small
+size, after pre-Raphaelite models, and he occasionally presented them
+with copies--a little weak, but charming--of their favorite Italian
+pictures. He and Mary began now to talk of Florence with much enthusiasm
+and many caressing adjectives. For Harman most things were "sweet"; for
+Mary, "interesting" or "suggestive." She talked fast and fluently; a
+subtle observer might have guessed she wished it to be seen that for her
+Lady Kitty Bristol's flirtations, be they in or out of taste, were
+simply non-existent.
+
+Darrell listened intermittently, watched Cliffe and Lady Kitty, and
+thought a good deal. That extraordinary girl was certainly "carrying on"
+with Cliffe, as she had "carried on" with Ashe on the night of her first
+acquaintance with him in St. James's Place. Ashe apparently took it with
+equanimity, for he was still sitting beside the pair, twisting a
+paper-knife and smiling, sometimes putting in a word, but more often
+silent, and apparently of no account at all to either Kitty or Cliffe.
+
+Darrell knew that the new minister disliked and despised Geoffrey
+Cliffe; he was aware, too, that Cliffe returned these sentiments, and
+was not unlikely to be found attacking Ashe in public before long on
+certain points of foreign policy, where Cliffe conceived himself to be a
+master. The meeting of the two men under the Grosvilles' roof struck
+Darrell as curious. Why had Cliffe been invited by these very
+respectable and straitlaced people the Grosvilles? Darrell could only
+reflect that Lady Eleanor Cliffe, the traveller's mother, was probably
+connected with them by some of those innumerable and ever-ramifying
+links that hold together a certain large group of English families; and
+that, moreover, Lady Grosville, in spite of philanthropy and
+Evangelicalism, had always shown a rather pronounced taste in
+"lions"--of the masculine sort. Of the women to be met with at Grosville
+Park, one could be certain. Lady Grosville made no excuses for her own
+sex. But she was a sufficiently ambitious hostess to know that agreeable
+parties are not constructed out of the saints alone. The men, therefore,
+must provide the sinners; and of some of the persons then most in vogue
+she was careful not to know too much. For, socially, one must live; and
+that being so, the strictness of to-day may have at any moment to be
+purchased by the laxity of to-morrow. Such, at any rate, was Darrell's
+analysis of the situation.
+
+He was still astonished, however, when all was said. For Cliffe during
+the preceding winter, on his return from some remarkable travels in
+Persia, had paused on the Riviera, and an affair at Cannes with a French
+vicomtesse had got into the English papers. No one knew the exact truth
+of it; and a small volume of verse by Cliffe, published immediately
+afterwards--verse very distinguished, passionate, and obscure--had
+offered many clews, but no solution whatever. Nobody supposed, however,
+that the story was anything but a bad one. Moreover, the last book of
+travels--which had had an enormous success--contained one of the most
+malicious attacks on foreign missions that Darrell remembered. And if
+the missionaries had a supporter in England, it was Lady Grosville. Had
+she designs--material designs--on behalf of Miss Amy or Miss Caroline?
+Darrell smiled at the notion. Cliffe must certainly marry money, and was
+not to be captured by any Miss Amys--or Lady Kittys either, for the
+matter of that.
+
+But?--Darrell glanced at the lady beside him, and his busy thoughts took
+a new turn. He had seen the greeting between Miss Lyster and Cliffe. It
+was cold; but all the same the world knew that they had once been
+friends. Was it some five years before that Miss Lyster, then in the
+height of a brilliant season under the wing of Lady Tranmore, had been
+much seen in public with Geoffrey Cliffe? Then he had departed eastward,
+to explore the upper waters of the Mékong, and the gossip excited had
+died away. Of late her name had been rather coupled with that of William
+Ashe.
+
+Well, so far as the world was concerned, she might mate with
+either--with the mad notoriety of Cliffe or the young distinction of
+Ashe. Darrell's bitter heart contracted as he reflected that only for
+him and the likes of him, men of the people, with average ability, and a
+scarcely average income, were maidens of Mary Lyster's dower and
+pedigree out of reach. Meanwhile he revenged himself by being her very
+good friend, and allowing himself at times much caustic plainness of
+speech in his talks with her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What are you three gossiping about?" said Ashe, strolling in presently
+from the other room to join them.
+
+"As usual," said Darrell. "I am listening to perfection. Miss Lyster and
+Harman are discussing pictures."
+
+Ashe stifled a little yawn. He threw himself down by Mary, vowing that
+there was no more pleasure to be got out of pictures now that people
+would try to know so much about them. Mary meanwhile raised herself
+involuntarily to look into the farther room, where the noise made by
+Cliffe and Lady Kitty had increased.
+
+"They are going to sing," said Ashe, lazily--"and it won't be hymns."
+
+In fact, Lady Kitty had opened the piano, and had begun the first bars
+of something French and operatic. At the first sound of Kitty's music,
+however, Lady Grosville drew herself up; she closed the volume of
+Evangelical sermons for which she had exchanged the _Times_; she
+deposited her spectacles sharply on the table beside her.
+
+"Amy!--Caroline!"
+
+Those young ladies rose. So did Lady Grosville. Kitty meanwhile sat with
+suspended fingers and laughing eyes, waiting on her aunt's movements.
+
+"Kitty, pray don't let me interfere with your playing," said Lady
+Grosville, with severe politeness--"but perhaps you would kindly put it
+off for half an hour. I am now going to read to the servants--"
+
+"Gracious!" said Kitty, springing up. "I was going to play Mr. Cliffe
+some Offenbach."
+
+"Ah, but the piano can be heard in the library, and your cousin Amy
+plays the harmonium--"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_!" said Kitty. "We will be as quiet as mice. Or"--she made a
+quick step in pursuit of her aunt--"shall I come and sing, Aunt Lina?"
+
+Ashe, in his shelter behind Mary Lyster, fell into a silent convulsion
+of laughter.
+
+"No, thank you!" said Lady Grosville, hastily. And she rustled away
+followed by her daughters.
+
+Kitty came flying into the inner room followed by Cliffe.
+
+"What have I done?" she said, breathlessly, addressing Harman, who rose
+to greet her. "Mayn't one play the piano here on Sundays?"
+
+"That depends," said Harman, "on what you play."
+
+"Who made your English Sunday?" said Kitty, impetuously. "Je vous
+demande--_who_?"
+
+She threw her challenge to all the winds of heaven--standing tiptoe, her
+hands poised on the back of a chair, the smallest and most delicate of
+furies.
+
+"A breath unmakes it, as a breath has made," said Cliffe. "Come and play
+billiards, Lady Kitty. You said just now you played."
+
+"Billiards!" said Harman, throwing up his hands. "On Sunday--_here_?"
+
+"Can they hear the balls?" said Kitty, eagerly, with a gesture towards
+the library.
+
+Mary Lyster, who had been perfunctorily looking at a book, laid it down.
+
+"It would certainly greatly distress Lady Grosville," she said, in a
+voice studiously soft, but on that account perhaps all the more
+significant.
+
+Kitty glanced at Mary, and Ashe saw the sudden red in her cheek. She
+turned provokingly to Cliffe. "There's quite half an hour, isn't there,
+before one need dress--"
+
+"More," said Cliffe. "Come along."
+
+And he made for the door, which he held open for her. It was now Mary
+Lyster's turn to flush--the rebuff had been so naked and unadorned. Ashe
+rose as Kitty passed him.
+
+"Why don't you come, too?" she said, pausing. There was a flash from
+eyes deep and dark beneath a pair of wilful brows. "Aunt Lina would
+never be cross with _you_!"
+
+"Thank you! I should be delighted to play buffer, but unfortunately I
+have some work I must do before dinner."
+
+"Must you?" She looked at him uncertainly, then at Cliffe. In the dusk
+of the large, heavily furnished room, the pale yet brilliant gold of her
+hair, her white dress, her slim energy and elegance drew all their
+eyes--even Mary Lyster's.
+
+"I must," Ashe repeated, smiling. "I am glad your headache is so much
+better."
+
+"It is not in the least better!"
+
+"Then you disguise it like a heroine."
+
+He stood beside her, looking down upon her, his height and strength
+measured against her smallness. Apparently his amused detachment, the
+slight dryness of his tone annoyed her. She made a tart reply and
+vanished through the door that Cliffe held open for her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ashe retired to his own room, dealt with some Foreign Office work, and
+then allowed himself a meditative smoke. The click of the billiard-balls
+had ceased abruptly about ten minutes after he had begun upon his
+papers; there had been voices in the hall, Lord Grosville's he thought
+among them; and now all was silence.
+
+He thought of the events of the afternoon with mingled amusement and
+annoyance. Cliffe was an unscrupulous fellow, and the child's head might
+be turned. She should be protected from him in future--he vowed she
+should. Lady Tranmore should take it in hand. She had been a match for
+Cliffe in various other directions before this.
+
+What brought the man, with his notorious character and antecedents, to
+Grosville Park--one of the dwindling number of country-houses in England
+where the old Puritan restrictions still held? It was said he was on the
+look-out for a post--Ashe, indeed, happened to know it officially; and
+Lord Grosville had a good deal of influence. Moreover, failing an
+appointment, he was understood to be aiming at Parliament and office;
+and there were two safe county-seats within the Grosville sphere.
+
+"Yet even when he wants a thing he can't behave himself in order to get
+it," thought Ashe. "Anybody else would have turned Sabbatarian for once,
+and refrained from flirting with the Grosvilles' niece. But that's
+Cliffe all over--and perhaps the best thing about him."
+
+He might have added that as Cliffe was supposed to desire an appointment
+under either the Foreign Office or the Colonial Office, it might have
+been thought to his interest to show himself more urbane than he had in
+fact shown himself that afternoon to the new Under-Secretary for Foreign
+Affairs. But Ashe rarely or never indulged himself in reflections of
+that kind. Besides, he and Cliffe knew each other too well for posing.
+There was a time when they had been on very friendly terms, and when
+Cliffe had been constantly in his mother's drawing-room. Lady Tranmore
+had a weakness for "influencing" young men of family and ability; and
+Cliffe, in fact, owed her a good deal. Then she had seen cause to think
+ill of him; and, moreover, his travels had taken him to the other side
+of the world. Ashe was now well aware that Cliffe reckoned on him as a
+hostile influence and would not try either to deceive or to propitiate
+him.
+
+He thought Cliffe had been disagreeably surprised to see him that
+afternoon. Perhaps it was the sudden sense of antagonism acting on the
+man's excitable nature that had made him fling himself into the wild
+nonsense he had talked with Lady Kitty.
+
+And thenceforward Ashe's thoughts were possessed by Kitty only--Kitty in
+her two aspects, of the morning and the afternoon. He dressed in a
+reverie, and went down-stairs still dreaming.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At dinner he found himself responsible for Mary Lyster. Kitty was on the
+other side of the table, widely separated both from himself and Cliffe.
+She was in a little Empire dress of blue and silver, as extravagantly
+simple as her gown of the afternoon had been extravagantly elaborate.
+
+Ashe observed the furtive study that the Grosville girls could not help
+bestowing upon her--upon her shoulder-straps and long, bare arms, upon
+her high waist and the blue and silver bands in her hair. Kitty herself
+sat in a pensive or proud silence. The Dean was beside her, but she
+scarcely spoke to him, and as to the young man from the neighborhood who
+had taken her in, he was to her as though he were not.
+
+"Has there been a row?" Ashe inquired, in a low voice, of his companion.
+
+Mary looked at him quietly.
+
+"Lord Grosville asked them not to play--because of the servants."
+
+"Good!" said Ashe. "The servants were, of course, playing cards in the
+house-keeper's room."
+
+"Not at all. They were singing hymns with Lady Grosville."
+
+Ashe looked incredulous.
+
+"Only the slaveys and scullery maids that couldn't help themselves.
+Never mind. Was Lady Kitty amenable?"
+
+"She seems to have made Lord Grosville very angry. Lady Grosville and I
+smoothed him down."
+
+"Did you?" said Ashe. "That was nice of you."
+
+Mary colored a little, and did not reply. Presently Ashe resumed.
+
+"Aren't you as sorry for her as I am?"
+
+"For Lady Kitty? I should think she managed to amuse herself pretty
+well."
+
+"She seems to me the most deplorable tragic little person," said Ashe,
+slowly.
+
+Miss Lyster laughed.
+
+"I really don't see it," she said.
+
+"Oh yes, you do," he persisted--"if you think a moment. Be kind to
+her--won't you?"
+
+She drew herself up with a cold dignity.
+
+"I confess that she has never attracted me in the least."
+
+Ashe returned to his dinner, dimly conscious that he had spoken like a
+fool.
+
+When the ladies had withdrawn, the conversation fell on some important
+news from the Far East contained in the Sunday papers that Geoffrey
+Cliffe had brought down, and presumed to form part of the despatches
+which the two ministers staying in the house had received that afternoon
+by Foreign Office messenger. The government of Teheran was in one of its
+periodical fits of ill-temper with England; had been meddling with
+Afghanistan, flirting badly with Russia, and bringing ridiculous charges
+against the British minister. An expedition to Bushire was talked of,
+and the Radical press was on the war-path. The cabinet minister said
+little. A Lord Privy Seal, reverentially credited with advising royalty
+in its private affairs, need have no views on the Persian Gulf. But Ashe
+was appealed to and talked well. The minister at Teheran was an old
+friend of his, and he described the personal attacks made on him for
+political reasons by the Shah and his ministers with a humor which kept
+the table entertained.
+
+Suddenly Cliffe interposed. He had been listening with restlessness,
+though Ashe, with pointed courtesy, had once or twice included him in
+the conversation. And presently, at a somewhat dramatic moment, he met a
+statement of Ashe's with a direct and violent contradiction. Ashe
+flushed, and a duel began between the two men of which the company were
+soon silent spectators. Ashe had the resources of official knowledge;
+Cliffe had been recently on the spot, and pushed home the advantage of
+the eye-witness with a covert insolence which Ashe bore with surprising
+carelessness and good-temper. In the end Cliffe said some outrageous
+things, at which Ashe laughed; and Lord Grosville abruptly dissolved the
+party.
+
+Ashe went smiling out of the dining-room, caressing a fine white
+spaniel, as though nothing had happened. In crossing the hall Harman
+found himself alone with the Dean, who looked serious and preoccupied.
+
+"That was a curious spectacle," said Harman. "Ashe's equanimity was
+amazing."
+
+"I had rather have seen him angrier," said the Dean, slowly.
+
+"He was always a very tolerant, easy-going fellow."
+
+The Dean shook his head.
+
+"A touch of _soeva indignatio_ now and then would complete him."
+
+"Has he got it in him?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said the little Dean, with a flash of expression that
+dignified all his frail person. "But without it he will hardly make a
+great man."
+
+Meanwhile Geoffrey Cliffe, his strange, twisted face still vindictively
+aglow, made his way to Kitty Bristol's corner in the drawing-room. Mary
+Lyster was conscious of it, conscious also of a certain look that Kitty
+bestowed upon the entrance of Ashe, while Cliffe was opening a battery
+of mingled chaff and compliments that did not at first have much effect
+upon her. But William Ashe threw himself into conversation with Lady
+Edith Manley, and was presently, to all appearance, happily plunged in
+gossip, his tall person wholly at ease in a deep arm-chair, while Lady
+Edith bent over him with smiles. Meanwhile there was a certain desertion
+of Kitty on the part of the ladies. Lady Grosville hardly spoke to her,
+and the girls markedly avoided her. There was a moment when Kitty,
+looking round her, suddenly shook her small shoulders, and like a colt
+escaping from harness gave herself to riot. She and Cliffe amused
+themselves so well and so noisily that the whole drawing-room was
+presently uneasily aware of them. Lady Grosville shot glances of wrath,
+rose suddenly at one moment and sat down again; her girls talked more
+disjointedly than ever to the gentlemen who were civilly attending them;
+while, on the other hand, Miss Lyster's flow of conversation with Louis
+Harman was more softly copious than usual. At last the Dean's wife
+looked at the Dean, a signal of kind distress, and the Dean advanced.
+
+"Lady Kitty," he said, taking a seat beside the pair, "have you
+forgotten you promised me some French?"
+
+Kitty turned on him a hot and mutinous face.
+
+"Did I? What shall I say? Some Alfred de Musset?"
+
+"No," said the Dean, "I think not."
+
+"Some--some"--she cudgelled her memory--"some Théophile Gautier?"
+
+"No, certainly not!" said the Dean, hastily.
+
+"Well, as I don't know a word of him--" laughed Kitty.
+
+"That was mischievous," said the Dean, raising a finger. "Let me suggest
+Lamartine."
+
+Kitty shook her head obstinately. "I never learned one line."
+
+"Then some of the old fellows," said the Dean, persuasively. "I long to
+hear you in Corneille or Racine. That we should _all_ enjoy."
+
+And suddenly his wrinkled hand fell kindly on the girl's small, chilly
+ringers and patted them. Their eyes met, Kitty's wild and challenging,
+the Dean's full of that ethereal benevolence which blended so agreeably
+with his character as courtier and man of the world. There was a bright
+sweetness in them which seemed to say: "Poor child! I understand. But be
+a _little_ good--as well as clever--and all will be well."
+
+Suddenly Kitty's look wavered and fell. All the harshness dissolved from
+her thin young beauty. She turned from Cliffe, and the Dean saw her
+quiver with submission.
+
+"I think I could say some 'Polyeucte,'" she said, gently.
+
+The Dean clapped his hands and rose.
+
+"Lady Grosville," he said, raising his voice--"Ladies and gentlemen,
+Lady Kitty has promised to say us some more French poetry. You remember
+how admirably she recited last night. But this is Sunday, and she will
+give us something in a different vein."
+
+Lady Grosville, who had risen impatiently, sat down again. There was a
+general movement; chairs were turned or drawn forward till a circle
+formed. Meanwhile the Dean consulted with Kitty and resumed:
+
+"Lady Kitty will recite a scene from Corneille's beautiful tragedy of
+'Polyeucte'--the scene in which Pauline, after witnessing the martyrdom
+of her husband, who has been beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to the
+gods, returns from the place of execution so melted by the love and
+sacrifice she has beheld that she opens her heart then and there to the
+same august faith and pleads for the same death."
+
+The Dean seated himself, and Kitty stepped into the centre of the
+circle. She thought a moment, her lips moving, as though she recalled
+the lines. Then she looked down at her bare arms, and dress, frowned,
+and suddenly approached Lady Edith Manley.
+
+"May I have that?" she said, pointing to a lace cloak that lay on Lady
+Edith's knee. "I am rather cold."
+
+Lady Edith handed it to her, and she threw it round her.
+
+"Actress!" said Cliffe, under his breath, with a grin of amusement.
+
+At any rate, her impulse served her well. Her form and dress disappeared
+under a cloud of white. She became in a flash, so to speak,
+evangelized--a most innocent and spiritual apparition. Her beautiful
+head, her kindled and transfigured face, her little hand on the white
+folds, these alone remained to mingle their impression with the austere
+and moving tragedy which her lips recited. Her audience looked on at
+first with the embarrassed or hostile air which is the Englishman's
+natural protection against the great things of art; then for those who
+understood French the high passion and the noble verse began to tell;
+while those who could not follow were gradually enthralled by the
+gestures and tones with which the slight, vibrating creature, whom but
+ten minutes before most of them had regarded as a mere noisy flirt,
+suggested and conveyed the finest and most compelling shades of love,
+faith, and sacrifice.
+
+When she ceased, there was a moment's profound silence. Then Lady Edith,
+drawing a long breath, expressed the welcome commonplace which restored
+the atmosphere of daily life.
+
+"How _could_ you remember it all?"
+
+Kitty sat down, her lip trembling scornfully.
+
+"I had to say it every week at the convent."
+
+"I understand," said Cliffe in Darrell's ear--"that last night she was
+Doña Sol. An accommodating young woman."
+
+Meanwhile Kitty looked up to find Ashe beside her. He said,
+"Magnificent!"--but it did not matter to her what he said. His face told
+her that she had moved him, and that he was incapable of any foolish
+chatter about it. A smile of extraordinary sweetness sprang into her
+eyes; and when Lady Grosville came up to thank her, the girl impetuously
+rose, and, in the foreign way, kissed her hand, courtesying. Lord
+Grosville said, heartily, "Upon my word, Kitty, you ought to go on the
+stage!" and she smiled upon him, too, in a flutter of feeling,
+forgetting his scolding and her own impertinence, before dinner. The
+revulsion, indeed, throughout the company--with two exceptions--was
+complete. For the rest of the evening Kitty basked in sunshine and
+flattery. She met it with a joyous gentleness, and the little figure,
+still bedraped in white, became the centre of the room's kindness.
+
+The Dean was triumphant.
+
+"My dear Miss Lyster," he said, presently, finding himself near that
+lady, "did you ever hear anything better done? A most remarkable
+talent!"
+
+Mary smiled.
+
+"I am wondering," she said, "what they teach you in French convents--and
+why! It is all so singular,--isn't it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that night Ashe entered his room--before his usual time, however.
+He had tired even of Lord Grosville's chat, and had left the
+smoking-room still talking. Indeed, he wished to be alone, and there was
+that in his veins which told him that a new motive had taken possession
+of his life.
+
+He sat beside the open window reviewing the scenes and feelings of the
+day--his interview with Kitty in the morning--the teasing coquette of
+the afternoon--the inspired poetic child of the evening. Rapidly, but
+none the less strongly and steadfastly, he made up his mind. He would
+ask Kitty Bristol to marry him, and he would ask her immediately.
+
+Why? He scarcely knew her. His mother, his family would think it
+madness. No doubt it was madness. Yet, as far as he could explain his
+impulse himself, it depended on certain fundamental facts in his own
+nature--it was in keeping with his deepest character. He had an inbred
+love of the difficult, the unconventional in life, of all that piqued
+and stimulated his own superabundant consciousness of resource and
+power. And he had a tenderness of feeling, a gift of chivalrous pity,
+only known to the few, which was in truth always hungrily on the watch,
+like some starved faculty that cannot find its outlet. The thought of
+this beautiful child, in the hands of such a mother as Madame d'Estrées,
+and rushing upon risks illustrated by the half-mocking attentions of
+Geoffrey Cliffe, did in truth wring his heart. With a strange
+imaginative clearness he foresaw her future, he beheld her the prey at
+once of some bad fellow and of her own temperament. She would come to
+grief; he saw the prescience of it in her already; and what a waste
+would be there!
+
+No!--he would step in--capture her before these ways and whims, now
+merely bizarre or foolish, stiffened into what might in truth destroy
+her. His pulse quickened as he thought of the development of this
+beauty, the ripening of this intelligence. Never yet had he seen a girl
+whom he much wished to marry. He was easily repelled by stupidity, still
+more by mere amiability. Some touch of acid, of roughness in the
+fruit--that drew him, in politics, thought, love. And if she married him
+he vowed to himself, proudly, that she would find him no tyrant. Many a
+man might marry her who would then fight her and try to break her. All
+that was most fastidious and characteristic in Ashe revolted from such a
+notion. With him she should have _freedom_--whatever it might cost. He
+asked himself deliberately, whether after marriage he could see her
+flirting with other men, as she had flirted that day with Cliffe, and
+still refrain from coercing her. And his question was answered, or
+rather put aside, first by the confidence of nascent love--he would love
+her so well and so loyally that she would naturally turn to him for
+counsel; and then by the clear perception that she was a creature of
+mind rather than sense, governed mainly by the caprices and curiosities
+of the _intelligence_, combined with a rather cold, indifferent
+temperament. One moment throwing herself wildly into a dangerous or
+exciting intimacy, the next, parting with a laugh, and without a
+regret--it was thus he saw her in the future, even as a wife. "She may
+scandalize half the world," he said to himself, stubbornly--"I shall
+understand her!"
+
+But his mother?--his friends?--his colleagues? He knew well his mother's
+ambitions for him, and the place that he held in her heart. Could he
+without cruelty impose upon her such a daughter as Kitty Bristol?
+Well!--his mother had a very large experience of life, and much natural
+independence of mind. He trusted her to see the promise in this untamed
+and gifted creature; he counted on the sense of power that Lady Tranmore
+possessed, and which would but find new scope in the taming of Kitty.
+
+But Kitty's mother? Kitty must, of course, be rescued from Madame
+d'Estrées--must find a new and truer mother in Lady Tranmore. But money
+would do it; and money must be lavished.
+
+Then, almost for the first time, Ashe felt a conscious delight in wealth
+and birth. _Panache_? He could give it her--the little, wild, lovely
+thing! Luxury, society, adoration--all should be hers. She should be so
+loved and cherished, she must needs love in turn.
+
+His dreams were delicious; and the sudden fear into which he fell at the
+end lest after all Kitty should mock and turn from him, was only in
+truth another pleasure. No delay! Circumstances might develop at any
+moment and sweep her from him. Now or never must he snatch her from
+difficulty and disgrace--let hostile tongues wag as they pleased--and
+make her his.
+
+His political future? He knew well the influence which, in these days of
+universal publicity, a man's private affairs may have on his public
+career. And in truth his heart was in that career, and the thought of
+endangering it hurt him. Certainly it would recommend him to nobody that
+he should marry Madame d'Estrées' daughter. On the other hand, what
+favor did he want of anybody? save what work and "knowing more than the
+other fellows" might compel? The cynic in him was well aware that he had
+already what other men fought for--family, money, and position. Society
+must accept his wife; and Kitty, once mellowed by happiness and praise,
+might live, laugh, and rattle as she pleased.
+
+As to strangeness and caprice, the modern world delights in them; "the
+violent take it by force." There is, indeed, a dividing-line; but it was
+a love-marriage that should keep Kitty on the safe side of it.
+
+He stood lost in a very ecstasy of resolve, when suddenly there was a
+sharp movement outside, and a flash of white among the yew hedges
+bordering the formal garden on which his windows looked. The night
+outside was still and veiled, but of the flash of white he was
+certain--and of a step on the gravel.
+
+Something fell beside him, thrown from outside. He picked it up, and
+found a flower weighted by a stone, tied into a fold of ribbon.
+
+"Madcap!" he said to himself, his heart beating to suffocation.
+
+Then he stole out of his room, and down a small, winding staircase which
+led directly to the garden and a door beside the orangery. He had to
+unbolt the door, and as he did so a dog in one of the basement rooms
+began to bark. But there could be no flinching, though the whole thing
+was of an imprudence which pricked his conscience. To slip along the
+shadowed side of the orangery, to cross the space of clouded light
+beyond, and gain the darkness of the ilex avenue beyond was soon done.
+Then he heard a soft laugh, and a little figure fled before him. He
+followed and overtook.
+
+Kitty Bristol turned upon him.
+
+"Didn't I throw straight?" she said, triumphantly. "And they say girls
+can't throw."
+
+"But why did you throw at all?" he said, capturing her hand.
+
+"Because I wanted to talk to you. And I was restless and couldn't sleep.
+Why did you never come and talk to me this afternoon? And why"--she beat
+her foot angrily--"did you let me go and play billiards alone with Mr.
+Cliffe?"
+
+"Let you!" cried Ashe. "As if anybody could have prevented you!"
+
+"One sees, of course, that you detest Mr. Cliffe," said the whiteness
+beside him.
+
+"I didn't come here to talk about Geoffrey Cliffe. I _won't_ talk about
+him! Though, of course, you must know--"
+
+"That I flirted with him abominably all the afternoon? _C'est
+vrai--c'est ab-sol-ument vrai!_ And I shall always want to flirt with
+him, wherever I am--and whatever I may be doing."
+
+"Do as you please," said Ashe, dryly, "but I think you will get tired."
+
+"No, no--he excites me! He is bad, false, selfish, but he excites me. He
+talks to very few women--one can see that. And all the women want to
+talk to him. He used to admire Miss Lyster, and now he dislikes her. But
+she doesn't dislike him. No! she would marry him to-morrow if he asked
+her."
+
+"You are very positive," said Ashe. "Allow me to say that I entirely
+disagree with you."
+
+"You don't know anything about her," said the teasing voice.
+
+"She is my cousin, mademoiselle."
+
+"What does that matter? I know much more than you do, though I have only
+seen her two days. I know that--well, I am afraid of her!"
+
+"Afraid of her? Did you come out--may I ask--determined to talk
+nonsense?"
+
+"I came out--never mind! I _am_ afraid of her. She hates me. I
+think"--he felt a shiver in the air--will do me harm if she can."
+
+"No one shall do you harm," said Ashe, his tone changing, "if you will
+only trust yourself--"
+
+She laughed merrily.
+
+"To you? Oh! you'd soon throw it up."
+
+"Try me!" he said, approaching her. "Lady Kitty, I have something to say
+to you."
+
+Suddenly she shrank away from him. He could not see her face, and had
+nothing to guide him.
+
+"I haven't yet known you three weeks," he said, over-mastered by
+something passionate and profound. "I don't know what you will
+say--whether you can put up with me. But I know my own mind--I shall not
+change. I--I love you. I ask you to marry me."
+
+A silence. The night seemed to have grown darker. Then a small hand
+seized his, and two soft lips pressed themselves upon it. He tried to
+capture her, but she evaded him.
+
+"You--you really and actually--want to marry me?"
+
+"I do, Kitty, with all my heart."
+
+"You remember about my mother--about Alice?"
+
+"I remember everything. We would face it together."
+
+"And--you know what I told you about my bad temper?"
+
+"Some nonsense, wasn't it? But I should be bored by the domestic dove. I
+want the hawk, Kitty, with its quick wings and its daring bright eyes."
+
+She broke from him with a cry.
+
+"You must listen. I _have_--a wicked, odious, ungovernable temper. I
+should make you miserable."
+
+"Not at all," said Ashe. "I should take it very calmly. I am made that
+way."
+
+"And then--I don't know how to put it--but I have fancies--overpowering
+fancies--and I must follow them. I have one now for Geoffrey Cliffe."
+
+Ashe laughed.
+
+"Oh, that won't last."
+
+"Then some other will come after it. And I can't help it. It is my
+head"--she tapped her forehead lightly--"that seems on fire."
+
+Ashe at last slipped his arm round her.
+
+"But it is your heart--you will give me."
+
+She pushed him away from her and held him at arm's-length.
+
+"You are very rich, aren't you?" she said, in a muffled voice.
+
+"I am well off. I can give you all the pretty things you want."
+
+"And some day you will be Lord Tranmore?"
+
+"Yes, when my poor father dies," he said, sighing. He felt her fingers
+caress his hand again. It was a spirit touch, light and tender.
+
+"And every one says you are so clever--you have such prospects. Perhaps
+you will be Prime Minister."
+
+"Well, there's no saying," he threw out, laughing--"if you'll come and
+help."
+
+He heard a sob.
+
+"Help! I should be the ruin of you. I should spoil everything. You don't
+know the mischief I can do. And I can't help it, it's in my blood."
+
+"You would like the game of politics too much to spoil it, Kitty." His
+voice broke and lingered on the name. "You would want to be a great lady
+and lead the party."
+
+"Should I? Could you ever teach me how to behave?"
+
+"You would learn by nature. Do you know, Kitty, how clever you are?"
+
+"Yes," she sighed. "I am clever. But there is always something that
+hinders--that brings failure."
+
+"How old are you?" he said, laughing. "Eighteen--or eighty?"
+
+Suddenly he put out his arms, enfolding her. And she, still sobbing,
+raised her hands, clasped them round his neck, and clung to him like a
+child.
+
+"Oh! I knew--I knew--when I first saw your face. I had been so miserable
+all day--and then you looked at me--and I wanted to tell you all. Oh, I
+adore you--I adore you!" Their faces met. Ashe tasted a moment of
+rapture; and knew himself free at last of the great company of poets and
+of lovers.
+
+They slipped back to the house, and Ashe saw her disappear by a door on
+the farther side of the orangery--noiselessly, without a sound. Except
+that just at the last she drew him to her and breathed a sacred whisper
+in his ear.
+
+"Oh! what--what will Lady Tranmore say?"
+
+Then she fled. But she left her question behind her, and when the dawn
+came Ashe found that he had spent half the night in trying anew to frame
+some sort of an answer to it.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THREE YEARS AFTER
+
+"The world an ancient murderer is."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+"Her ladyship will be in before six, my lady. I was to be sure and ask
+you to wait, if you came before, and to tell you that her ladyship had
+gone to Madame Fanchette about her dress for the ball."
+
+So said Lady Kitty's maid. Lady Tranmore hesitated, then said she would
+wait, and asked that Master Henry might be brought down.
+
+The maid went for the child, and Lady Tranmore entered the drawing-room.
+The Ashes had been settled since their marriage in a house in Hill
+Street--a house to which Kitty had lost her heart at first sight. It was
+old and distinguished, covered here and there with eighteenth-century
+decoration, once, no doubt, a little florid and coarse beside the finer
+work of the period, but now agreeably blunted and mellowed by time.
+Kitty had had her impetuous and decided way with the furnishing of it;
+and, though Lady Tranmore professed to admire it, the result was, in
+truth, too French and too pagan for her taste. Her own room reflected
+the rising worship of Morris and Burse-Jones, of which, indeed, she had
+been an adept from the beginning. Her walls were covered by the
+well-known pomegranate or jasmine or sunflower patterns; her hangings
+were of a mystic greenish-blue; her pictures were drawn either from the
+Italian primitives or their modern followers. Celtic romance, Christian
+symbolism, all that was touching, other-worldly, and obscure--our late
+English form, in fact, of the great Romantic reaction--it was amid
+influences of this kind that Lady Tranmore lived and fed her own
+imagination. The dim, suggestive, and pathetic; twilight rather than
+dawn, autumn rather than spring; yearning rather than fulfilment; "the
+gleam" rather than noon-day: it was in this half-lit, richly colored
+sphere that she and most of her friends saw the tent of Beauty pitched.
+
+But Kitty would have none of it. She quoted French sceptical remarks
+about the legs and joints of the Burne-Jones knights; she declared that
+so much pattern made her dizzy; and that the French were the only nation
+in the world who understood a _salon_, whether as upholstery or
+conversation. Accordingly, in days when these things were rare, the girl
+of eighteen made her new husband provide her with white-panelled walls,
+lightly gilt, and with a Persian carpet of which the mass was of a
+plain, blackish gray, and only the border was allowed to flower. A few
+Louis-Quinze girandoles on the walls, a Vernis-Martin screen, an old
+French clock, two or three inlaid cabinets, and a collection of lightly
+built chairs and settees in the French mode--this was all she would
+allow; and while Lady Tranmore's room was always crowded, Kitty's, which
+was much smaller, had always an air of space. French books were
+scattered here and there; and only one picture was admitted. That was a
+Watteau sketch of a group from "L'Embarquement pour Cythère." Kitty
+adored it; Lady Tranmore thought it absurd and disagreeable.
+
+As she entered the room now, on this May afternoon, she looked round it
+with her usual distaste. On several of the chairs large illustrated
+books were lying. They contained pictures of seventeenth and eighteenth
+century costume--one of them displayed a colored engraving of a
+brilliant Madame de Pompadour, by Boucher.
+
+The maid who followed her into the room began to remove the books.
+
+"Her ladyship has been choosing her costume, my lady," she explained, as
+she closed some of the volumes.
+
+"Is it settled?" said Lady Tranmore.
+
+The maid replied that she believed so, and, bringing a volume which had
+been laid aside with a mark in it, she opened on a fantastic plate of
+Madame de Longueville, as Diana, in a gorgeous hunting-dress.
+
+Lady Tranmore looked at it in silence; she thought it unseemly, with its
+bare ankles and sandalled feet, and likely to be extremely expensive.
+For this Diana of the Fronde sparkled with jewels from top to toe, and
+Lady Tranmore felt certain that Kitty had already made William promise
+her the counterpart of the magnificent diamond crescent that shone in
+the coiffure of the goddess.
+
+"It really seemed to be the only one that suited her ladyship," said the
+maid, in a deprecating voice.
+
+"I dare say it will look very well," said Lady Tranmore. "And Fanchette
+is to make it?"
+
+"If her ladyship is not too late," said the maid, smiling. "But she has
+taken such a long time to make up her mind--"
+
+"And Fanchette, of course, is driven to death. All the world seems to
+have gone mad about this ball."
+
+Lady Tranmore shrugged her shoulders in a slight disgust. She was not
+going. Since her elder son's death she had had no taste for spectacles
+of the kind. But she knew very well that fashionable London was talking
+and thinking of nothing else; she heard that the print-room of the
+British Museum was every day besieged by an eager crowd of fair ladies,
+claiming the services of the museum officials from dewy morn till eve;
+that historic costumes and famous jewels were to be lavished on the
+affair; that those who were not invited had not even the resource of
+contempt, so unquestioned and indubitable was the prospect of a really
+magnificent spectacle; and that the dress-makers of Paris and London, if
+they survived the effort, would reap a marvellous harvest.
+
+"And Mr. Ashe--do you know if he is going, after all?" she asked of the
+maid as the latter was retreating.
+
+"Mr. Ashe says he will, if he may wear just court-dress," said the maid,
+smiling. "Not unless. And her ladyship's afraid it won't be allowed."
+
+"She'll make him go in costume," thought Lady Tranmore. "And he will do
+it, or anything, to avoid a scene."
+
+The maid retired, and Lady Tranmore was left alone. As she sat waiting,
+a thought occurred to her. She rang for the butler.
+
+"Where is the _Times_?" she asked, when he appeared. The man replied
+that it was no doubt in Mr. Ashe's room, and he would bring it.
+
+"Kitty has probably not looked at it," thought the visitor. When the
+paper arrived she turned at once to the Parliamentary report. It
+contained an important speech by Ashe in the House the night before.
+Lady Tranmore had been disturbed in the reading of it that morning, and
+had still a few sentences to finish. She read them with pride, then
+glanced again at the leading article on the debate, and at the
+flattering references it contained to the knowledge, courtesy, and
+debating power of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
+
+"Mr. Ashe," said the _Times_, "has well earned the promotion he is now
+sure to receive before long. In those important rearrangements of some
+of the higher offices which cannot be long delayed, Mr. Ashe is clearly
+marked out for a place in the cabinet. He is young, but he has already
+done admirable service; and there can be no question that he has a great
+future before him."
+
+Lady Tranmore put down the paper and fell into a reverie. A great
+future? Yes--if Kitty permitted--if Kitty could be managed. At present
+it appeared to William's mother that the caprices of his wife were
+endangering the whole development of his career. There were wheels
+within wheels, and the newspapers knew very little about them.
+
+Three years, was it, since the marriage? She looked back to her dismay
+when William brought her the news, though it seemed to her that in some
+sort she had foreseen it from the moment of his first mention of Kitty
+Bristol--with its eager appeal to her kindness, and that new and
+indefinable something in voice and manner which put her at once on the
+alert.
+
+Ought she to have opposed it more strongly? She had, indeed, opposed it;
+and for a whole wretched week she who had never yet gainsaid him in
+anything had argued and pleaded with her son, attempting at the same
+time to bring in his uncles to wrestle with him, seeing that his poor
+paralyzed father was of no account, and so to make a stubborn family
+fight of it. But she had been simply disarmed and beaten down by
+William's sweetness, patience, and good-humor. Never had he been so
+determined, and never so lovable.
+
+It had been made abundantly plain to her that no wife, however exacting
+and adorable, should ever rob her, his mother, of one tittle of his old
+affection--nay, that, would she only accept Kitty, only take the little
+forlorn creature into the shelter of her motherly arms, even a more
+tender and devoted attention than before, on the part of her son, would
+be surely hers. He spoke, moreover, the language of sound sense about
+his proposed bride. That he was in love, passionately in love, was
+evident; but there were moments when he could discuss Kitty, her family,
+her bringing-up, her gifts and defects, with the same cool acumen, the
+same detachment, apparently, he might have given, say, to the Egyptian
+or the Balkan problem. Lady Tranmore was not invited to bow before a
+divinity; she was asked to accept a very gifted and lovely child, often
+troublesome and provoking, but full of a glorious promise which only
+persons of discernment, like herself and Ashe, could fully realize. He
+told her, with a laugh, that she could never have behaved even tolerably
+to a stupid daughter-in-law. Whereas, let London and society and a few
+years of love and living do their work, and Kitty would make one of the
+leading women of her time, as Lady Tranmore had been before her. "You'll
+help her, you'll train her, you'll put her in the way," he had said,
+kissing his mother's hand. "And you'll see that in the end we shall both
+of us be so conceited to have had the making of her there'll be no
+holding us."
+
+Well, she had yielded--of course she had yielded. She had explained the
+matter, so far as she could, to the dazed wits of her paralyzed husband.
+She had propitiated the family on both sides; she had brought Kitty to
+stay with her, and had advised on the negotiations which banished Madame
+d'Estrées from London and the British Isles, in return for a handsome
+allowance and the payment of her debts; and, finally, she had with
+difficulty allowed the Grosvilles to provide the trousseau and arrange
+the marriage from Grosville Park, so eager had she grown in her accepted
+task.
+
+And there had been many hours of high reward. Kitty had thrown herself
+at first upon William's mother with all the effusion possible. She had
+been docile, caressing, brilliant. Lady Tranmore had become almost as
+proud of her gifts, her social effect, and her fast advancing beauty as
+Ashe himself. Kitty's whims and humors; her passion for this person, and
+her hatred of that; her love of splendor and indifference to debt; her
+contempt of opinion and restraint, seemed to her, as to Ashe, the mere
+crude growth of youth. When she looked at Ashe, so handsome, agreeable,
+and devoted, at his place and prestige in the world, his high
+intelligence and his personal attraction, Ashe's mother must needs think
+that Kitty's mere cleverness would soon reveal to her her extraordinary
+good-fortune; and that whereas he was now at her feet, she before long
+would be at his.
+
+Three years! Lady Tranmore looked back upon them with feelings that
+wavered like smoke before a wind. A year of excitement, a year of
+illness, a year of extravagance, shaken moreover by many strange gusts
+of temper and caprice, it was so she might have summarized them. First,
+a most promising début in London. Kitty welcomed on all hands with
+enthusiasm as Ashe's wife and her own daughter-in-law, fêted to the top
+of her bent, smiled on at Court, flattered by the country-houses, always
+exquisitely dressed, smiling and eager, apparently full of ambition for
+Ashe no less than for herself, a happy, notorious, busy little person,
+with a touch of wildness that did but give edge to her charm and keep
+the world talking.
+
+Then, the birth of the boy, and Kitty's passionate, ungovernable recoil
+from the deformity that showed itself almost immediately after his
+birth--a form of infantile paralysis involving a slight but incurable
+lameness. Lady Tranmore could recall weeks of remorseful fondling,
+alternating with weeks of neglect; continued illness and depression on
+Kitty's part, settling after a while into a petulant melancholy for
+which the baby's defect seemed but an inadequate cause; Ashe's tender
+anxiety, his willingness to throw up Parliament, office, everything,
+that Kitty might travel and recover; and those huge efforts by which she
+and his best friends in the House had held him back--when Kitty, it
+seemed, cared little or nothing whether he sacrificed his future or not.
+Finally, she herself, with the assistance of a new friend of Kitty's,
+had become Kitty's nurse, had taken her abroad when Ashe could not be
+spared, had watched over her, and humored her, and at last brought her
+back--so the doctors said--restored.
+
+Was it really recovery? At any rate, Lady Tranmore was often inclined to
+think that since the return to London--now about a twelvemonth
+since--both she and William had had to do with a different Kitty. Young
+as she still was, the first exquisite softness of the expanding life was
+gone; things harder, stranger, more inexplicable than any which those
+who knew her best had yet perceived, seemed now and then to come to the
+surface, like wreckage in a summer sea.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The opening door disturbed these ponderings. The nurse appeared,
+carrying the little boy. Lady Tranmore took him on her knee and caressed
+him. He was a piteous, engaging child, generally very docile, but liable
+at times to storms of temper out of all proportion to the fragility of
+his small person. His grandmother was inclined to look upon his passions
+as something external and inflicted--the entering-in of the Blackwater
+devil to plague a tiny creature that, normally, was of a divine and
+clinging sweetness. She would have taught him religion, as his only
+shield against himself; but neither his father nor his mother was
+religious; and Harry was likely to grow up a pagan.
+
+He leaned now against her breast, and she, whose inmost nature was
+maternity, delighted in the pressure of the tiny body, crooning songs to
+him when they were left alone, and pausing now and then to pity and kiss
+the little shrunken foot that hung beside the other.
+
+She was interrupted by a soft entrance and the rustle of a dress.
+
+"Ah, Margaret!" she said, looking round and smiling.
+
+The girl who had come in approached her, shook hands, and looked down at
+the baby. She was fair-haired and wore spectacles; her face was round
+and childish, her eyes round and blue, with certain lines about them,
+however, which showed that she was no longer in her first youth.
+
+"I came to see if I could do anything to-day for Kitty. I know she is
+very busy about the ball--"
+
+"Head over ears apparently," said Lady Tranmore. "Everybody has lost
+their wits. I see Kitty has chosen her dress."
+
+"Yes, if Fanchette can make it all right. Poor Kitty! She has been in
+such a state of mind. I think I'll go on with these invitations."
+
+And, taking off her gloves and hat, Margaret French went to the
+writing-table like one intimately acquainted with the room and its
+affairs, took up a pile of cards and envelopes which lay upon it, and,
+bringing them to Lady Tranmore's side, began to work upon them.
+
+"I did about half yesterday," she explained; "but I see Kitty hasn't
+been able to touch them, and it is really time they were out."
+
+"For their party next week?"
+
+"Yes. I hope Kitty won't tire herself out. It has been a rush lately."
+
+"Does she ever rest?"
+
+"Never--as far as I can see. And I am afraid she has been very much
+worried."
+
+"About that silly affair with Prince Stephan?" said Lady Tranmore.
+
+Margaret French nodded. "She vows that she meant no harm, and did no
+harm, and that it has been all malice and exaggeration. But one can see
+she has been hurt."
+
+"Well, if you ask me," said Lady Tranmore, in a low voice, "I think she
+deserved to be."
+
+Their eyes met, the girl's full of a half-smiling, half-soft
+consideration. Lady Tranmore, on the other hand, had flushed proudly, as
+though the mere mention of the matter to which she had referred had been
+galling to her. Kitty, in fact, had just been guilty of an escapade
+which had set the town talking, and even found its way here and there in
+the newspapers. The heir to a European monarchy had been recently
+visiting London. A romantic interest surrounded him; for a lady, not of
+a rank sufficiently high to mate with his, had lately drowned herself
+for love of him, and the young man's melancholy good looks, together
+with the magnificent apathy of his manner, drew after him a chain of
+gossip. Kitty failed to meet him in society; certain invitations that
+for once she coveted did not arrive; and in a fit of pique she declared
+that she would make acquaintance with him in her own way. On a certain
+occasion, when the Princeling was at the play, his attention was drawn
+to a small and dazzling creature in a box opposite his own. Presently,
+however, there was a commotion in this box. The dazzling creature had
+fainted; and rumor sent round the name of Lady Kitty Ashe. The Prince
+despatched an equerry to make inquiries, and the inquiries were repeated
+that evening in Hill Street. Recovery was prompt, and the Prince let it
+be known that he wished to meet the lady. Invitations from high quarters
+descended upon Kitty; she bore herself with an engaging carelessness,
+and the melancholy youth was soon spending far more pains upon her than
+he had yet been known to spend upon any other English beauties presented
+to him. Ashe and Kitty's friends laughed; the old general in charge of
+the Princeling took alarm. And presently Kitty's audacities, alack,
+carried away her discretion; she began, moreover, to boast of her ruse.
+Whispers crept round; and the general's ears were open. In a few days
+Kitty's triumph went the way of all earthly things. At a Court ball, to
+which her vanity had looked forward, unwarned, the Prince passed her
+with glassy eyes, returning the barest bow to her smiling courtesy. She
+betrayed nothing; but somehow the thing got out, and set in motion a
+perfect hurricane of talk. It was rumored that the old Prime Minister,
+Lord Parham, had himself said a caustic word to Lady Kitty, that Royalty
+was annoyed, and that William Ashe had for once scolded his wife
+seriously.
+
+Lady Tranmore was well aware that there was, at any rate, no truth in
+the last report; but she also knew that there was a tone of sharpness in
+the London chatter that was new with regard to Kitty. It was as though a
+certain indulgence was wearing out, and what had been amusement was
+passing into criticism.
+
+She and Margaret French discussed the matter a little, _sotto voce_,
+while Margaret went on with the invitations and Lady Tranmore made a
+French toy dance and spin for the babe's amusement. Their tone was one
+of close and friendly intimacy, an intimacy based clearly upon one
+common interest--their relation to Kitty. Margaret French was one of
+those beings in whom, for our salvation, this halting, hurried world of
+ours is still on the whole rich. She was unmarried, thirty-five, and
+poor. She lived with her brother, a struggling doctor, and she had come
+across Kitty in the first months of Kitty's married life, on some
+fashionable Soldiers' Aid Committee, where Margaret had done the work
+and Kitty with the other great ladies had reaped the fame. Kitty had
+developed a fancy for her, and presently could not live without her. But
+Margaret, though it soon became evident that she had taken Kitty and, in
+due time, the child--Ashe, too, for the matter of that--deep into her
+generous heart, preserved a charming measure in the friendship offered
+her. She would owe Kitty nothing, either socially or financially. When
+Kitty's smart friends appeared, she vanished. Nobody in her own world
+ever heard her mention the name of Lady Kitty Ashe, largely as that name
+was beginning to figure in the gossip of the day. But there were few
+things concerning the Hill Street ménage that Lady Tranmore could not
+safely and rightly discuss with her; and even Ashe himself went to her
+for counsel.
+
+"I am afraid this has made things worse than ever with the Parhams,"
+said Lady Tranmore, presently.
+
+Margaret shook her head anxiously.
+
+"I hope Kitty won't throw over their dinner next week."
+
+"She is talking of it!"
+
+"Yesterday she had almost made up her mind," said Margaret, reluctantly.
+"Perhaps you will persuade her. But she has been terribly angry with
+Lord Parham--and with Lady P., too."
+
+"And it was to be a reconciliation dinner, after the old nonsense
+between her and Lady Parham," sighed Lady Tranmore. "It was planned for
+Kitty entirely. And she is to act something, isn't she, with that young
+De La Rivière from the embassy? I believe the Princess is
+coming--expressly to meet her. I have been hearing of it on all sides.
+She _can't_ throw it over!"
+
+Margaret shrugged her shoulders. "I believe she will."
+
+The older lady's face showed a sudden cloud of indignation.
+
+"William must really put his foot down," she said, in a low, decided
+voice. "It is, of course, most important--just now--"
+
+She said no more, but Margaret French looked up, and they exchanged
+glances.
+
+"Let's hope," said Margaret, "that Mr. Ashe will be able to pacify her.
+Ah, there she is."
+
+For the front door closed heavily, and instantly the house was aware
+from top to toe of a flutter of talk and a frou-frou of skirts. Kitty
+ran up the stairs and into the drawing-room, still talking, apparently,
+to the footman behind her, and stopped short at the sight of Lady
+Tranmore and Margaret. A momentary shadow passed across her face; then
+she came forward all smiles.
+
+"Why, they never told me down-stairs!" she said, taking a hand of each
+caressingly, and slipping into a seat between them. "Have I lost much of
+you?"
+
+"Well, I must soon be off," said Lady Tranmore. "Harry has been
+entertaining me."
+
+"Oh, Harry; is he there?" said Kitty, in another voice, perceiving the
+child behind his grandmother's dress as he sat on the floor, where Lady
+Tranmore had just deposited him.
+
+The baby turned towards his beautiful mother, and, as he saw her, a
+little wandering smile began to spread from his uncertain lips to his
+deep-brown eyes, till his whole face shone, held to hers as to a magnet,
+in a still enchantment.
+
+"Come!" said Kitty, holding out her hands.
+
+With difficulty the child pulled himself towards her, moving in sideway
+fashion along the floor, and dragging the helpless foot after him. Again
+the shadow crossed Kitty's face. She caught him up, kissed him, and
+moved to ring the bell.
+
+"Shall I take him up-stairs?" said Margaret.
+
+"Why, he seems to have only just come down!" said Lady Tranmore. "Must
+he go?"
+
+"He can come down again afterwards," said Kitty. "I want to talk to you.
+Take him, Margaret."
+
+The babe went without a whimper, still following his mother with his
+eyes.
+
+"He looks rather frail," said Lady Tranmore. "I hope you'll soon be
+sending him to the country, Kitty."
+
+"He's very well," said Kitty. Then she took off her hat and looked at
+the invitations Margaret had been writing.
+
+"Heavens, I had forgotten all about them! What an angel is Margaret! I
+really can't remember these things. They ought to do themselves by
+clock-work. And now Fanchette and this ball are enough to drive one
+wild."
+
+She lifted her hands to her face and pressed back the masses of fair
+hair that were tumbling round it, with a gesture of weariness.
+
+"Fanchette can make your dress?"
+
+"She says she will, but I couldn't make her understand anything I
+wanted. She is off her head! They all are. By-the-way, did you hear of
+Madeleine Alcot's. telegram to Worth?"
+
+"No."
+
+Kitty laughed--a laugh musical but malicious. Mrs. Alcot, married in the
+same month as herself, had been her companion and rival from the
+beginning. They called each other "Kitty" and "Madeleine," and saw each
+other frequently; why, Lady Tranmore could never discover, unless on the
+principle that it is best to keep your enemy under observation.
+
+"She telegraphed to Worth as soon as her invitation arrived, 'Envoyez
+tout de suite costume Vénus. Réponse.' The answer came at dinner--she
+had a dinner-party--and she read it aloud: 'Remercîments. Il n'y en a
+pas.' Isn't it delightful?"
+
+"Very neat," said Lady Tranmore, smiling. "When did you invent that?
+You, I hear, are to be Diana?"
+
+Kitty made a gesture of despair.
+
+"Ask Fanchette--it depends on her. There is no one but she in London who
+can do it. Oh, by-the-way, what's Mary going to be? I suppose a Madonna
+of sorts."
+
+"Not at all," said Lady Tranmore, dryly; "she has chosen a Sir Joshua
+costume I found for her."
+
+"A vocation missed," said Kitty, shaking her head. "She ought to have
+been a 'Vestal Virgin' at least.... Do you know that you look _such_ a
+duck this afternoon!" The speaker put up two small hands and pulled and
+patted at the black lace strings of Lady Tranmore's hat, which were tied
+under the delicately wrinkled white of her very distinguished chin.
+
+"This hat suits you so--you are such a _grande dame_ in it. Ah! Je
+t'adore!"
+
+And Kitty softly took the chin aforesaid into her hands, and dropped a
+kiss on Lady Tranmore's cheek, which reddened a little under the sudden
+caress.
+
+"Don't be a goose, Kitty." But Elizabeth Tranmore stooped forward all
+the same and returned the kiss heartily. "Now tell me what you're going
+to wear at the Parhams'."
+
+Kitty rose deliberately, went to the bell and rang it.
+
+"It must be quite time for tea."
+
+"You haven't answered my question, Kitty."
+
+"Haven't I?" The butler entered. "Tea, please, Wilson, at once."
+
+"Kitty!--"
+
+Lady Kitty seated herself defiantly a short distance from her
+mother-in-law and crossed her hands on her lap.
+
+"I am not going to the Parhams'."
+
+"Kitty!--what do you mean?"
+
+"I am not going to the Parhams'," repeated Kitty, slowly. "They should
+behave a little more considerately to me if they want to get me to amuse
+their guests for them."
+
+At this moment Margaret French re-entered the room. Lady Tranmore turned
+to her with a gesture of distress.
+
+"Oh, Margaret knows," said Kitty. "I told her yesterday."
+
+"The Parhams?" said Margaret.
+
+Kitty nodded. Margaret paused, with her hand on the back of Lady
+Tranmore's chair, and there was a short silence. Then Lady Tranmore
+began, in a tone that endeavored not to be too serious:
+
+"I don't know how you're going to get out of it, my dear. Lady Parham
+has asked the Princess, first because she wished to come, secondly as an
+olive-branch to you. She has taken the greatest pains about the dinner;
+and afterwards there is to be an evening party to hear you, just the
+right size, and just the right people."
+
+"Cela m'est égal," said Kitty, "par-faite-ment égal! I am not going."
+
+"What possible excuse can you invent?"
+
+"I shall have a cold, the most atrocious cold imaginable. I take to my
+bed just two hours before it is time to dress. My letter reaches Lady
+Parham on the stroke of eight."
+
+"Kitty, you would be doing a thing perfectly unheard of--most rude--most
+unkind!"
+
+The stiff, slight figure, like a strained wand, did not waver for a
+moment before the grave indignation of the older woman.
+
+"I should for once be paying off a score that has run on too long."
+
+"You and Lady Parham had agreed to make friends, and let bygones be
+bygones."
+
+"That was before last week."
+
+"Before Lord Parham said--what annoyed you?"
+
+Kitty's eyes flamed.
+
+"Before Lord Parham humiliated me in public--or tried to."
+
+"Dear Kitty, he was annoyed, and said a sharp thing; but he is an old
+man, and for William's sake, surely, you can forgive it. And Lady Parham
+had nothing to do with it."
+
+"She has not written to me to apologize," said Kitty, with a most
+venomous calm. "Don't talk about it, mother. It will hurt you, and I am
+determined. Lady Parham has patronized or snubbed me ever since I
+married--when she hasn't been setting my best friends against me. She is
+false, false, _false_!" Kitty struck her hands together with an emphatic
+gesture. "And Lord Parham said a thing to me last week I shall never
+forgive. Voilà! Now I mean to have done with it!"
+
+"And you choose to forget altogether that Lord Parham is William's
+political chief--that William's affairs are in a critical state, and
+everything depends on Lord Parham--that it is not seemly, not possible,
+that William's wife should publicly slight Lady Parham, and through her
+the Prime Minister--at this moment of all moments."
+
+Lady Tranmore breathed fast.
+
+"William will not expect me to put up with insults," said Kitty, also
+beginning to show emotion.
+
+"But can't you see that--just now especially--you ought to think of
+nothing--_nothing_--but William's future and William's career?"
+
+"William will never purchase his career at my expense."
+
+"Kitty, dear, listen," cried Lady Tranmore, in despair, and she threw
+herself into arguments and appeals to which Kitty listened quite unmoved
+for some twenty minutes. Margaret French, feeling herself an
+uncomfortable third, tried several times to steal away. In vain. Kitty's
+peremptory hand retained her. She could not escape, much as she wished
+it, from the wrestle between the two women--on the one side the mother,
+noble, already touched with age, full of dignity and protesting
+affection; on the other the wife, still little more than a child in
+years, vibrating through all her slender frame with passion and
+insolence, more beautiful than usual by virtue of the very fire which
+possessed her--a mænad at bay.
+
+Lady Tranmore had just begun to waver in a final despair when the door
+opened and William Ashe entered.
+
+He looked in astonishment at his mother and wife. Then in a flash he
+understood, and, with an involuntary gesture of fatigue, he turned to
+go.
+
+"William!" cried his mother, hurrying after him, "don't go. Kitty and I
+were disputing; but it is nothing, dear! Don't go, you look so tired.
+Can you stay for dinner?"
+
+"Well, that was my intention," said Ashe, with a smile, as he allowed
+himself to be brought back. "But Kitty seems in the clouds."
+
+For Kitty had not moved an inch to greet him. She sat in a high-back
+chair, one foot crossed over the other, one hand supporting her cheek,
+looking straight before her with shining eyes.
+
+Lady Tranmore laid a hand on her shoulder.
+
+"We won't talk any more about it now, Kitty, will we?"
+
+Kitty's pinched lips opened enough to emit the words:
+
+"Perhaps William had better understand--"
+
+"Goodness!" cried Ashe. "Is it the Parhams? Send them, Kitty, if you
+please, to ten thousand _diables_! You won't go to their dinner? Well,
+don't go! Please yourself--and hang the expense! Come and give me some
+dinner--there's a dear."
+
+He bent over her and kissed her hair.
+
+Lady Tranmore began to speak; then, with a mighty effort, restrained
+herself and began to look for her parasol. Kitty did not move. Lady
+Tranmore said a muffled good-bye and went. And this time Margaret French
+insisted on going with her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Ashe returned to the drawing-room, he found his wife still in the
+same position, very pale and very wild.
+
+"I have told your mother, William, what I intend to do about the
+Parhams."
+
+"Very well, dear. Now she knows."
+
+"She says it will ruin your career."
+
+"Did she? We'll talk about that presently. We have had a nasty scene in
+the House with the Irishmen, and I'm famished. Go and change, there's a
+dear. Dinner's just coming in."
+
+Kitty went reluctantly. She came down in a white, flowing garment, with
+a small green wreath in her hair, which, together with the air of a
+storm which still enwrapped her, made her more mænad-like than ever.
+Ashe took no notice, gave her a laughing account of what had passed in
+the House, and ate his dinner.
+
+Afterwards, when they were alone, and he was just about to return to the
+House, she made a swift rush across the dining-room, and caught his coat
+with both hands.
+
+"William, I can't go to that dinner--it would kill me!"
+
+"How you repeat yourself, darling!" he said, with a smile. "I suppose
+you'll give Lady Parham decent notice. What'll you do? Get a doctor's
+certificate and go away?"
+
+Kitty panted. "Not at all. I shall not tell her till an hour before."
+
+Ashe whistled.
+
+"War? I see. Open war. Very well. Then we shall get to Venice for
+Easter."
+
+Kitty fell back.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Very plain, isn't it? But what does it matter? Venice will be
+delightful, and there are plenty of good men to take my place."
+
+"Lord Parham would pass you over?"
+
+"Not at all. But I can't work in public with a man whom I must cut in
+private. It wouldn't amuse me. So if you're decided, Kitty, write to
+Danieli's for rooms."
+
+He lit his cigarette, and went out with a perfect nonchalance and
+good-temper.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kitty was to have gone to a ball. She countermanded her maid's
+preparations, and sent the maid to bed. In due time all the servants
+went to bed, the front door being left on the latch as usual for Ashe's
+late return. About midnight a little figure slipped into the child's
+nursery. The nurse was fast asleep. Kitty sat beside the child,
+motionless, for an hour, and when Ashe let himself into the house about
+two o'clock he heard a little rustle in the hall, and there stood Kitty,
+waiting for him.
+
+"Kitty, what are you about?" he said, in pretended amazement. But in
+reality he was not astonished at all. His life for months past had been
+pitched in a key of extravagance and tumult. He had been practically
+certain that he should find Kitty in the hall.
+
+With great tenderness he half led, half carried her up-stairs. She clung
+to him as passionately as, before dinner, she had repulsed him. When
+they reached their room, the tired man, dropping with sleep, after a
+Parliamentary wrestle in which every faculty had been taxed to the
+utmost, took his wife in his arms; and there Kitty sobbed and talked
+herself into a peace of complete exhaustion. In this state she was one
+of the most exquisite of human beings, with words, tone, and gestures of
+a heavenly softness and languor. The evil spirit went out of her, and
+she was all ethereal tenderness, sadness, and remorse. For more than two
+years, scenes like this had, in Ashe's case, melted into final delight
+and intoxication which more than effaced the memory of what had gone
+before. Now for several months he had dreaded the issue of the crisis,
+no less than the crisis itself. It left him unnerved as though some
+morbid sirocco had passed over him.
+
+When Kitty at last had fallen asleep, Ashe stood for some time beside
+his dressing-room window, looking absently into the cloudy night, too
+tired even to undress. A gusty northwest wind tore down the street and
+beat against the windows. The unrest without increased the tension of
+his mind and body. Like Lady Tranmore, he had, as it were, stepped back
+from his life, and was looking at it--the last three years of it in
+particular--as a whole. What was the net result of those years? Where
+was he? Whither were he and Kitty going? A strange pang shot through
+him. The mere asking of the question had been as the lifting of the lamp
+of Psyche.
+
+The scene that night in the House of Commons had been for him a scene of
+conflict; in the main, also, of victory. His virile powers, capacities,
+and ambitions had been at their height. He had felt the full spell of
+the English political life, with all its hard fighting joy, the
+exhilaration which flows from the vastness of the interests on which it
+turns, and the intricate appeal it makes, in the case of a man like
+himself, to a hundred inherited aptitudes, tastes, and traditions.
+
+And here he stood in the darkness, wondering whether indeed the best of
+his life were not over--the prey of forebodings as strong and vagrant as
+the gusts outside.
+
+Birds of the night! He forced himself to bed, and slept heavily. When he
+woke up, the May sun was shining into his room. Kitty, in the freshest
+of morning dresses, was sitting on his bed like a perching bird, waiting
+impatiently till his eyes should open and she could ask him his opinion
+on her dress for the ball. The savor and joy of life returned upon him
+in a flood. Kitty was the prettiest thing ever seen; he had scored off
+those Tory fellows the night before; the Parhams' dinner was all right;
+and life was once more kind, manageable, and full of the most agreeable
+possibilities. A certain indolent impatience in him recoiled from the
+mere recollection of the night before. The worry was over; why think of
+it again?
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Meanwhile Lady Tranmore had reached home, and after one of those
+pathetic hours in her husband's room which made the secret and sacred
+foundation of her daily life, she expected Mary Lyster, who was to dine
+at Tranmore House before the two ladies presented themselves at a
+musical party given by the French Ambassadress. Before her guest's
+arrival, Lady Tranmore wandered about her rooms, unable to rest, unable
+even to read the evening papers on Ashe's speech, so possessed was she
+still by her altercation with Kitty, and by the foreboding sense of what
+it meant. William's future was threatened; and the mother whose whole
+proud heart had been thrown for years into every successful effort and
+every upward step of her son, was up in arms.
+
+Mary Lyster arrived to the minute. She came in, a tall gliding woman,
+her hair falling in rippled waves on either side of her face, which in
+its ample comeliness and placidity reminded the Italianate Lady Tranmore
+of many faces well known to her in early Siennese or Florentine art.
+Mary's dress to-night was of a noble red, and the glossy brown of her
+hair made a harmony both with her dress and with the whiteness of her
+neck that contented the fastidious eye of her companion. "Polly" was now
+thirty, in the prime of her good looks. Lady Tranmore's affection for
+her, which had at one time even included the notion that she might
+possibly become William Ashe's wife, did not at all interfere with a
+shrewd understanding of her limitations. But she was daughterless
+herself; her family feeling was strong; and Mary's society was an old
+and pleasant habit one could ill have parted with. In her company,
+moreover, Mary was at her best.
+
+Elizabeth Tranmore never discussed her daughter-in-law with her cousin.
+Loyalty to William forbade it, no less than a strong sense of family
+dignity. For Mary had spoken once--immediately after the
+engagement--with energy--nay, with passion; prophesying woe and
+calamity. Thenceforward it was tacitly agreed between them that all
+root-and-branch criticism of Kitty and her ways was taboo. Mary was,
+indeed, on apparently good terms with her cousin's wife. She dined
+occasionally at the Ashes', and she and Kitty met frequently under the
+wing of Lady Tranmore. There was no cordiality between them, and Kitty
+was often sharply or sulkily certain that Mary was to be counted among
+those hostile forces with which, in some of her moods, the world seemed
+to her to bristle. But if Mary kept, in truth, a very sharp tongue for
+many of her intimates on the subject of Kitty, Lady Tranmore at least
+was determined to know nothing about it.
+
+On this particular evening, however, Lady Tranmore's self-control failed
+her, for the first time in three years. She had not talked five minutes
+with her guest before she perceived that Mary's mind was, in truth,
+brimful of gossip--the gossip of many drawing-rooms--as to Kitty's
+escapade with the Prince, Kitty's relations to Lady Partham, Kitty's
+parties, and Kitty's whims. The temptation was too great; her own guard
+broke down.
+
+"I hear Kitty is furious with the Parhams," said Mary, as the two ladies
+sat together after their rapid dinner. It was a rainy night, and the
+fire to which they had drawn up was welcome.
+
+Lady Tranmore shook her head sadly.
+
+"I don't know where it is to end," she said, slowly.
+
+"Lady Parham told me yesterday--you don't mind my repeating it?"--Mary
+looked up with a smile--"she was still dreadfully afraid that Kitty
+would play her some trick about next Friday. She knows that Kitty
+detests her."
+
+"Oh no," said Lady Tranmore, in a vague voice, "Kitty
+couldn't--impossible!"
+
+Mary turned an observant eye upon her companion's conscious and troubled
+air, and drew conclusions not far from the truth.
+
+"And it's all so awkward, isn't it?" she said, with sympathy, "when
+apparently Lady Parham is as much Prime Minister as he is."
+
+For in those days certain great houses and political ladies, though not
+at the zenith of their power, were still, in their comparative decline,
+very much to be reckoned with. When Lady Parham talked longer than usual
+with the French Ambassador, his Austrian and German colleagues wrote
+anxious despatches to their governments; when a special mission to the
+East of great importance had to be arranged, nobody imagined that Lord
+Parham had very much to do with the appointment of the commissioner, who
+happened to have just engaged himself to Lady Parham's second girl. No
+young member on the government side, if he wanted office, neglected
+Lady Parham's invitations, and admission to her more intimate dinners
+was still almost as much coveted as similar favors had been a generation
+before in the case of Lady Jersey, or still earlier, in that of Lady
+Holland. She was a small old woman, with a shrewish face, a waxen
+complexion, and a brown wig. In spite of short sight, she saw things
+that escaped most other people; her tongue was rarely at a loss; she
+was, on the whole, a good friend, though never an unreflecting one; and
+what she forgave might be safely reckoned as not worth resenting.
+
+Elizabeth Tranmore received Mary's remark with reluctant consent. Lady
+Parham--from the English aristocratic stand-point--was not well-born.
+She had been the daughter of a fashionable music-master, whose blood was
+certainly not Christian. And there were many people beside Lady Tranmore
+who resented her domination.
+
+"It will be so perfectly easy when the moment comes to invent some
+excuse or other for shelving William's claims," sighed Ashe's mother.
+"Nobody is indispensable, and if that old woman is provoked, she will be
+capable of any mischief."
+
+"What do you want for William?" said Mary, smiling.
+
+"He ought, of course, to have the Home Office!" replied Lady Tranmore,
+with fire.
+
+Mary vowed that he would certainly have it. "Kitty is so clever, she
+will understand how important discretion is, before things go too far."
+
+Lady Tranmore made no answer. She gazed into the fire, and Miss Lyster
+thought her depressed.
+
+"Has William ever interfered?" she asked, cautiously.
+
+Lady Tranmore hesitated.
+
+"Not that I know of," she said, at last. "Nor will he ever--in the sense
+in which any ordinary husband would interfere."
+
+"I know! It is as though he had a kind of superstition about it. Isn't
+there a fairy story, in which an elf marries a mortal on condition that
+if he ever ill-treats her, her people will fetch her back to fairyland?
+One day the husband lost his temper and spoke crossly; instantly there
+was a crash of thunder and the elf-wife vanished."
+
+"I don't remember the story. But it's like that--exactly. He said to me
+once that he would never have asked her to marry him if he had not been
+able to make up his mind to let her have her own way--never to coerce
+her."
+
+But having said this, Lady Tranmore repented. It seemed to her she had
+been betraying William's affairs. She drew her chair back from the fire,
+and rang to ask if the carriage had arrived. Mary took the hint. She
+arrayed herself in her cloak, and chatted agreeably about other things
+till the moment for their departure came.
+
+As they drove through the streets, Lady Tranmore stole a glance at her
+companion.
+
+"She is really very handsome," she thought--"much better-looking than
+she was at twenty. What are the men about, not to marry her?"
+
+It was indeed a puzzle. For Mary was increasingly agreeable as the years
+went on, and had now quite a position of her own in London, as a
+charming woman without angles or apparent egotisms; one of the
+initiated besides, whom any dinner-party might be glad to capture. Her
+relations, near and distant, held so many of the points of vantage in
+English public life that her word inevitably carried weight. She talked
+politics, as women of her class must talk them to hold their own; she
+supported the Church; and she was elegantly charitable, in that popular
+sense which means that you subscribe to your friends' charities without
+setting up any of your own. She was rich also--already in possession of
+a considerable fortune, inherited from her mother, and prospective
+heiress of at least as much again from her father, old Sir Richard
+Lyster, whose house in Somersetshire she managed to perfection. In the
+season she stayed with various friends, or with Lady Tranmore, Sir
+Richard being now infirm, and preferring the country. There was a
+younger sister, who was known to have married imprudently, and against
+her father's wishes, some five or six years before this. Catharine was
+poor, the wife of a clergyman with young children. Lady Tranmore
+sometimes wondered whether Mary was quite as good to her as she might
+be. She herself sent Catharine various presents in the course of the
+year for the children.
+
+--Yes, it was certainly surprising that Mary had not married. Lady
+Tranmore's thoughts were running on this tack when of a sudden her eyes
+were caught by the placard of one of the evening papers.
+
+"Interview with Mr. Cliffe. Peace assured." So ran one of the lines.
+
+"Geoffrey Cliffe home again!" Lady Tranmore's tone betrayed a shade of
+contemptuous amusement.
+
+"We shall have to get on without our daily telegram. Poor London!"
+
+If at that moment it had occurred to her to look at her companion, she
+would have seen a quick reddening of Mary's cheeks.
+
+"He has had a great success, though, with his telegrams!" replied Miss
+Lyster. "I should have thought one couldn't deny that."
+
+"Success! Only with the people who don't matter," said Lady Tranmore,
+with a shrug. "Of what importance is it to anybody that Geoffrey Cliffe
+should telegraph his doings and his opinions every morning to the
+English public?"
+
+We were in the midst of a disagreement with America. A whirlwind was
+unloosed, and as it happened Geoffrey Cliffe was riding it. For that
+gentleman had not succeeded in the designs which were occupying his mind
+when he had first made Kitty's acquaintance in the Grosvilles'
+country-house. He had desired an appointment in Egypt; but it had not
+been given him, and after some angry restlessness at home, he had once
+more taken up a pilgrim's staff and departed on fresh travels, bound
+this time for the Pamirs and Thibet. After nearly three years, during
+which he had never ceased, through the newspapers and periodicals, to
+keep his opinions and his personality before the public, he had been
+heard of in China, and as returning home by America. He arrived at San
+Francisco just as the dispute had broken out, was at once captured by an
+English paper, and sent to New York, with _carte blanche_. He had risen
+with alacrity to the situation. Thenceforward for some three weeks,
+England found a marvellous series of large-print telegrams, signed
+"Geoffrey Cliffe," awaiting her each morning on her breakfast-table.
+
+"'The President and I met this morning'--'The President considers, and I
+agree with him'--'I told the President'--etc.--'The President this
+morning signed and sealed a memorable despatch. He said to me
+afterwards'"--etc.
+
+Two diverse effects seemed to have been produced by these proceedings. A
+certain section of Radical opinion, which likes to see affairs managed
+_sans cérémonie_, and does not understand what the world wants with
+diplomatists when journalists are to be had, applauded; the
+old-fashioned laughed.
+
+It was said that Cliffe was going into the House immediately; the young
+bloods of the party in power enjoyed the prospect, and had already
+stored up the _ego et Rex meus_ details of his correspondence for future
+use.
+
+"How could a man make such a fool of himself!" continued Lady Tranmore,
+the malice in her voice expressing not only the old aristocratic dislike
+of the press, but also the jealousy natural to the mother of an official
+son.
+
+"Well, we shall see," said Mary, after a pause. "I don't quite agree
+with you, Cousin Elizabeth--indeed, I know there are many people who
+think that he has certainly done good."
+
+Lady Tranmore turned in astonishment. She had expected Mary's assent to
+her original remark as a matter of course. Mary's old flirtation with
+Geoffrey Cliffe, and the long breach between them which had followed it,
+were things well known to her. They had coincided, moreover, with her
+own dropping of the man whom for various reasons she had come to regard
+as unscrupulous and unsafe.
+
+"Good!" she echoed--"_good_?--with that boasting, and that
+_fanfaronnade_. Polly!"
+
+But Miss Lyster held her ground.
+
+"We must allow everybody their own ways of doing things, mustn't we? I
+am quite sure he has meant well--all through."
+
+Lady Tranmore shrugged her shoulders. "Lord Parham told me he had had
+the most grotesque letters from him!--and meant henceforward to put them
+in the fire."
+
+"Very foolish of Lord Parham," said Mary, promptly. "I should have
+thought that a Prime Minister would welcome information--from all sides.
+And of course Mr. Cliffe thinks that the government has been _very_
+badly served."
+
+Lady Tranmore's wonder broke out. "You don't mean--that--you hear from
+him?"
+
+She turned and looked full at her companion. Mary's color was still
+raised, but otherwise she betrayed no embarrassment.
+
+"Yes, dear Cousin Elizabeth. I have heard from him regularly for the
+last six months. I have often wished to tell you, but I was afraid you
+might misunderstand me, and--my courage failed me!" The speaker,
+smiling, laid her hand on Lady Tranmore's. "The fact is, he wrote to me
+last autumn from Japan. You remember that poor cousin of mine who died
+at Tokio? Mr. Cliffe had seen something of him, and he very kindly wrote
+both to his mother and me afterwards. Then--"
+
+"You didn't forgive him!" cried Lady Tranmore.
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+"Was there anything to forgive? We were both young and foolish. Anyway,
+he interests me--and his letters are splendid."
+
+"Did you ever tell William you were corresponding with him?"
+
+"No, indeed! But I want very much to make them understand each other
+better. Why shouldn't the government make use of him? He doesn't wish at
+all to be thrown into the arms of the other side. But they treat him so
+badly--"
+
+"My dear Mary! are we governed by the proper people, or are we not?"
+
+"It is no good ignoring the press," said Mary, holding herself
+gracefully erect. "And the Bishop quite agrees with me."
+
+Lady Tranmore sank back in her seat.
+
+"You discussed it with the Bishop?" It was now some time since Mary had
+last brought the family Bishop--her cousin, and Lady Tranmore's--to bear
+upon an argument between them. But Elizabeth knew that his appearance in
+the conversation invariably meant a _fait accompli_ of some sort.
+
+"I read him some of Mr. Cliffe's letters," said Mary, modestly. "He
+thought them most remarkable."
+
+"Even when he mocks at missionaries?"
+
+"Oh! but he doesn't mock at them any more. He has learned wisdom--I
+assure you he has!"
+
+Lady Tranmore's patience almost departed, Mary's look was so penetrated
+with indulgence for the prejudices of a dear but unreasonable relation.
+But she managed to preserve it.
+
+"And you knew he was coming home?"
+
+"Oh yes!" said Mary. "I meant to have told you at dinner. But something
+put it out of my head--Kitty, of course! I shouldn't wonder if he were
+at the embassy to-night."
+
+"Polly! tell me--"--Lady Tranmore gripped Miss Lyster's hand with some
+force--"are you going to marry him?"
+
+"Not that I know of," was the smiling reply. "Don't you think I'm old
+enough by now to have a man friend?"
+
+"And you expect me to be civil to him!"
+
+"Well, dear Cousin Elizabeth--you know--you never did break with him,
+quite."
+
+Lady Tranmore, in her bewilderment, reflected that she had certainly
+meant to complete the process whenever she and Mr. Cliffe should meet
+again. Aloud she could only say, rather stiffly:
+
+"I can't forget that William disapproves of him strongly."
+
+"Oh no--excuse me--I don't think he does!" said Mary, quickly. "He said
+to me, the other day, that he should be very glad to pick his brains
+when he came home. And then he laughed and said he was a 'deuced clever
+fellow'--excuse the adjective--and it was a great thing to be 'as free
+as that chap was'--'without all sorts of boring colleagues and
+responsibilities.' Wasn't it like William?"
+
+Lady Tranmore sighed.
+
+"William shouldn't say those things."
+
+"Of course, dear, he was only in fun. But I'll lay you a small wager,
+Cousin Elizabeth, that Kitty will ask Mr. Cliffe to lunch as soon as she
+knows he is in town."
+
+Lady Tranmore turned away.
+
+"I dare say. No one can answer for what Kitty will do. But Geoffrey
+Cliffe has said scandalous things of William."
+
+"He won't say them again," said Mary, soothingly. "Besides, William
+never minds being abused a bit--does he?"
+
+"He should mind," said Lady Tranmore, drawing herself up. "In my young
+days, our enemies were our enemies and our friends our friends. Nowadays
+nothing seems to matter. You may call a man a scoundrel one day and ask
+him to dinner the next. We seem to use words in a new sense--and I
+confess I don't like the change. Well, Mary, I sha'n't, of course, be
+rude to any friend of yours. But don't expect me to be effusive. And
+please remember that my acquaintance with Geoffrey Cliffe is older than
+yours."
+
+Mary made a caressing reply, and gave her mind for the rest of the drive
+to the smoothing of Lady Tranmore's ruffled plumes. But it was not easy.
+As that lady made her way up the crowded staircase of the French
+Embassy, her fine face was still absent and a little stern.
+
+Mary could only reflect that she had at least got through a first
+explanation which was bound to be made. Then for a few minutes her mind
+surrendered itself wholly to the question, "Will he be here?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rooms of the French Embassy were already crowded. An ambassador,
+short, stout, and somewhat morose, his plain features and snub nose
+emerging with difficulty from his thick, fair hair, superabundant beard,
+and mustache--with an elegant and smiling ambassadress, personifying
+amid the English crowd that Paris from which through every fibre she
+felt herself a pining exile--received the guests. The scene was ablaze
+with uniforms, for the Speaker had been giving a dinner, and Royalty was
+expected. But, as Lady Tranmore perceived at once, very few members of
+the House of Commons were present. A hot debate on some detail of the
+naval estimates had been sprung on ministers, and the whips on each side
+had been peremptorily keeping their forces in hand.
+
+"I don't see either William or Kitty," said Mary, after a careful
+scrutiny not, in truth, directed to the discovery of the Ashes.
+
+"No. I suppose William was kept, and Kitty did not care to come alone."
+
+Mary said nothing. But she was well aware that Kitty was never
+restrained from going into society by the mere absence of her husband.
+Meanwhile Lady Tranmore was lost in secret anxieties as to what might
+have happened in Hill Street. Had there been a quarrel? Something
+certainly had gone wrong, or Kitty would be here.
+
+"Lady Kitty not arrived?" said a voice, like a macaw's, beside her.
+
+Elizabeth turned and shook hands with Lady Parham. That extraordinary
+woman, followed everywhere by the attentive observation of the crowd,
+had never asserted herself more sharply in dress, manner, and coiffure
+than on this particular evening--so it seemed, at least, to Lady
+Tranmore. Her ample figure was robed in the white satin of a bride, her
+wrinkled neck disappeared under a weight of jewels, and her bright
+chestnut wig, to which the diamond tiara was fastened, positively
+attacked the spectator, so patent was it and unashamed. Unashamed, too,
+were the bold, tyrannous eyes, the rouge-spots on either cheek, the
+strength of the jaw, the close-shut ability of the mouth. Elizabeth
+Tranmore looked at her with a secret passion of dislike. Her English
+pride of race, no less than the prejudices of her taste and training,
+could hardly endure the fact that, for William's sake, she must make
+herself agreeable to Lady Parham.
+
+Agreeable, however, she tried to be. Kitty had seemed to her tired in
+the afternoon, and had, no doubt, gone to bed--so she averred.
+
+Lady Parham laughed.
+
+"Well, she mustn't be tired the night of my party next week--or the
+skies will fall. I never took so much trouble before about anything in
+my life."
+
+"No, she must take care," said Lady Tranmore. "Unfortunately, she is not
+strong, and she does too much."
+
+Lady Parham threw her a sharp look.
+
+"Not strong? I should have thought Lady Kitty was made on wires. Well,
+if she fails me, I shall go to bed--with small-pox. There will be
+nothing else to be done. The Princess has actually put off another
+engagement to come--she has heard so much of Lady Kitty's reciting. But
+you'll help me through, won't you?"
+
+And the wrinkled face and harsh lips fell into a contortion meant for a
+confidential smile; while through it all the eyes, wholly independent,
+studied the face beside her--closely, suspiciously--until the owner of
+it in her discomfort could almost have repeated aloud the words that
+were ringing in her mind--"I shall _not_ go to Lady Parham's! My note
+will reach her on the stroke of eight."
+
+"Certainly--I will keep an eye on her!" she said, lightly. "But you
+know--since her illness--"
+
+"Oh no!" said Lady Parham, impatiently, "she is very well--very well
+indeed. I never saw her look so radiant. By-the-way, did you hear your
+son's speech the other night? I did not see you in the gallery. A great
+pity if you missed it. It was admirable."
+
+Lady Tranmore replied regretfully that she had not been there, and that
+she had not been able to have a word with him about it since.
+
+"Oh, he knows he did well," said Lady Parham, carelessly. "They all do.
+Lord Parham was delighted. He could do nothing but talk about it at
+dinner. He says they were in a very tight place, and Mr. Ashe got them
+out."
+
+Lady Tranmore expressed her gratification with all the dignity she could
+command, conscious meanwhile that her companion was not listening to a
+word, absorbed as she was in a hawklike examination of the room through
+a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses.
+
+Suddenly the eye-glasses fell with a rattle.
+
+"Good Heavens!" cried Lady Parham. "Do you see who that is talking to
+Mr. Loraine?"
+
+Lady Tranmore looked, and at once perceived Geoffrey Cliffe in close
+conversation with the leader of the Opposition. The lady beside her gave
+an angry laugh.
+
+"If Mr. Cliffe thinks he has done himself any good by these ridiculous
+telegrams of his, he will find himself mistaken! People are perfectly
+furious about them."
+
+"Naturally," said Lady Tranmore. "Only that it is a pity to take him
+seriously."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. He has his following; unfortunately, some of our own
+men are inclined to think that Parham should conciliate him. Ignore him,
+I say. Behave as though he didn't exist. Ah! by-the-way"--the speaker
+raised herself on tiptoe, and said, in an audacious undertone--"is it
+true that he may possibly marry your cousin, Miss Lyster?"
+
+Lady Tranmore kept a smiling composure. "Is it true that Lord Parham may
+possibly give him an appointment?"
+
+Lady Parham turned away in annoyance. "Is that one of the inventions
+going about?"
+
+"There are so many," said Lady Tranmore.
+
+At that moment, however, to her infinite relief, her companion abruptly
+deserted her. She was free to observe the two distant figures in
+conversation--Geoffrey Cliffe and Mr. Loraine, the latter a man now
+verging on old age, white-haired and wrinkled, but breathing still
+through every feature and every movement the scarcely diminished energy
+of his magnificent prime. He stood with bent head, listening
+attentively, but, as Lady Tranmore thought, coldly, to the arguments
+that Cliffe was pouring out upon him. Once he looked up in a sudden
+recoil, and there was a flash from an eye famous for its power of
+majestic or passionate rebuke. Cliffe, however, took no notice, and
+talked on, Loraine still listening.
+
+"Look at them!" said Lady Parham, venomously, in the ear of one of her
+intimates. "We shall have all this out in the House to-morrow. The
+Opposition mean to play that man for all he's worth. Mr. Loraine,
+too--with his puritanical ways! I know what he thinks of Cliffe. He
+wouldn't _touch_ him in private. But in public--you'll see--he'll
+swallow him whole--just to annoy Parham. There's your politician."
+
+And stiff with the angry virtue of the "ins," denouncing the faction of
+the "outs," Lady Parham passed on.
+
+Elizabeth Tranmore meanwhile turned to look for Mary Lyster. She found
+her close behind, engaged in a perfunctory conversation, which evidently
+left her quite free to follow things more exciting. She, too, was
+watching; and presently it seemed to Lady Tranmore that her eyes met
+with those of Cliffe. Cliffe paused; abruptly lost the thread of his
+conversation with Mr. Loraine, and began to make his way through the
+crowded room. Lady Tranmore watched his progress with some attention. It
+was the progress, clearly, of a man much in the eye and mouth of the
+public. Whether the atmosphere surrounding him in these rooms was more
+hostile or more favorable, Lady Tranmore could not be quite sure.
+Certainly the women smiled upon him; and his strange face, thinner,
+browner, more weather-beaten and life-beaten than ever, under its crest
+of grizzling hair, had the old arrogant and picturesque power, but, as
+it seemed to her, with something added--something subtler, was it, more
+romantic than of yore? which arrested the spectator. Had he really been
+in love with that French woman? Lady Tranmore had heard it rumored that
+she was dead.
+
+It was not towards Mary Lyster, primarily, that he was moving, Elizabeth
+soon discovered; it was towards herself. She braced herself for the
+encounter.
+
+The greeting was soon over. After she herself had said the appropriate
+things, Lady Tranmore had time to notice that Mary Lyster, whose turn
+came next, did not attempt to say them. She looked, indeed, unusually
+handsome and animated; Lady Tranmore was certain that Cliffe had noticed
+as much, at his first sight of her. But the remarks she omitted showed
+how minute and recent was their knowledge of each other's movements.
+Cliffe himself gave a first impression of high spirits. He declared that
+London was more agreeable than he had ever known it, and that after his
+three years' absence nobody looked a day older. Then he inquired after
+Ashe.
+
+Lady Tranmore replied that William was well, but hard-worked; she hoped
+to persuade him to get a few days abroad at Whitsuntide. Her manner was
+quiet, without a trace of either discourtesy or effusion. Cliffe began
+to twist his mustache, a sign she knew well. It meant that he was in
+truth both irritable and nervous.
+
+"You think they'll last till Whitsuntide?"
+
+"The government?" she said, smiling. "Certainly--and beyond."
+
+"I give them three weeks," said Cliffe, twisting anew, with a vigor that
+gave her a positive physical sympathy with the tortured mustache. "There
+will be some papers out to-morrow that will be a bomb-shell."
+
+"About America? Oh, they have been blown up so often! You, for instance,
+have been doing your best--for months."
+
+His perfunctory laugh answered the mockery of her charming eyes.
+
+"Well--I wish I could make William hear reason."
+
+Lady Tranmore held herself stiffly. The Christian name seemed to her an
+offence. It was true that in old days he and Cliffe had been on those
+terms. Now--it was a piece of bad taste.
+
+"Probably what is reason to you is folly to him," she said, dryly.
+
+"No, no!--he _knows_," said Cliffe, with impatience. "The others don't.
+Parham is more impossible--more crassly, grossly ignorant!" He lifted
+hands and eyes in protest. "But Ashe, of course, is another matter
+altogether."
+
+"Well, go and see him--go and talk to him!" said Lady Tranmore, still
+mocking. "There are no lions in the way."
+
+"None," said Cliffe. "As a matter of fact, Lady Kitty has asked me to
+luncheon. But does one find Ashe himself in the middle of the day?"
+
+At the mention of her daughter-in-law Elizabeth made an involuntary
+movement. Mary, standing beside her, turned towards her and smiled.
+
+"Not often." The tone was cold. "But you could always find him at the
+House." And Lady Tranmore moved away.
+
+"Is there a quiet corner anywhere?" said Cliffe to Mary. "I have such
+heaps to tell you."
+
+So while some Polish gentleman in the main drawing-room, whose name
+ended in _ski_, challenged his violin to the impossible, Cliffe and Mary
+retired from observation into a small room thrown open with the rest of
+the suite, which was in truth the morning-room of the ambassadress.
+
+As soon as they found themselves alone, there was a pause in their
+conversation; each involuntarily looked at the other. Mary certainly
+recognized that these years of absence had wrought a noticeable change
+in the man before her. He had aged. Hard living and hard travelling had
+left their marks. But, like Lady Tranmore, she also perceived another
+difference. The eyes bent upon her were indeed, as before, the eyes of a
+man self-centred, self-absorbed. There was no chivalrous softness in
+them, no consideration. The man who owned them used them entirely for
+his own purposes; they betrayed none of that changing instinctive
+relation towards the human being--any human being--within their range,
+which makes the charm of so many faces. But they were sadder, more
+sombre, more restless; they thrilled her more than they had already
+thrilled her once, in the first moment of her youth.
+
+What was he going to say? From the moment of his first letter to her
+from Japan, Mary had perfectly understood that he had some fresh purpose
+in his mind. She was not anxious, however, to precipitate the moment of
+explanation. She was no longer the young girl whose equilibrium is upset
+by the mere approach of the man who interests her. Moreover, there was a
+past between herself and Cliffe, the memory of which might indeed point
+her to caution. Did he now, after all, want to marry her--because she
+was rich, and he was comparatively poor, and could only secure an
+English career at the cost of a well-stored wife? Well, all that should
+be thought over; by herself no less than by him. Meanwhile her vanity
+glowed within her, as she thus held him there, alone, to the
+discomfiture of other women more beautiful and more highly placed than
+herself; as she remembered his letters in her desk at home; and the
+secrets she imagined him to have told her. Then again she felt a rush of
+sudden disquiet, caused by this new aspect--wavering and remote--as
+though some hidden grief emerged and vanished. He had the haggard air of
+a man who scarcely sleeps. All that she had ever heard of the French
+affair rushed through her mind, stirring there an angry curiosity.
+
+These impressions took, however, but a few minutes, while they exchanged
+some conventionalities. Then Cliffe said, scrutinizing the face and form
+beside him with that intentness which, from him, was more generally
+taken as compliment than offence:
+
+"Will you excuse the remark? There are no women who keep their first
+freshness like Englishwomen."
+
+"Thank you. If we feel fresh, I suppose we look it. As for you, you
+clearly want a rest."
+
+"No time to think of it, then; I have come home to fight--all I know; to
+make myself as odious as possible."
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+"You have been doing that so long. Why not try the opposite?"
+
+Cliffe looked at her sharply.
+
+"You think I have made a failure of it?"
+
+"Not at all. You have made everybody furiously uncomfortable, and you
+see how civil even the Radical papers are to you."
+
+"Yes. What fools!" said Cliffe, shortly. "They'll soon leave that off.
+Just now I'm a stick to beat the government with. But you don't believe
+I shall carry my point?"
+
+The point concerned a particular detail in a pending negotiation with
+the United States. Cliffe had been denouncing the government for what he
+conceived to be their coming retreat before American demands. America,
+according to him, had been playing the bully; and English interests were
+being betrayed.
+
+Mary considered.
+
+"I think you will have to change your tactics."
+
+"Dictate them, then."
+
+He bent forward, with that sudden change of manner, that courteous
+sweetness of tone and gesture, which few women could resist. Mary's
+heart, seasoned though it were, felt a charming flutter. She talked, and
+she talked well. She had no independence of mind, and very little real
+knowledge; but she had an excellent reporter's ability; she knew what to
+remember, and how to tell it. Cliffe listened to her attentively,
+acknowledging to himself the while that she had certainly gained. She
+was a far more definite personality than she had been when he last knew
+her; and her self-possession, her trained manner, rested him. Thank
+Heaven, she was not a clever woman--how he detested the breed! But she
+was a useful one. And the smiling commonplace into which she fell so
+often was positively welcome to him. He had known what it was to court a
+woman who was more than his equal both in mind and passion; and it had
+left him bitter and broken.
+
+"Well, all this is most illuminating," he said at last. "I owe you
+immense thanks." And he put out a pair of hands, thin, brown, and
+weather-stained as his face, and pressed one of hers. "We're very old
+friends, aren't we?"
+
+"Are we?" said Mary, drawing back.
+
+"So far as any one can be the friend of a chap like me," he said,
+hastily. "Tell me, are you with Lady Tranmore?"
+
+"No. I go to her in a few days--till I leave London."
+
+"Don't go away," he said, suddenly and insistently. "Don't go away."
+
+Mary could not help a slight wavering in the eyes that perforce met his.
+Then he said, abruptly, as she rose:
+
+"By-the-way, they tell me Ashe is a great man."
+
+She caught the note of incredulous contempt in his voice and laughed.
+
+"They say he'll be in the cabinet directly."
+
+"And Lady Kitty, I understand, is a scandal to gods and men, and the
+most fashionable person in town?"
+
+"Oh, not now," said Mary. "That was last year."
+
+"You mean people are tired of her?"
+
+"Well, after a time, you know, a naughty child--"
+
+"Becomes a bore. Is she a bore? I doubt; I very much doubt."
+
+"Go and see," said Mary. "When do you lunch there?"
+
+"I think to-morrow. Shall I find you?"
+
+"Oh no. I am not at all intimate with Lady Kitty."
+
+Cliffe's slight smile, as he followed her into the large drawing-room,
+died under his mustache. He divined at once the relation between the
+two, or thought he did.
+
+As for Mary, she caught her last sight of Cliffe, standing bareheaded on
+the steps of the embassy, his lean distinction, his ugly good looks
+marking him out from the men around him. Then, as they drove away she
+was glad that the darkness hid her from Lady Tranmore. For suddenly she
+could not smile. She was filled with the perception that if Geoffrey
+Cliffe did not now ask her to marry him, life would utterly lose its
+savor, its carefully cherished and augmented savor, and youth would
+abandon her. At the same time she realized that she would have to make a
+fight of it, with every weapon she could muster.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+"Wasn't I expected?" said Darrell, with a chilly smile.
+
+"Oh yes, sir--yes, sir!" said the Ashes' butler, as he looked
+distractedly round the drawing-room. "I believe her ladyship will be in
+directly. Will you kindly take a seat?"
+
+The man's air of resignation convinced Darrell that Lady Kitty had
+probably gone out without any orders to her servants, and had now
+forgotten all about her luncheon-party--a state of things to which the
+Hill Street household was, no doubt, well accustomed.
+
+"I shall claim some lunch," he thought to himself, "whatever happens.
+These young people want keeping in their place. Ah!"
+
+For he had observed, placed on a small easel, the print of Madame de
+Longueville in costume, and he put up his eye-glass to look at it. He
+guessed at once that its appearance there was connected with the fancy
+ball which was now filling London with its fame, and he examined it with
+some closeness. "Lady Kitty will make a stir in it--no doubt of that!"
+he said to himself, as he turned away. "She has the keenest _flair_ of
+them all for what produces an effect. None of the others can touch
+her--Mrs. Alcot--none of them!"
+
+He was thinking of the other members of a certain group, at that time
+well known in London society--a group characterized chiefly by the
+beauty, extravagance, and audacity of the women belonging to it. It was
+by no means a group of mere fashionables. It contained a large amount of
+ability and accomplishment; some men of aristocratic family, who were
+also men of high character, with great futures before them; some persons
+from the literary or artistic world, who possessed, besides their
+literary or artistic gifts, a certain art of agreeable living, and some
+few others--especially young girls--admitted generally for some peculiar
+quality of beauty or manner outside the ordinary canons. Money was
+really presupposed by the group as a group. The life they belonged to
+was a life of the rich, the houses they met in were rich houses. But
+money as such had no power whatever to buy admission to their ranks; and
+the members of the group were at least as impatient of the claims of
+mere wealth as they were of those of mere virtue.
+
+On the whole the group was an element of ferment and growth in the
+society that had produced it. Its impatience of convention and
+restraint, the exaltation of intellectual or artistic power which
+prevailed in it, and even the angry opposition excited by its
+pretensions and its exclusiveness, were all, perhaps, rather profitable
+than harmful at that moment of our social history. Old customs were much
+shaken; the new were shaping themselves, and this daring coterie of
+young and brilliant people, living in one another's houses, calling one
+another by their Christian names, setting a number of social rules at
+defiance, discussing books, making the fame of artists, and, now and
+then, influencing politics, were certainly helping to bring the new
+world to birth. Their foes called them "The Archangels," and they
+themselves had accepted the name with complacency.
+
+Kitty, of course, was an Archangel, so was Mrs. Alcot. Cliffe had
+belonged to them before his travels began. Louis Harman was more or less
+of their tribe, and Lady Tranmore, though not herself an Archangel,
+entertained the set in London and in the country. Like various older
+women connected with the group, she was not of them, but she "harbored"
+them.
+
+Darrell was well aware that he did not belong to them, though personally
+he was acquainted with almost all the members of the group. He was not
+completely indifferent to his exclusion; and this fact annoyed him more
+than the exclusion itself.
+
+He had scarcely finished his inspection of the print when the door again
+opened and Geoffrey Cliffe entered. Darrell had not yet seen him since
+his return and since his attack on the government had made him the hero
+of the hour. Of the newspaper success Darrell was no less jealous and
+contemptuous than Lady Tranmore, though for quite other reasons. But he
+knew better than she the intellectual quality of the man, and his
+disdain for the journalist was tempered by his considerable though
+reluctant respect for the man of letters.
+
+They greeted each other coolly, while Cliffe, not seeing his hostess,
+looked round him with annoyance.
+
+"Well, we shall probably entertain each other," said Darrell, as they
+sat down. "Lady Kitty often forgets her engagements."
+
+"Does she?" said Cliffe, coldly, pretending to glance through a book
+beside him. It touched his vanity that his hostess was not present, and
+still more that Darrell should suppose him a person to be forgotten.
+Darrell, however, who had no mind for any discomfort that might be
+avoided, made a few dexterous advances, Cliffe's brow relaxed, and they
+were soon in conversation.
+
+The position of the ministry naturally presented itself as a topic. Two
+or three retirements were impending, the whole position was precarious.
+Would the cabinet be reconstructed without a dissolution, or must there
+be an appeal to the country?
+
+Cliffe was passionately in favor of the latter course. The party
+fortunes could not possibly be retrieved without a general shuffling of
+the cards, and an opportunity for some wholly fresh combination
+involving new blood.
+
+"In any case," said Cliffe, "I suppose our friend here is sure of one or
+other of the big posts?"
+
+"William Ashe? Oh, I suppose so, unless some intrigue gets in the way."
+Darrell dropped his voice. "Parham doesn't, in truth, hit it off with
+him very well. Ashe is too clever, and Parham doesn't understand his
+paradoxes."
+
+"Also I gather," said Cliffe, with a smile, "that Lady Parham has her
+say?"
+
+Darrell shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It sounds incredible that one should still have to reckon with that
+kind of thing at this time of day. But I dare say it's true."
+
+"However, I imagine Lady Kitty--by-the-way, how much longer shall we
+give her?"--Cliffe looked at his watch with a frown--"may be trusted to
+take care of that."
+
+Darrell merely raised his eyebrows, without replying. "What, not a
+match for one Lady Parham?" said Cliffe, with a laugh. "I should have
+thought--from my old recollections of her--she would have been a match
+for twenty?"
+
+"Oh, if she cared to try."
+
+"She is not ambitious?"
+
+"Certainly; but not always for the same thing."
+
+"She is trying to run too many horses abreast?"
+
+"Oh, I am not a great friend," said Darrell, smiling. "I should never
+dream of analyzing Lady Kitty. Ah!"--he turned his head--"are we not
+forgotten, or just remembered--which?"
+
+For a rapid step approached, the door opened, and a lady appeared on the
+threshold. It was not Kitty, however. The new-comer advanced, putting up
+a pair of fashionable eye-glasses, and looking at the two men in a kind
+of languid perplexity, intended, as Darrell immediately said to himself,
+merely to prolong the moment and the effect of her entry. Mrs. Alcot was
+very tall, and inordinately thin. Her dark head on its slim throat, the
+poetic lines of the brow, her half-shut eyes, the gleam of her white
+teeth, and all the delicate detail of her dress, and, one might even
+say, of her manner, gave an impression of beauty, though she was not, in
+truth, beautiful. But she had grace and she had daring--the two
+essential qualities of an Archangel; she was also a remarkable artist,
+and no small critic.
+
+"Mr. Cliffe," she said, with a start of what was evidently agreeable
+surprise, "Kitty never told me. When did you come?"
+
+"I arrived a few days ago. Why weren't you at the embassy last night?"
+
+"Because I was much better employed. I have given up crushes. But I
+would have come--to meet you. Ah, Mr. Darrell!" she added, in another
+tone, holding out an indifferent hand. "Where is Kitty?" She looked
+round her.
+
+"Shall we order lunch?" said Darrell, who had given her a greeting as
+careless as her own.
+
+"Kitty is really too bad; she is never less than an hour late," said
+Mrs. Alcot, seating herself. "Last time she dined with us I asked her
+for seven-thirty. She thought something very special must be happening,
+and arrived--breathless--at half-past eight. Then she was furious with
+me because she was not the last. But one can't do it twice.
+Well"--addressing herself to Cliffe--"are you come home to stay?"
+
+"That depends," said Cliffe, "on whether England makes itself agreeable
+to me."
+
+"What are your deserts? Why should England be agreeable to you?" she
+replied, with a smiling sharpness. "You do nothing but croak about
+England."
+
+Thus challenged, Cliffe sat down beside her and they fell into a
+bantering conversation. Darrell, though inwardly wounded by the small
+trouble they took to include him, let nothing appear, put in a word now
+and then, or turned over the pages of the illustrated books.
+
+After five minutes a fresh guest arrived. In walked the little Dean, Dr.
+Winston, who had originally made acquaintance with Lady Kitty at
+Grosville Park. He came in overflowing with spirits and enthusiasm. He
+had been spending the morning in Westminster Abbey with another Dean
+more famous though not more charming than himself, and with yet another
+congenial spirit, one of the younger historians, all of them passionate
+lovers of the rich human detail of the past, the actual men and women,
+kings, queens, bishops, executioners, and all the shreds and tatters
+that remained of them. Together they had opened a royal tomb, and the
+Dean's eyes were sparkling as though the ghost of the queen whose ashes
+he had been handling still walked and talked with him.
+
+He passed in his light, disinterested way through most sections of
+English society, though the slave of none; and he greeted Darrell and
+Mrs. Alcot as acquaintances. Mrs. Alcot introduced Cliffe to him, and
+the small Dean bowed rather stiffly. He was a supporter of the
+government, and he thought Cliffe's campaign against them vulgar and
+unfair.
+
+"Is there no hope of Lady Kitty?" he said to Mrs. Alcot.
+
+"Not much. Shall we go down to lunch?"
+
+"Without our hostess?" The Dean opened his eyes.
+
+"Oh, Kitty expects it," said Mrs. Alcot, with affected resignation, "and
+the servants are quite prepared. Kitty asks everybody to lunch--then
+somebody asks her--and she forgets. It's quite simple."
+
+"Quite," said Cliffe, buttoning up his coat, "but I think I shall go to
+the club."
+
+He was looking for his hat, when again there was a commotion on the
+stairs--a high voice giving orders--and in burst Kitty. She stood still
+as soon as she saw her guests, talking so fast and pouring out such a
+flood of excuses that no one could get in a word. Then she flew to each
+guest in turn, taking them by both hands--Darrell only excepted--and
+showing herself so penitent, amusing, and charming that everybody was
+propitiated. It was Fanchette, of course--Fanchette the criminal, the
+incomparable. Her dress for the ball. Kitty raised eyes and hands to
+heaven--it would be a marvel, a miracle. Unless, indeed, she were lying
+cold and quiet in her little grave before the time came to wear it. But
+Fanchette's tempers--Fanchette's caprices--no! Kitty began to mimic the
+great dressmaker torn to pieces by the crowd of fashionable ladies,
+stopping abruptly in the middle to say to Cliffe:
+
+"You were going away? I saw you take up your hat."
+
+"I despaired of my hostess," said Cliffe, with a smile. Then as he
+perceived that Mrs. Alcot had taken up the theme and was holding the
+others in play, he added in a lower voice, "and I was in no mood for
+second-best."
+
+Kitty's eyes twinkled a moment as she turned them on Madeleine Alcot.
+
+"Ah, _I_ remember--at Grosville Park--what a bad temper you had. You
+would have gone away furious."
+
+"With disappointment--yes," said Cliffe, as he looked at her with an
+admiration he scarcely endeavored to conceal. Kitty was in black, but a
+large hat of white tulle, in the most extravagant fashion of the day,
+made a frame for her hair and eyes, and increased the general lightness
+and fantasy of her appearance. Cliffe tried to recall her as he had
+first seen her at Grosville Park, but his recollection of the young girl
+could not hold its own against the brilliant and emphatic reality before
+him.
+
+At luncheon it chafed him that he must divide her with the Dean. Yet she
+was charming with the old man, who chatted history, art, and Paris to
+her, with a delightful innocence and ignorance of all that made Lady
+Kitty Ashe the talk of the town, and an old-fashioned deference besides,
+that insensibly curbed her manner and her phrases as she answered him.
+Yet when the Dean left her free she returned to Cliffe, as though in
+some sort they two had really been talking all the time, through all the
+apparent conversation with other people.
+
+"I have read all your telegrams," she said. "Why did you attack William
+so fiercely?"
+
+Cliffe was taken by surprise, but he felt no embarrassment--her tone was
+not that of the wife in arms.
+
+"I attacked the official--not the man. William knows that."
+
+"He is coming in to-day if possible. He wanted to see you."
+
+"Good news! William knows that he would have hit just as hard in my
+place."
+
+"I don't think he would," said Kitty, calmly. "He is so generous."
+
+The color rushed to Cliffe's face.
+
+"Well scored! I wish I had a wife to play these strokes for me. I shall
+argue that a keen politician has no right to be generous. He is at war."
+
+Kitty took no notice. She leaned her little chin on her hand, and her
+eyes perused the face of her companion.
+
+"Where have you been--all the time--before America?"
+
+"In the deserts--fighting devils," said Cliffe, after a moment.
+
+"What does that mean?" she asked, wondering.
+
+"Read my new book. That will tell you about the deserts."
+
+"And the devils?"
+
+"Ah, I keep them to myself."
+
+"Do you?" she said, softly. "I have just read your poems over again."
+
+Cliffe gave a slight start, then looked indifferent.
+
+"Have you? But they were written three years ago. Dieu merci, one finds
+new devils like new acquaintances."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked her, half amused, half arrested.
+
+"They are always the old," she said, in a low voice. Their eyes met. In
+hers was the same veiled, restless melancholy as in his own. Together
+with the dazzling air of youth that surrounded her, the cherished,
+flattered, luxurious existence that she and her house suggested, they
+made a strange impression upon him. "Does she mean me to understand that
+she is not happy?" he thought to himself. But the next moment she was
+engaged in a merry chatter with the Dean, and all trace of the mood she
+had thus momentarily shown him had vanished.
+
+Half-way through the luncheon, Ashe came in. He appeared, fresh and
+smiling, irreproachably dressed, and showing no trace whatever of the
+hard morning of official work he had just passed through, nor of the
+many embarrassments which, as every one knew, were weighing on the
+Foreign Office. The Dean, with his keen sense for the dramatic, watched
+the meeting between him and Cliffe with some closeness, having in mind
+the almost personal duel between the two men--a duel of letters,
+telegrams, or speeches, which had been lately carried on in the sight of
+Europe and America. For Ashe now represented the Foreign Office in the
+House of Commons, and had been much badgered by the Tory extremists who
+followed Cliffe.
+
+Naturally, being Englishmen, they met as though nothing had happened and
+they had parted the day before in Pall Mall. A "Hullo, Ashe!" and
+"Hullo, Cliffe! glad to see you back again," completed the matter. The
+Dean enjoyed it as a specimen of English "phlegm," recalling with
+amusement his last visit to the Paris of the Second Empire--Paris torn
+between government and opposition, the _salons_ of the one divided from
+the _salons_ of the other by a sulphurous gulf, unless when some Lazarus
+of the moment, some well-known novelist or poet, cradled in the
+Abraham's bosom of Liberalism, passed amid shrieks of triumph or howls
+of treason into the official inferno.
+
+Not that there was any avoiding of topics in this English case. Ashe had
+no sooner slipped into his seat than he began to banter Cliffe upon a
+letter of a supporter which had appeared in that morning's _Times_. It
+was written by Lord S., who had played the part of public "fool" for
+half a generation. To be praised by him was disaster, and Cliffe's flush
+showed at once that the letter had caused him acute annoyance. He and
+Ashe fell upon the writer, vying with each other in anecdotes that left
+him presently close-plucked and bare.
+
+"That's all very well," said Kitty, amid the laughter which greeted the
+last tale, "but he never told _you_ how he proposed to the second Lady
+S."
+
+And lifting a red strawberry, which she held poised against her red,
+laughing lips, she waited a moment--looking round her. "Go on, Kitty,"
+said Ashe, approvingly; "go on."
+
+Thus permitted, Kitty gave one of the little "scenes," arranged from
+some experience of her own, which were very famous among her intimates.
+Ashe called them her "parlor tricks," and was never tired of making her
+exhibit them. And now, just as at Grosville Park, she held her audience.
+She spoke without a halt, her small features answering perfectly to
+every impulse of her talent, each touch of character or dialogue as
+telling as a malicious sense of comedy could make it; arms, hands,
+shoulders all aiding in the final result--a table swept by a very storm
+of laughter, in the midst of which Kitty quietly finished her
+strawberry.
+
+"Well done, Kitty!" Ashe, who sat opposite to her, stretched his hand
+across, and patted hers.
+
+"Does she love him?" Cliffe asked himself, and could not make up his
+mind, closely as he tried to observe their relations. He was more and
+more conscious of the exciting effect she produced on himself, doubly
+so, indeed, because of that sudden stroke of melancholy wherewith--like
+a Rembrandt shadow, she had thrown into relief the gayety and frivolity
+of her ordinary mood.
+
+The stimulus, whatever it was, played upon his vanity. He, too, sought
+an opening and found it. Soon it was he who was monopolizing the
+conversation with an account of two days spent with Bismarck in a
+Prussian country-house, during the triumphant days of the winter which
+followed on Sadowa. The story was brilliantly told, and of some
+political importance. But it was disfigured by arrogance and
+affectation, and Ashe's eyes began to dance a little. Cliffe meanwhile
+could not forget that he was in the presence of a rival and an official,
+could not refrain after a while from a note of challenge here and there.
+The conversation diverged from the tale into matters of current foreign
+politics. Ashe, lounging and smoking, at first knew nothing, had heard
+of nothing, as usual. Then a comment or correction dropped out; Cliffe
+repeated himself vehemently--only to provoke another. Presently, no one
+knew how, the two men were measured against each other _corps à
+corps_--the wide knowledge and trained experience of the minister
+against the originality, the force, the fantastic imagination of the
+writer.
+
+The Dean watched it with delight. He was very fond of Ashe, and liked to
+see him getting the better of "the newspaper fellow." Kitty's lovely
+brown eyes travelled from one to the other. Now it seemed to the Dean
+that she was proud of Ashe, now that she sympathized with Cliffe. Soon,
+however, like the god at Philippi, she swept upon the poet and bore him
+from the field.
+
+"Not a word more politics!" she said, peremptorily, to Ashe, holding up
+her hand. "_I_ want to talk to Mr. Cliffe about the ball."
+
+Cliffe was not very ready to obey. He had an angry sense of having been
+somehow shown to disadvantage, and would like to have challenged his
+host again. But Kitty poured balm into his wounds. She drew him apart a
+little, using the play of her beautiful eyes for him only, and talking
+to him in a new voice of deference.
+
+"You're going, of course? Lady M. told me the other day she _must_ have
+you."
+
+Cliffe, still a little morose, replied that his invitation had been
+waiting for him at his London rooms. He gave the information carelessly,
+as though it did not matter to him a straw. In reality, as soon as,
+while still in America, he had seen the announcement of the ball in one
+of the New York papers, he had written at once to the Marchioness who
+was to give it--an old acquaintance of his--practically demanding an
+invitation. It had been sent indeed with alacrity, and without waiting
+for its arrival Cliffe had ordered his dress in Paris. Kitty inquired
+what it was to be.
+
+"I told my man to copy a portrait of Alva."
+
+"Ah, that's right," said Kitty, nodding--"that's right. Only it would
+have been better if it had been Torquemada."
+
+Rather nettled, Cliffe asked what there might be about him that so
+forcibly suggested the Grand Inquisitor. Kitty, cigarette in hand, with
+half-shut eyes, did not answer immediately. She seemed to be perusing
+his face with difficulty.
+
+"Strength, I suppose," she said at last, slowly. Cliffe waited, then
+burst into a laugh.
+
+"And cruelty?" She nodded.
+
+"Who are my victims?"
+
+She said nothing.
+
+"Whose tales have you been listening to, Lady Kitty?"
+
+She mentioned the name of a French lady. Cliffe changed countenance.
+
+"Ah, well, if you have been talking to her," he said, haughtily, "you
+may well expect to see me appear as Diabolus in person."
+
+"No. But it's since then that I've read the poems again. You see, you
+tell the public so much--"
+
+"That you think you have the right to guess the rest?" He paused, then
+added, with impatience, "Don't guess, Lady Kitty. You have everything
+that life can give you. Let my secrets alone."
+
+There was silence. Kitty looking round her saw that Madeleine Alcot was
+entertaining her other guests, and that she and Cliffe were unobserved.
+Suddenly Cliffe bent towards her, and said, with roughness, his face
+struggling to conceal the feeling behind it:
+
+"You heard--and you believed--that I tormented her--that I killed her?"
+
+The anguish in his eyes seemed to strike a certain answering fire from
+Kitty's.
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I didn't think it very strange--"
+
+Cliffe watched her closely.
+
+"--that a man should be--an inhuman beast--if he were jealous--and
+desperate. You can sympathize with these things?"
+
+She drew a long breath, and threw away the cigarette she had been
+holding suspended in her small fingers.
+
+"I don't know anything about them."
+
+"Because," he hesitated, "your own life has been so happy?"
+
+She evaded him. "Don't you think that jealousy will soon be as dead
+as--saying your prayers and going to church? I never meet anybody that
+cares enough--to be jealous."
+
+She spoke first with passionate force, then with contempt, glancing
+across the room at Madeleine Alcot. Cliffe saw the look, and remembered
+that Mrs. Alcot's husband, a distinguished treasury official, had been
+for years the intimate friend of a very noble and beautiful woman,
+herself unhappily married. There was no scandal in the matter, though
+much talk. Mrs. Alcot meanwhile had her own affairs; her husband and she
+were apparently on friendly terms; only neither ever spoke of the other;
+and their relations remained a mystery.
+
+Cliffe bent over to Kitty.
+
+"And yet you said you could understand?--such things didn't seem strange
+to you."
+
+She gave a little, reckless laugh.
+
+"Did I? It's like the people who think they could act or sing, if they
+only had the chance. I choose to think I could feel. And of course I
+couldn't. We've lost the power. All the old, horrible, splendid things
+are dead and done with."
+
+"The old passions, you mean?"
+
+"And the old poems! _You'll_ never write like that again."
+
+"God forbid!" said Cliffe, under his breath. Then as Kitty rose he
+followed her with his eyes. "Lady Kitty, you've thrown me a challenge
+that you hardly understand. Some day I must answer it."
+
+"Don't answer it," said Kitty, hastily.
+
+"Yes, if I can drag the words out," he said, sombrely. She met his look
+in a kind of fascination, excited by the memory of the story which had
+been told her, by her own audacity in speaking of it, by the presence of
+the dead passion she divined lying shrouded and ghastly in the mind of
+the man beside her. Even the ugly things of which he was accused did but
+add to the interest of his personality for a nature like hers, greedy of
+experience, and discontented with the real.
+
+While he on his side was nattered and astonished by her attitude towards
+him, as Ashe's wife, she would surely dislike and try to trample on him.
+That was what he had expected.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I hear you are an Archangel, Lady Kitty," said the Dean, who, having
+obstinately outstayed all the other guests, had now settled his small
+person and his thin legs into a chair beside his hostess with a view to
+five agreeable minutes. He was the most harmless of social epicures, was
+the Dean, and he felt that Lady Kitty had defrauded him at lunch in
+favor of that great, ruffling, Byronic fellow Cliffe, who ought to have
+better taste than to come lunching with the Ashes.
+
+"Am I?" said Kitty, who had thrown herself into the corner of a sofa,
+and sat curled up there in an attitude which the Dean thought charming,
+though it would not, he was aware, "have become Mrs. Winston.
+
+"Well, you know best," said the Dean. "But, at any rate, be good and
+explain to me what is an Archangel."
+
+"Somebody whom most men and all women dislike," said Kitty, promptly.
+
+"Yet they seem to be numerous," remarked the Dean.
+
+"Not at all!" cried Kitty, with an air of offence; "not at all! If they
+were numerous they would, of course, be popular."
+
+"And in fact they are rare--and detested? What other characteristics
+have they?"
+
+"Courage," said Kitty, looking up.
+
+"Courage to break rules? I hear they all call one another by their
+Christian names, and live in one another's rooms, and borrow one
+another's money, and despise conventionalities. I am sorry you are an
+Archangel, Lady Kitty."
+
+"I didn't admit that I was," said Kitty, "but if I am, why are you
+sorry?"
+
+"Because," said the Dean, smiling, "I thought you were too clever to
+despise conventionalities."
+
+Kitty sat up with revived energy, and joined battle. She flew into a
+tirade as to the dulness and routine of English life, the stupidity of
+good people, and the tyranny of English hypocrisy. The Dean listened
+with amusement, then with a shade of something else. At last he got up
+to go.
+
+"Well, you know, we have heard all that before. My point of view is so
+much more interesting--subtle--romantic! Anybody can attack Mrs. Grundy,
+but only a person of originality can adore her. Try it, Lady Kitty. It
+would be really worth your while."
+
+Kitty mocked and exclaimed.
+
+"Do you know what that phrase--that name of abomination--always recalls
+to me?" pursued the old man.
+
+"It bores me, even to guess," was Kitty's petulant reply.
+
+"Does it? I think of some of the noblest people I have ever known--brave
+men--beautiful women--who fought Mrs. Grundy, and perished."
+
+The Dean stood looking down upon her, with an eager, sensitive
+expression. Tales that he had heeded very little when he had first
+heard them ran through his mind; he had thought Lady Kitty's intimate
+_tête-à-tête_ with her husband's assailant in the press disagreeable and
+unseemly; and as for Mrs. Alcot, he had disliked her particularly.
+
+Kitty looked up unquelled.
+
+     "''Tis better to have fought and lost
+     Than never to have fought at all--'"
+
+she quoted, with one of her most radiant and provoking smiles.
+
+"Incorrigible!" cried the Dean, catching up his hat. "I see! Once an
+Archangel--always an Archangel."
+
+"Oh no!" said Kitty. "There may be 'war in heaven.'"
+
+"Well, don't take Mrs. Alcot for a leader, that's all," said the Dean,
+as he held out a hand of farewell.
+
+"And now I understand!" cried Kitty, triumphantly. "You detest my best
+friend."
+
+The Dean laughed, protested, and went. Ashe, who had been writing
+letters while Kitty and the Dean were talking, escorted the old man to
+the door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he returned he found Kitty sitting with her hands in her lap, lost
+apparently in thought.
+
+"Darling," he said, looking at his watch, "I must be off directly, but I
+should like to see the boy."
+
+Kitty started. She rang, and the child was brought down. He sat on
+Kitty's knee, and Ashe coming to the sofa, threw an arm round them both.
+
+"You are not a bad-looking pair," he said, kissing first Kitty and then
+the baby. "But he's rather pale, Kitty. I think he wants the country."
+
+Kitty said nothing, but she lifted the little white embroidered frock
+and looked at the twisted foot. Then Ashe felt her shudder.
+
+"Dear, don't be morbid!" he cried, resentfully. "He will have so much
+brains that nobody will remember that. Think of Byron."
+
+Kitty did not seem to have heard.
+
+"I remember so well when I first saw his foot--after your mother told
+me--and they brought him to me," she said, slowly. "It seemed to me it
+was the end--"
+
+"The end of what?"
+
+"Of my dream."
+
+"What _do_ you mean, Kitty!"
+
+"Do you remember the mask in the 'Tempest'? First Iris, with saffron
+wings, and rich Ceres, and great Juno--"
+
+She half closed her eyes.
+
+"Then the nymphs and the reapers--dancing together on 'the short-grassed
+green,' the sweetest, gayest show--"
+
+She breathed the words out softly. "Then, suddenly--"
+
+She sat up stiffly and struck her small hands together:
+
+"Prospero starts and speaks. And in a moment--without warning--with 'a
+strange, hollow, and confused noise'"--she dragged the words
+drearily--"_they heavily vanish_. That"--she pointed, shuddering, to the
+child's foot--"was for me the sign of Prospero."
+
+Ashe looked at her with anxiety, finding it indeed impossible to laugh
+at her.
+
+She was very pale, her breath came with difficulty, and she trembled
+from head to foot. He tried to draw her into his arms, but she held him
+away.
+
+"That first year I had been so happy," she continued, in the same voice.
+"Everything was so perfect, so glorious. Life was like a great pageant,
+in a palace. All the old terrors went. I often had fears as a
+child--fears I couldn't put into words, but that overshadowed me. Then
+when I saw Alice--the shadow came nearer. But that was all gone. I
+thought God was reconciled to me, and would always be kind to me now.
+And then I saw that foot, and I knew that He hated me still. He had
+burned His mark into my baby's flesh. And I was never to be quite happy
+again, but always in fear, fear of pain--and death--and grief--"
+
+She paused. Her large eyes gazed into vacancy, and her whole slight
+frame showed the working of some mysterious and pitiful distress.
+
+A wave of poignant alarm swept through Ashe's mind, coupled also with a
+curious sense of something foreseen. He had never witnessed precisely
+this mood in her before; but now that it was thus revealed, he was
+suddenly aware "that something like it had been for long moving
+obscurely below the surface of her life. He took the child and laid him
+on the floor, where he rolled at ease, cooing to himself. Then he came
+back to Kitty, and soothed her with extraordinary tenderness and skill.
+Presently she looked at him, as though some obscure trouble of which she
+had been the victim had released her, and she were herself again.
+
+"Don't go away just yet," she said, in a voice which was still low and
+shaken. He came close to her, again put his arms round her, and held her
+on his breast in silence.
+
+"That is heavenly!" he heard her say to herself after a while, in a
+whisper.
+
+"Kitty!" His eyes grew dim and he stooped to kiss her.
+
+"Heavenly--" she went on, still as though following out her own thought
+rather than speaking to him, "because one _yields_--_yields_! Life is
+such tension--always."
+
+She closed her eyes quickly, and he watched the beautiful lashes lying
+still upon her cheek. With an emotion he could not explain--for it was
+not an emotion of the senses, just as her yielding had not been a
+yielding of the senses but a yielding of the soul--he continued to hold
+her in his arms, her life, her will given to him wholly, sighed out upon
+his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then gradually she recovered her balance; the normal Kitty came back.
+She put out her hand and touched his face.
+
+"You must go back to the House, William."
+
+"Yes, if you are all right."
+
+She sat up, and began to rearrange some of her hair that had slipped
+down.
+
+"You have carried us both into such heights and depths, darling!" said
+Ashe, after he had watched her a little in silence, "that I have
+forgotten to tell you the gossip I brought back from mother this
+morning."
+
+Kitty paused, interrogatively. She was still pale.
+
+"Do you know that mother is convinced Mary Lyster has made up her mind
+to marry Cliffe?"
+
+There was a pause, then Kitty said, with incredulous contempt: "He would
+never _dream_ of marrying her!"
+
+"Not so sure! She has a great deal of money, and Cliffe wants money
+badly."
+
+Ashe began to put his papers together. Kitty questioned him a little
+more, intermittently, as to what his mother had said. When he had left
+her, she sat for long on the sofa, playing with some flowers she had
+taken from her dress, or sombrely watching the child, as it lay on the
+floor beside her.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+"My lady! It's come!"
+
+The maid put her head in just to convey the good news. Kitty was in her
+bedroom walking up and down in a fury which was now almost speechless.
+
+The housemaid was waiting on the stairs. The butler was waiting in the
+hall. Till that hurried knock was heard at the front door, and the
+much-tried Wilson had rushed to open it, the house had been wrapped in a
+sort of storm silence. It was ten o'clock on the night of the ball. Half
+Kitty's costume lay spread out upon her bed. The other half--although
+since seven o'clock all Kitty's servants had been employed in rushing to
+Fanchette's establishment in New Bond Street, at half-hour intervals, in
+the fastest hansoms to be found--had not yet appeared.
+
+However, here at last was the end of despair. A panting boy dragged the
+box into the hall, the butler and footman carried it up-stairs and into
+their mistress's room, where Kitty in a white peignoir stood waiting,
+with the brow of Medea.
+
+"The boy that brought it looked just fit to drop, my lady!" said the
+maid, as she undid the box. She was a zealous servant, but she was glad
+sometimes to chasten these great ones of the land by insisting on the
+seamy side of their pleasures.
+
+Kitty paused in the eager task of superintendence, and turned to the
+under-housemaid, who stood by, gazing open-mouthed at the splendors
+emerging from the box.
+
+"Run down and tell Wilson to give him some wine and cake!" she said,
+peremptorily. "It's all Fanchette's fault--odious creature!--running it
+to the last like this--after all her promises!"
+
+The housemaid went, and soon sped back. For no boy on earth would she
+have been long defrauded of the sight of her ladyship's completed gown.
+
+"Did Wilson feed him?" Kitty flung her the question as she bent,
+alternately frowning and jubilant, over the creation before her.
+
+"Yes, my lady. It was quite a little fellow. He said his legs were just
+run off his feet," said the girl, growing confused as the moon-robe
+unfolded.
+
+"Poor wretch!" said Kitty, carelessly. "I'm glad I'm not an
+errand--Blanche! you know Fanchette may be an old demon, but she _has_
+got taste! Just look at these folds, and the way she's put on the
+pearls! Now then--make haste!"
+
+Off flew the peignoir, and, with the help of the excited maids, Kitty
+slipped into her dress. Ten times, over did she declare that it was
+hopeless, that it didn't fit in the least, that it wasn't one bit what
+she had ordered, that she couldn't and wouldn't go out in it, that it
+was simply scandalous, and Fanchette should never be paid a penny. Her
+maids understood her, and simply went on pulling, patting, fastening, as
+quickly as their skilled fingers could work, till the last fold fell
+into its place, and the under-housemaid stepped back with clasped hands
+and an "Oh, my lady!" couched in a note of irrepressible ecstasy.
+
+"Well?" said Kitty, still frowning--"eh, Blanche?"
+
+The maid proper would have scorned to show emotion; but she nodded
+approval. "If you ask me, my lady, I think you have never looked so well
+in anything."
+
+Kitty's brow relaxed at last, as she stood gazing at the reflection in
+the large glass before her. She saw herself as Artemis--á la Madame de
+Longueville--in a hunting-dress of white silk, descending to the ankles,
+embroidered from top to toe in crescents of seed pearls and silver, and
+held at the waist by a silver girdle. Her throat was covered with
+magnificent pearls, a Tranmore family possession, lent by Lady Tranmore
+for the occasion. The slim ankles and feet were cased in white silk,
+cross-gartered with silver and shod with silver sandals. Her belt held
+her quiver of white-winged arrows; her bow of ivory inlaid with silver
+was slung at her shoulder, while across her breast, the only note of
+color in the general harmony of white, fell a scarf of apple-green
+holding the horn, also of ivory and silver, which, like the belt and
+bow, had been designed for her in Madame de Longueville's Paris.
+
+But neither she nor her model would have been finally content with an
+adornment so delicately fanciful and minute. Both Kitty and the goddess
+of the Fronde knew that they must hold their own in a crowd. For this
+there must be diamonds. The sleeves, therefore, on the white arms fell
+back from diamond clasps; the ivory spear in her right hand was topped
+by a small genius with glittering wings; and in the masses of her fair
+hair, bound with pearl fillets, shone the large diamond crescent that
+Lady Tranmore had foreseen, with one small attendant star at either
+side.
+
+[Illustration: THE FINISHING TOUCHES]
+
+"Well, upon my word, Kitty!" said a voice from her husband's
+dressing-room.
+
+Kitty turned impetuously.
+
+"Do you like it?" she cried. Ashe approached. She lifted her horn to her
+mouth and stood tiptoe. The movement was enchanting; it had in it the
+youth and freshness of spring woods; it suggested mountain distances and
+the solitudes of high valleys. Intoxication spoke in Ashe's pulses; he
+wished the maids had been far away that he might have taken the goddess
+in his very human arms. Instead of which he stood lazily smiling.
+
+"What Endymion are you calling?" he asked her. "Kitty, you are a dream!"
+
+Kitty pirouetted, then suddenly stopped short and held out a foot.
+
+"Look at those silk things, sir. Nobody but Fanchette could have made
+them look anything but a botch. But they spoil the dress. And all to
+please mother and Mrs. Grundy!"
+
+"I like them. I suppose--the nearest you could get to buskins? You would
+have preferred ankles _au naturel_? I don't think you'd have been
+admitted, Kitty."
+
+"Shouldn't I? And so few people have feet they can show!" sighed Kitty,
+regretfully.
+
+Ashe's eyes met those of the maid, who was trying to hide her smiles,
+and he and she both laughed.
+
+"What do you think about it, eh, Blanche?"
+
+"I think her ladyship is much better as she is," said the maid,
+decidedly. "She'd have felt very strange when she got there."
+
+Kitty turned upon her like a whirlwind. "Go to bed!" she said, putting
+both hands on the shoulders of the maid. "Go to bed at once! Esther can
+give me my cloak. Do you know, William, she was awake all last night
+thinking of her brother?"
+
+"The brother who has had an operation? But I thought there was good
+news?" said Ashe, kindly.
+
+"He's much better," put in Kitty. "She heard this afternoon. She won't
+be such a goose as to lie awake, I Should hope, to-night. Don't let me
+catch you here when I get back!" she said, releasing the girl, whose
+eyes had filled with tears. "Mr. Ashe will help me, and if he pulls the
+strings into knots, I shall just cut them--so there! Go away, get your
+supper, and go to bed. Such a life as I've led them all to-day!" She
+threw up her hands in a perfunctory penitence.
+
+The maid was forced to go, and the housemaid also returned to the hall
+with Kitty's Opera-cloak and fan, till it should please her mistress to
+descend. Both of them were dead tired, but they took a genuine
+disinterested pleasure in Kitty's beauty and her fine frocks. She was
+not by any means always considerate of them; but still, with that
+wonderful generosity that the poor show every day to the rich, they
+liked her; and to Ashe every servant in the house was devoted.
+
+Kitty meanwhile had driven Ashe to his own toilette, and was walking
+about the room, now studying herself in the glass, and now chattering to
+him through the open door.
+
+"Have you heard anything more about Tuesday?" she asked him, presently.
+
+"Oh yes!--compliments by the dozen. Old Parham overtook me as I was
+walking away from the House, and said all manner of civil things."
+
+"And I met Lady Parham in Marshall's," said Kitty. "She does thank so
+badly! I should like to show her how to do it. Dear me!" Kitty sighed.
+"Am I henceforth to live and die on Lady Parham's ample breast?"
+
+She sat with one foot beating the floor, deep in meditation.
+
+"And shall I tell you what mother said?" shouted Ashe through the door.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He repeated--so far as dressing would let him a number of the charming
+and considered phrases in which Lady Tranmore, full of relief, pleasure,
+and a secret self-reproach, had expressed to him the effect produced
+upon herself and a select public by Kitty's performance at the Parhams'.
+Kitty had indeed behaved like an angel--an angel _en toilette de bal_,
+reciting a scene from Alfred de Musset. Such politeness to Lady Parham,
+such smiles, sometimes a shade malicious, for the Prime Minister, who on
+his side did his best to efface all memory of his speech of the week
+before from the mind of his fascinating guest; smiles from the Princess,
+applause from the audience; an evening, in fact, all froth and
+sweetstuff, from which Lady Parham emerged grimly content, conscious at
+the same time that she was henceforward very decidedly, and rather
+disagreeably, in the Ashes' debt; while Elizabeth Tranmore went home in
+a tremor of delight, happily persuaded that Ashe's path was now clear.
+
+Kitty listened, sometimes pleased, sometimes inclined to be critical or
+scornful of her mother-in-law's praise. But she did love Lady Tranmore,
+and on the whole she smiled. Smiles, indeed, had been Kitty's portion
+since that evening of strange emotion, when she had found herself
+sobbing in William's arms for reasons quite beyond her own defining. It
+was as if, like the prince in the fairy tale, some iron band round her
+heart had given way. She seemed to dance through the house; she devoured
+her child with kisses; and she was even willing sometimes to let William
+tell her what his mother suspected of the progress of Mary's affair with
+Geoffrey Cliffe, though she carefully avoided speaking directly to Lady
+Tranmore about it. As to Cliffe himself, she seemed to have dropped him
+out of her thoughts. She never mentioned him, and Ashe could only
+suppose she had found him disenchanting.
+
+"Well, darling! I hope I have made a sufficient fool of myself to please
+you!"
+
+Ashe had thrown the door wide, and stood on the threshold, arrayed in
+the brocade and fur of a Venetian noble. He was a somewhat magnificent
+apparition, and Kitty, who had coaxed or driven him into the dress, gave
+a scream of delight. She saw him before her own glass, and the crimson
+senator made eyes at the white goddess as they posed triumphantly
+together.
+
+"You're a very rococo sort of goddess, you know, Kitty!" said Ashe. "Not
+much Greek about you!"
+
+"Quite as much as I want, thank you," said Kitty, courtesying to her own
+reflection in the glass. "Fanchette could have taught them a thing or
+two! Now come along! Ah! Wait!"
+
+And, gathering up her possessions, she left the room. Ashe, following
+her, saw that she was going to the nursery, a large room on the back
+staircase. At the threshold she turned back and put her finger to her
+lip. Then she slipped in, reappearing a moment afterwards to say, in a
+whisper, "Nurse is not in bed. You may come in." Nurse, indeed, knew
+much better than to be in bed. She had been sitting up to see her
+ladyship's splendors, and she rose smiling as Ashe entered the room.
+
+"A parcel of idiots, nurse, aren't we?" he said, as he, too, displayed
+himself, and then he followed Kitty to the child's bedside. She bent
+over the baby, removed a corner of the cot-blanket that might tease his
+cheek, touched the mottled hand softly, removed a light that seemed to
+her too near--and still stood looking.
+
+"We must go, Kitty."
+
+"I wish he were a little older," she said, discontentedly, under her
+breath, "that he might wake up and see us both! I should like him to
+remember me like this."
+
+"Queen and huntress, come away!" said Ashe, drawing her by the hand.
+
+Outside the landing was dimly lighted. The servants were all waiting in
+the hall below.
+
+"Kitty," said Ashe, passionately, "give me one kiss. You're so sweet
+to-night--so sweet!"
+
+She turned.
+
+"Take care of my dress!" she smiled, and then she held out her face
+under its sparkling crescent, held it with a dainty deliberation, and
+let her lips cling to his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ashe and Kitty were soon wedged into one of the interminable lines of
+carriages that blocked all the approaches to St. James's Square. The
+ball had been long expected, and there was a crowd in the streets, kept
+back by the police. The brougham went at a foot's pace, and there was
+ample time either for reverie or conversation. Kitty looked out
+incessantly, exclaiming when she caught sight of a costume or an
+acquaintance. Ashe had time to think over the latest phase of the
+negotiations with America, and to go over in his mind the sentences of a
+letter he had addressed to the _Times_ in answer to one of great
+violence from Geoffrey Cliffe. His own letter had appeared that morning.
+Ashe was proud of it. He made bold to think that it exposed Cliffe's
+exaggerations and insincerities neatly, and perhaps decisively. At any
+rate, he hummed a cheerful tune as he thought of it.
+
+Then suddenly and incongruously a recollection occurred to him.
+
+"Kitty, do you know that I had a letter from your mother, this morning?"
+
+"Had you?" said Kitty, turning to him with reluctance. "I suppose she
+wanted some money."
+
+"She did. She says she is very hard up. If I cared to use it, I have an
+easy reply."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I might say,' D---n it, we are, too!'"
+
+Kitty laughed uneasily.
+
+"Don't begin to talk money matters now, William, _please_."
+
+"No, dear, I won't. But we shall really have to draw in."
+
+"You _will_ pay so many debts!" said Kitty, frowning.
+
+Ashe went into a fit of laughter.
+
+"That's my extravagance, isn't it? I assure you I go on the most
+approved principles. I divide our available money among the greatest
+number of hungry claimants it will stretch to. But, after all, it goes a
+beggarly short way."
+
+"I know mother will think my diamond crescent a horrible extravagance,"
+said Kitty, pouting. "But you are the only son, William, and we must
+behave like other people."
+
+"Dear, don't trouble your little head," he said; "I'll manage it,
+somehow."
+
+Indeed, he knew very well that he could never bring his own indolent and
+easy-going temper in such matters to face any real struggle with Kitty
+over money. He must go to his mother, who now--his father being a
+hopeless invalid--managed the estates with his own and the agent's help.
+It was, of course, right that she should preach to Kitty a little; but
+she would be sensible and help them out. After all, there was plenty of
+money. Why shouldn't Kitty spend it?
+
+Any one who knew him well might have observed a curious contrast between
+his private laxity in these matters and the strictness of his public
+practice. He was scruple and delicacy itself in all financial matters
+that touched his public life--directorships, investments, and the like,
+no less than in all that concerned interest and patronage. He would have
+been a bold man who had dared to propose to William Ashe any expedient
+whatever by which his public place might serve his private gain. His
+proud and fastidious integrity, indeed, was one of the sources of his
+growing power. But as to private debts--and the tradesmen to whom they
+were owed--his standards were still essentially those of the Whigs from
+whom he descended, of Fox, the all-indebted, or of Melbourne, who has
+left an amusing disquisition on the art of dividing a few loaves and
+fishes in the shape of bank-notes among a multitude of creditors.
+
+Not that affairs were as yet very bad. Far from it. But there was little
+to spare for Madame d'Estrées, who ought, indeed, to want nothing; and
+Ashe was vaguely meditating his reply to that lady when a face in a
+carriage near them, which was trying to enter the line, caught his
+attention.
+
+"Mary!" he said, "à la Sir Joshua--and mother. They don't see us. Query,
+will Cliffe take the leap to-night? Mother reports a decided increase of
+ardor on his part. Sorry you don't approve of it, darling!"
+
+"It's just like lighting a lamp to put it out--that's all!" said Kitty,
+with vivacity. "The man who marries Mary is done for."
+
+"Not at all. Mary's money will give him the pedestal he wants, and trust
+Cliffe to take care of his own individuality afterwards! Now, if you'll
+transfer your alarms to _Mary_, I'm with you!"
+
+"Oh! of _course_ he'll be unkind to her. She may lay her account for
+that. But it's the _marrying_ her!" And Kitty's upper-lip curled under a
+slow disdain.
+
+William laughed out.
+
+"Kitty, really!--you remind me, please, of Miss Jane Taylor:
+
+     "'I did not think there could be found--a little heart so hard!'
+
+Mary is thirty; she would like to be married. And why not? She'll give
+quite as good as she gets."
+
+"Well, she won't get--anything. Geoffrey Cliffe thinks of no one but
+himself."
+
+Ashe's eyebrows went up.
+
+"Oh, well, all men are selfish--and the women don't mind."
+
+"It depends on how it's done," said Kitty.
+
+Ashe declared that Cliffe was just an ordinary person, "l'homme sensuel
+moyen"--with a touch of genius. Except for that, no better and no worse
+than other people. What then?--the world was not made up of persons of
+enormous virtue like Lord Althorp and Mr. Gladstone. If Mary wanted him
+for a husband, and could capture him, both, in his opinion, would have
+pretty nearly got their deserts.
+
+Kitty, however, fell into a reverie, after which she let him see a face
+of the same startling sweetness as she had several times shown him of
+late.
+
+"Do you want me to be nice to her?" She nestled up to him.
+
+"Bind her to your chariot wheels, madam! You can!" said Ashe, slipping a
+hand round hers.
+
+Kitty pondered.
+
+"Well, then, I won't tell her that I _know_ he's still in love with the
+Frenchwoman. But it's on the tip of my tongue."
+
+"Heavens!" cried Ashe. "The Vicomtesse D---, the lady of the poems? But
+she's dead! I thought that was over long ago."
+
+Kitty was silent for a moment, then said, with low-voiced emphasis:
+
+"That any one could write those poems, and then _think_ of Mary!"
+
+"Yes, the poems were fine," said Ashe, "but make-believe!"
+
+Kitty protested indignantly. Ashe bantered her a little on being one of
+the women who were the making of Cliffe.
+
+"Say what you like!" she said, drawing a quick breath. "But, often and
+often, he says divine things--divinely! I feel them there!" And she
+lifted both hands to her breast with an impulsive gesture.
+
+"Goddess!" said Ashe, kissing her hand because enthusiasm became her so
+well. "And to think that I should have dared to roast the divine one in
+a _Times_ letter this morning!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The hall and staircase of Yorkshire House were already filled with a
+motley and magnificent crowd when Ashe and Kitty arrived. Kitty, still
+shrouded in her cloak, pushed her way through, exchanging greetings with
+friends, shrieking a little now and then for the safety of her bow and
+quiver, her face flushed with pleasure and excitement. Then she
+disappeared into the cloak-room, and Ashe was left to wonder how he was
+going to endure his robes through the heat of the evening, and to
+exchange a laughing remark or two with the Parliamentary Secretary to
+the Admiralty, into whose company he had fallen.
+
+"What are we doing it for?" he asked the young man, whose thin person
+was well set off by a Tudor dress.
+
+"Oh, don't be superior!" said the other. "I'm going to enjoy myself like
+a school-boy!"
+
+And that, indeed, seemed to be the attitude of most of the people
+present. And not only of the younger members of the dazzling company.
+What struck Ashe particularly, as he mingled with the crowd, was the
+alacrity of the elder men. Here was a famous lawyer already nearing the
+seventies, in the Lord Chancellor's garb of a great ancestor; here an
+ex-Viceroy of Ireland with a son in the government, magnificent in an
+Elizabethan dress, his fair bushy hair and reddish beard shining above a
+doublet on which glittered a jewel given to the founder of his house by
+Elizabeth's own hand; next to him, a white-haired judge in the robes of
+Judge Gascoyne; a peer, no younger, at his side, in the red and blue of
+Mazarin: and showing each and all in their gay complacent looks a clear
+revival of that former masculine delight in splendid clothes which came
+so strangely to an end with that older world on the ruins of which
+Napoleon rose. So with the elder women. For this night they were young
+again. They had been free to choose from all the ages a dress that
+suited them; and the result of this renewal of a long-relinquished
+eagerness had been in many cases to call back a bygone self, and the
+tones and gestures of those years when beauty is its own chief care.
+
+As for the young men, the young women, and the girls, the zest and
+pleasure of the show shone in their eyes and movements, and spread
+through the hall and up the crowded staircase, like a warm, contagious
+atmosphere. At all times, indeed, and in all countries, an aristocracy
+has been capable of this sheer delight in its own splendor, wealth, good
+looks, and accumulated treasure; whether in the Venice that Petrarch
+visited; or in the Rome of the Renaissance popes; in the Versailles of
+the Grand Monarque; or in the Florence of to-day, which still at moments
+of _festa_ reproduces in its midst all the costumes of the Cinque-cento.
+
+In this English case there was less dignity than there would have been
+in a Latin country, and more personal beauty; less grace, perhaps, and
+yet a something richer and more romantic.
+
+At the top of the stairs stood a marquis in a dress of the Italian
+Renaissance, a Gonzaga who had sat for Titian; beside him a fair-haired
+wife in the white satin and pearls of Henrietta Maria; while up the
+marble stairs, watched by a laughing multitude above, streamed
+Gainsborough girls and Reynolds women, women from the courts of
+Elizabeth, or Henri Quatre, of Maria Theresa, or Marie Antoinette, the
+figures of Holbein and Vandyck, Florentines of the Renaissance, the
+youths of Carpaccio, the beauties of Titian and Veronese.
+
+"Kitty, make haste!" cried a voice in front, as Kitty began to mount the
+stairs. "Your quadrille is just called."
+
+Kitty smiled and nodded, but did not hurry her pace by a second. The
+staircase was not so full as it had been, and she knew well as she
+mounted it, her slender figure drawn to its full height, her eyes
+flashing greeting and challenge to those in the gallery, the diamond
+genius on her spear glittering above her, that she held the stage, and
+that the play would not begin without her.
+
+And indeed her dress, her brilliance, and her beauty let loose a hum of
+conversation--not always friendly.
+
+"What is she?" "Oh, something mythological! She's in the next
+quadrille." "My dear, she's Diana! Look at her bow and quiver, and the
+moon in her hair." "Very incorrect!--she ought to have the towered
+crown!" "Absurd, such a little thing to attempt Diana! I'd back Actæon!"
+
+The latter remark was spoken in the ear of Louis Harman, who stood in
+the gallery looking down. But Harman shook his head.
+
+"You don't understand. She's not Greek, of course; but she's fairyland.
+A child of the Renaissance, dreaming in a wood, would have seen Artemis
+so--dressed up and glittering, and fantastic--as the Florentines saw
+Venus. Small, too, like the fairies!--slipping through the leaves; small
+hounds, with jewelled collars, following her!"
+
+He smiled at his own fancy, still watching Kitty with his painter's
+eyes.
+
+"She has seen a French print somewhere," said Cliffe, who stood close
+by. "More Versailles in it than fairyland, I think!"
+
+"It is _she_ that is fairyland," said Harman, still fascinated.
+
+Cliffe's expression showed the sarcasm of his thought. Fairy,
+perhaps!--with the touch of malice and inhuman mischief that all
+tradition attributes to the little people. Why, after that first
+meeting, when the conversation of a few minutes had almost swept them
+into the deepest waters of intimacy, had she slighted him so, in other
+drawing-rooms and on other occasions? She had actually neglected and
+avoided him--after having dared to speak to him of his secret! And now
+Ashe's letter of the morning had kindled afresh his sense of rancor
+against a pair of people, too prosperous and too arrogant. The stroke
+in the _Times_ had, he knew, gone home; his vanity writhed under it, and
+the wish to strike back tormented him, as he watched Ashe mounting
+behind his wife, so handsome, careless, and urbane, his jewelled cap
+dangling in his hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The quadrille of gods and goddesses was over. Kitty had been dancing
+with a fine clumsy Mars, in ordinary life an honest soldier and
+deer-stalker, the heir to a Scotch dukedom; having as her _vis-à-vis_
+Madeleine Alcot--as the Flora of Botticelli's "Spring"--and slim as
+Mercury in fantastic Renaissance armor. All the divinities of the
+Pantheon, indeed, were there, but in Gallicized or Italianate form;
+scarcely a touch of the true antique, save in the case of one beautiful
+girl who wore a Juno dress of white whereof the clinging folds had been
+arranged for her by a young Netherlands painter, Mr. Alma Tadema, then
+newly settled in this country. Kitty at first envied her; then decided
+that she herself could have made no effect in such a gown, and threw her
+the praises of indifference.
+
+When, to Kitty's sharp regret, the music stopped and the glittering crew
+of immortals melted into the crowd, she found behind her a row of
+dancers waiting for the quadrille which was to follow. This was to
+consist entirely of English pictures revived--Reynolds, Gainsborough,
+and Romney--and to be danced by those for whose families they had been
+originally painted. As she drew back, looking eagerly to right and left,
+she came across Mary Lyster. Mary wore her hair high and powdered--a
+black silk scarf over white satin, and a blue sash.
+
+"Awfully becoming!" said Kitty, nodding to her. "Who are you?"
+
+"My great-great aunt!" said Mary, courtesying. "You, I see, go even
+farther back."
+
+"Isn't it fun?" said Kitty, pausing beside her. "Have you seen William?
+Poor dear! he's so hot. How do you do?" This last careless greeting was
+addressed to Cliffe, whom she now perceived standing behind Mary.
+
+Cliffe bowed stiffly.
+
+"Excuse me. I did not see you. I was absorbed in your dress. You are
+Artemis, I see--with additions."
+
+"Oh! I am an 'article de Paris,'" said Kitty. "But it seems odd that
+some people should take me for Joan of Arc." Then she turned to Mary. "I
+think your dress is quite lovely!" she said, in that warm, shy voice she
+rarely used except for a few intimates, and had never yet been known to
+waste on Mary. "Don't you admire it enormously, Mr. Cliffe?"
+
+"Enormously," said Cliffe, pulling at his mustache. "But by now my
+compliments are stale."
+
+"Is he cross about William's letter?" thought Kitty. "Well, let's leave
+them to themselves."
+
+Then, as she passed him, something in the silent personality of the man
+arrested her. She could not forbear a look at him over her shoulder.
+"Are you--Oh! of course, I remember--" for she had recognized the dress
+and cap of the Spanish grandee.
+
+Cliffe did not reply for a moment, but the harsh significance of his
+face revived in her the excitable interest she had felt in him on the
+day of his luncheon in Hill Street; an interest since effaced and
+dispersed, under the influence of that serenity and home peace which
+had shone upon her since that very day.
+
+"I should apologize, no doubt, for not taking your advice," he said,
+looking her in the eyes. Their expression, half bitter, half insolent,
+reminded her.
+
+"Did I give you any advice?" Kitty wrinkled up her white brows. "I don't
+recollect."
+
+Mary looked at her sharply, suspiciously. Kitty, quite conscious of the
+look, was straightway pricked by an elfish curiosity. Could she carry
+him off--trouble Mary's possession there and then? She believed she
+could. She was well aware of a certain relation between herself and
+Cliffe, if, at least, she chose to develop it. Should she? Her vanity
+insisted that Mary could not prevent it.
+
+However, she restrained herself and moved on. Presently looking back,
+she saw them still together, Cliffe leaning against the pedestal of a
+bust, Mary beside him. There was an animation in her eyes, a rose of
+pleasure on her cheek which stirred in Kitty a queer, sudden sympathy.
+"I _am_ a little beast!" she said to herself. "Why shouldn't she be
+happy?"
+
+Then, perceiving Lady Tranmore at the end of the ballroom, she made her
+way thither surrounded by a motley crowd of friends. She walked as
+though on air, "raining influence." And as Lady Tranmore caught the
+glitter of the diamond crescent, and beheld the small divinity beneath
+it, she, too, smiled with pleasure, like the other spectators on Kitty's
+march. The dress was monstrously costly. She knew that. But she forgot
+the inroad on William's pocket, and remembered only to be proud of
+William's wife. Since the Parhams' party, indeed, the unlooked-for
+submission of Kitty, and the clearing of William's prospects, Lady
+Tranmore had been sweetness itself to her daughter-in-law.
+
+But her fine face and brow were none the less inclined to frown. She
+herself as Katharine of Aragon would have shed a dignity on any scene,
+but she was in no sympathy with what she beheld.
+
+"We shall soon all of us be ashamed of this kind of thing," she declared
+to Kitty. "Just as people now are beginning to be ashamed of enormous
+houses and troops of servants."
+
+"No, please! Only bored with them!" said Kitty. "There are so many other
+ways now of amusing yourself--that's all."
+
+"Well, this way will die out," said Lady Tranmore. "The cost of it is
+too scandalous--people's consciences prick them."
+
+Kitty vowed she did not believe there was a conscience in the room; and
+then, as the music struck up, she carried off her companion to some
+steps overlooking the great marble gallery, where they had a better view
+of the two lines of dancers.
+
+It is said that as a nation the English have no gift for pageants. Yet
+every now and then--as no doubt in the Elizabethan mask--they show a
+strange felicity in the art. Certainly the dance that followed would
+have been difficult to surpass even in the ripe days and motherlands of
+pageantry. To the left, a long line, consisting mainly of young girls in
+their first bloom, dressed as Gainsborough and his great contemporaries
+delighted to paint these flowers of England--the folds of plain white
+muslin crossed over the young breast, a black velvet at the throat, a
+rose in the hair, the simple skirt showing the small pointed feet, and
+sometimes a broad sash defining the slender waist. Here were Stanleys,
+Howards, Percys, Villierses, Butlers, Osbornes--soft slips of girls
+bearing the names of England's rough and turbulent youth, bearing
+themselves to-night with a shy or laughing dignity, as though the touch
+of history and romance were on them. And facing them, the youths of the
+same families, no less handsome than their sisters and brides--in
+Romney's blue coats, or the splendid red of Reynolds and Gainsborough.
+
+To and fro swayed the dancers, under the innumerable candles that filled
+the arched roof and upper walls of the ballroom; and each time the lines
+parted they disclosed at the farther end another pageant, to which that
+of the dance was in truth subordinate--a dais hung with blue and silver,
+and upon it a royal lady whose beauty, then in its first bloom, has been
+a national possession, since as, the "sea-king's daughter" she brought
+it in dowry to her adopted country. To-night she blazed in jewels as a
+Valois queen, with her court around her, and as the dancers receded,
+each youth and maiden seemed instinctively to turn towards her as roses
+to the sun.
+
+"Oh, beautiful, beautiful world!" said Kitty to herself, in an ecstasy,
+pressing her small hands together; "how I love you!--_love_ you!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Darrell and Harman stood side by side near the doorway of the
+ballroom, looking in when the crowd allowed.
+
+"A strange sight," said Harman. "Perhaps they take it too seriously."
+
+"Ah! that is our English upper class," said Darrell, with a sneer. "Is
+there anything they take lightly?--_par exemple!_ It seems to me they
+carry off this amusement better than most. They may be stupid, but they
+are good-looking. I say, Ashe"--he turned towards the new-comer who had
+just sauntered up to them--"on this exceptional occasion, is it allowed
+to congratulate you on Lady Kitty's gown?"
+
+For Kitty, raised upon her step, was at the moment in full view.
+
+Ashe made some slight reply, the slightest of which indeed annoyed the
+thin-skinned and morbid Darrell, always on the lookout for affronts. But
+Louis Harman, who happened to observe the Under-Secretary's glance at
+his wife, said to himself, "By George! that queer marriage is turning
+out well, after all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Tudor and Marie Antoinette quadrilles had been danced. There was a
+rumor of supper in the air.
+
+"William!" said Kitty, in his ear, as she came across him in one of the
+drawing-rooms, "Lord Hubert takes me in to supper. Poor me!" She made an
+extravagant face of self-pity and swept on. Lord Hubert was one of the
+sons of the house, a stupid and inarticulate guardsman, Kitty's butt and
+detestation. Ashe smiled to himself over her fate, and went back to the
+ballroom in search of his own lady.
+
+Meanwhile Kitty paused in the next drawing-room, and dismissed her
+following.
+
+"I promised to wait here for Lord Hubert," she said. "You go on, or
+you'll get no tables."
+
+And she waved them peremptorily away. The drawing-room, one of a suite
+which looked on the garden, thinned temporarily. In a happy fatigue,
+Kitty leaned dreamily over the ledge of one of the open windows, looking
+at the illuminated space below her. Amid the colored lights, figures of
+dream and fantasy walked up and down. In the midst flashed a
+flame-colored fountain. The sounds of a Strauss waltz floated in the
+air. And beyond the garden and its trees rose the dull roar of London.
+
+A silk curtain floated out into the room under the westerly breeze,
+then, returning, sheathed Kitty in its folds. She stood there hidden,
+amusing herself like a child with the thought of startling that great
+heavy goose, Lord Hubert.
+
+Suddenly a pair of voices that she knew caught her ear. Two persons,
+passing through, lingered, without perceiving her. Kitty, after a first
+movement of self-disclosure, caught her own name and stood motionless.
+
+"Well, of course you've heard that we got through," said Lady Parham.
+"For once Lady Kitty behaved herself!"
+
+"You were lucky!" said Mary Lyster. "Lady Tranmore was dreadfully
+anxious--"
+
+"Lest she should cut us at the last?" cried Lady Parham. "Well, of
+course, Lady Kitty is 'capable de tout.'" She laughed. "But perhaps as
+you are a cousin I oughtn't to say these things."
+
+"Oh, say what you like," said Mary. "I am no friend of Kitty's, and
+never pretended to be."
+
+Lady Parham came closer, apparently, and said, confidentially: "What on
+earth made that man marry her? He might have married anybody. She had
+no money, and worse than no position."
+
+"She worked upon his pity, of course, a good deal. I saw them in the
+early days at Grosville Park. She played her cards very cleverly. And
+then, it was just the right moment. Lady Tranmore had been urging him to
+marry."
+
+"Well, of course," said Lady Parham, "there's no denying the beauty."
+
+"You think so?" said Mary, as though in wonder. "Well, I never could see
+it. And now she has so much gone off."
+
+"I don't agree with you. Many people think her the star to-night. Mr.
+Cliffe, I am told, admires her."
+
+Kitty could not see how the eyes of the speaker, under a Sir Joshua
+turban, studied the countenance of Miss Lyster, as she threw out the
+words.
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+"Poor Kitty! She tried to flirt with him long ago--just after she
+arrived in London, fresh out of the convent. It was so funny! He told me
+afterwards he never was so embarrassed in his life--this baby making
+eyes at him! And now--oh no!"
+
+"Why not now? Lady Kitty's very much the rage, and Mr. Cliffe likes
+notoriety."
+
+"But a notoriety with--well, with some style, some distinction! Kitty's
+sort is so cheap and silly."
+
+"Ah, well, she's not to be despised," said Lady Parham. "She's as clever
+as she can be. But her husband will have to keep her in order."
+
+"Can he?" said Mary. "Won't she always be in his way?"
+
+"Always, I should think. But he must have known what he was about. Why
+didn't his mother interfere? Such a family!--such a history!"
+
+"She did interfere," said Mary. "We all did our best"--she dropped her
+voice--"I know I did. But it was no use. If men like spoiled children
+they must have them, I suppose. Let's hope he'll learn how to manage
+her. Shall we go on? I promised to meet my supper-partner in the
+library."
+
+They moved away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For some minutes Kitty stood looking out, motionless, but the beating of
+her heart choked her. Strange ancestral things--things of evil--things
+of passion--had suddenly awoke, as it were, from sleep in the depths of
+her being, and rushed upon the citadel of her life. A change had passed
+over her from head to foot. Her veins ran fire.
+
+At that moment, turning round, she saw Geoffrey Cliffe enter the room in
+which she stood. With an impetuous movement she approached him.
+
+"Take me down to supper, Mr. Cliffe. I can't wait for Lord Hubert any
+more, I'm _so_ hungry!"
+
+"Enchanted!" said Cliffe, the color leaping into his tanned face as he
+looked down upon the goddess. "But I came to find--"
+
+"Miss Lyster? Oh, she is gone in with Mr. Darrell. Come with me. I have
+a ticket for the reserved tent. We shall have a delicious corner to
+ourselves."
+
+And she took from her glove the little coveted paste-board,
+which--handed about in secret to a few intimates of the house--gave
+access to the sanctum sanctorum of the evening.
+
+Cliffe wavered. Then his vanity succumbed. A few minutes later the
+supper guests in the tent of the _élite_ saw the entrance of a darkly
+splendid Duke of Alva, with a little sandalled goddess. All compact, it
+seemed, of ivory and fire, on his arm.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The spring freshness of London, had long since departed. A crowded
+season; much animation in Parliament, where the government, to its own
+amazement, had rather gained than lost ground; industrial trouble at
+home, and foreign complications abroad; and in London the steady growth
+of a new plutocracy, the result, so far, of American wealth and American
+brides. In the first week of July, the outward things of the moment
+might have been thus summed up by any careful observer.
+
+On a certain Tuesday night, the debate on a private member's bill
+unexpectedly collapsed, and the House rose early. Ashe left the House
+with his secretary, but parted from him at the corner of Birdcage Walk,
+and crossed the park alone. He meant to join Kitty at a party in
+Piccadilly; there was just time to go home and dress; and he walked at a
+quick pace.
+
+Two members sitting on the same side of the House with himself were also
+going home. One of them noticed the Under-Secretary.
+
+"A very ineffective statement Ashe made to-night--don't you think so?"
+he said to his companion.
+
+"Very! Really, if the government can't take up a stronger line, the
+general public will begin to think there's something in it."
+
+"Oh, if you only shriek long enough and sharp enough in England
+something's sure to come of it. Cliffe and his group have been playing a
+very shrewd game. The government will get their agreement approved all
+right, but Cliffe has certainly made some people on our side uneasy.
+However--"
+
+"However, what?" said the other, after a moment.
+
+"I wish I thought that were the only reason for Ashe's change of tone,"
+said the first speaker, slowly.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+The two were intimate personal friends, belonging, moreover, to a group
+of evangelical families well known in English life; but even so, the
+answer came with reluctance:
+
+"Well, you see, it's not very easy to grapple in public with the man
+whose name all smart London happens to be coupling with that of your
+wife!"
+
+"I say"--the other stood still, in genuine consternation and
+distress--"you don't mean to say that there's that in it!"
+
+"You notice that the difference is not in _what_ Ashe says, but in _how_
+he says it. He avoids all personal collision with Cliffe. The government
+stick to their case, but Ashe mentions everybody but Cliffe, and
+confutes all arguments but his. And meanwhile, of course, the truth is
+that Cliffe is the head and front of the campaign, and if he threw up
+to-morrow, everything would quiet down."
+
+"And Lady Kitty is flirting with him at this particular moment? Damned
+bad taste and bad feeling, to say the least of it!"
+
+"You won't find one of the Bristol lot consider that kind of thing when
+their blood is up!" said the other. "You remember the tales of old Lord
+Blackwater?"
+
+"But is there really any truth in it? Or is it mere gossip?"
+
+"Well, I hear that the behavior of both of them at Grosville Park last
+week was such that Lady Grosville vows she will never ask either of them
+again. And at Ascot, at Lord's, the opera, Lady Kitty sits with him,
+talks with him, walks with him, the whole time, and won't look at any
+one else. They must be asked together or neither will come--and
+'society,' as far as I can make out, thinks it a good joke and is always
+making plans to throw them together."
+
+"Can't Lady Tranmore do anything?"
+
+"I don't know. They say she is very unhappy about it. Certainly she
+looks ill and depressed."
+
+"And Ashe?"
+
+His companion hesitated. "I don't like to say it, but, of course, you
+know there are many people who will tell you that Ashe doesn't care
+twopence what his wife does so long as she is nice to him, and he can
+read his books and carry on his politics as he pleases!"
+
+"Ashe always strikes me as the soul of honor," said the other,
+indignantly.
+
+"Of course--for himself. But a more fatalist believer in liberty than
+Ashe doesn't exist--liberty especially to damn yourself--if you must and
+will."
+
+"It would be hard to extend that doctrine to a wife," said the other,
+with a grave, uncomfortable laugh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile the man whose affairs they had been discussing walked home,
+wrapped in solitary and disagreeable thought. As he neared the
+Marlborough House corner a carriage passed him. It was delayed a moment
+by other carriages, and as it halted beside him Ashe recognized Lady
+M----, the hostess of the fancy ball, and a very old friend of his
+parents. He took off his hat. The lady within recognized him and
+inclined slightly--very slightly and stiffly. Ashe started a little and
+walked on.
+
+The meeting vividly recalled the ball, the _terminus a quo_ indeed from
+which the meditation in which he had been plunged since entering the
+park had started. Between six and seven weeks ago, was it? It might have
+been a century. He thought of Kitty as she was that night--Kitty
+pirouetting in her glittering dress, or bending over the boy, or holding
+her face to his as he kissed her on the stairs. Never since had she
+shown him the smallest glimpse of such a mood. What was wrong with her
+and with himself? Something, since May, had turned their life
+topsy-turvy, and it seemed to Ashe that in the general unprofitable rush
+of futile engagements he had never yet had time to stop and ask himself
+what it might be.
+
+Why, at any rate, was _he_ in this chafing irritation and discomfort?
+Why could he not deal with that fellow Cliffe as he deserved? And what
+in Heaven's name was the reason why old friends like Lady M---- were
+beginning to look at him coldly, and avoid his conversation?
+
+His mother, too! He gathered that quite lately there had been some
+disagreeable scene between her and Kitty. Kitty had resented some
+remonstrance of hers, and for some days now they had not met. Nor had
+Ashe seen his mother alone. Did she also avoid him, shrink from speaking
+out her real mind to him?
+
+Well, it was all monstrously absurd!--a great coil about nothing, as far
+as the main facts were concerned, although the annoyance and worry of
+the thing were indeed becoming serious. Kitty had no doubt taken a wild
+liking to Geoffrey Cliffe--
+
+"And, by George!" said Ashe, pausing in his walk, "she warned me."
+
+And there rose in his memory the formal garden at Grosville Park, the
+little figure at his side, and Kitty's franknesses--"I shall take mad
+fancies for people. I sha'n't be able to help it. I have one now, for
+Geoffrey Cliffe."
+
+He smiled. There was the difficulty! If only the people whose envious
+tongues were now wagging could see Kitty as she was, could understand
+what a gulf lay between her and the ordinary "fast" woman, there would
+be an end of this silly, ill-natured talk. Other women might be of the
+earth earthy. Kitty was a sprite, with all the irresponsibility of such
+incalculable creatures. The men and women--women especially--who
+gossiped and lied about her, who sent abominable paragraphs to
+scurrilous papers--he had one now in his pocket which had reached him at
+the House from an anonymous correspondent--spoke out of their own vile
+experience, judged her by their own standards. His mother, at any
+rate--he proudly thought--ought to know better than to be misled by them
+for a moment.
+
+At the same time, something must be done. It could not be denied that
+Kitty had been behaving like a romantic, excitable child with this
+unscrupulous man, whose record with regard to women was probably wholly
+unknown to her, however foolishly she might idealize the _liaison_
+commemorated in his poems. What had Kitty, indeed, been doing with
+herself this six weeks? Ashe tried to recall them in detail. Ascot,
+Lord's, innumerable parties in London and in the country, to some of
+which he had not been able to accompany her, owing to the stress of
+Parliamentary and official work. Grosville Park, for instance--he had
+been stopped at the last moment from going down there by the arrival of
+some important foreign news, and Kitty had gone alone. She had
+reappeared on the Monday, pale and furious, saying that she and her aunt
+had quarrelled, and that she would never go near the Grosvilles either
+in town or country again. She had not volunteered any further
+explanation, and Ashe had refrained from inquiry. There were in him
+certain disgusts and disdains, belonging to his general epicurean
+conception of existence, which not even his love for Kitty could
+overcome. One was a disdain for the quarrels of women. He supposed they
+were inevitable; he saw, by-the-way, that Kitty and Lady Parham were
+once more at daggers drawn; and Kitty seemed to enjoy it. Well, it was
+her own affair; but while there was a Greek play, or a Shakespeare
+sonnet, or even a Blue Book to read, who could expect him to listen?
+
+What had old Lady Grosville been about? He understood that Cliffe had
+been of the party. And Kitty must have done something to bring down upon
+her the wrath of the Puritanical mistress of the house.
+
+Well, what was he to do? It was now July. The session would last
+certainly till the middle of August, and though the American business
+would be disposed of directly, there was fresh trouble in the Balkan
+Peninsula, and an anxious situation in Egypt. Impossible that he should
+think of leaving his post. And as for the chance of a dissolution, the
+government was now a good deal stronger than it had been before
+Easter--worse luck!
+
+Of course he ought to take Kitty away. But short of resignation how was
+it to be done? And what, even, would resignation do--supposing, _per
+impossibile_, it could be thought of--but give to gnawing gossip a
+bigger bone, and probably irritate Kitty to the point of rebellion? Yet
+how induce her to go with any one else? Lady Tranmore was out of the
+question. Margaret French, perhaps?
+
+Then, suddenly, Ashe was assailed by an inner laughter, hollow and
+discomfortable. Things were come to a pretty pass when he must even
+dream of resigning because a man whom he despised would haunt his house,
+and absorb the company of his wife; when, moreover, he could not even
+think of a remedy for such a state of things without falling back
+dismayed from the certainty of Kitty's temper--Kitty's wild and furious
+temper.
+
+For during the last fortnight, as it seemed to Ashe, all the winds of
+tempest had been blowing through his house. Himself, the servants, even
+Margaret, even the child, had all suffered. He also had lost his temper
+several times--such a thing had scarcely happened to him since his
+childhood. He thought of it as of a kind of physical stain or weakness.
+To keep an even and stoical mind, to laugh where one could not
+conquer--this had always seemed to him the first condition of decent
+existence. And now to be wrangling over an expenditure, an engagement, a
+letter, the merest nothing--whether it was a fine day or it
+wasn't--could anything be more petty, degrading, intolerable?
+
+He vowed that this should stop. Whatever happened, he and Kitty should
+not degenerate into a pair of scolds--besmirch their life with quarrels
+as ugly as they were silly. He would wrestle with her, his beloved,
+unreasonable, foolish Kitty; he ought, of course, to have done so
+before. But it was only within the last week or so that the horizon had
+suddenly darkened--the thing grown serious. And now this beastly
+paragraph! But, after all, what did such garbage matter? It would of
+course be a comfort to thrash the editor. But our modern life breeds
+such creatures, and they have to be borne.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He let himself into a silent house. His letters lay on the hall-table.
+Among them was a handwriting which arrested him. He remembered, yet
+could not put a name to it. Then he turned the envelope. "H'm. Lady
+Grosville!" He read it, standing there, then thrust it into his pocket,
+thinking angrily that there seemed to be a good many fools in this world
+who occupied themselves with other people's business. Exaggeration, of
+course, damnable _parti pris_! When did she ever see Kitty except with a
+jaundiced eye? "I wonder Kitty condescends to go to the woman's house!
+She must know that everything she does is seen there _en noir_.
+Pharisaical, narrow-minded Philistines!"
+
+The letter acted as a tonic. Ashe was positively grateful to the "old
+gorgon" who wrote it. He ran up-stairs, his pulses tingling in defence
+of Kitty. He would show Lady Grosville that she could not write to him,
+at any rate, in that strain, with impunity.
+
+He took a candle from the landing, and opened his wife's door in order
+to pass through her room to his own. As he did so, he ran against
+Kitty's maid, Blanche, who was coming out. She shrank back as she saw
+him, but not before the light of his candle had shone full upon her. Her
+face was disfigured with tears, which were, indeed, still running down
+her cheeks.
+
+"Why, Blanche!" he said, standing still--then in the kind voice which
+endeared him to the servants--"I am afraid your brother is worse?"
+
+For the poor brother in hospital had passed through many vicissitudes
+since his operation, and the little maid's spirits had fluctuated
+accordingly.
+
+"Oh no, sir--no, sir!" said Blanche, drying her eyes and retreating into
+the shadows of the room, where only a faint flame of gas was burning.
+"It's not that, sir, thank you. I was just putting away her ladyship's
+things," she said, inconsequently, looking round the room.
+
+"That was hardly what caused the tears, was it?" said Ashe, smiling. "Is
+there anything in which Lady Kitty or I could help you?"
+
+The girl, who had always seemed to him on excellent terms with Kitty,
+gave a sudden sob.
+
+"Thank you, sir; I've just given her ladyship warning."
+
+"Indeed!" said Ashe, gravely. "I'm sorry for that. I thought you got on
+here very well."
+
+"I used to, sir, but this last few weeks there's nothing pleases her
+ladyship; you can't do anything right. I'm sure I've worked my hands
+off. But I can't do any more. Perhaps her ladyship will find some one
+else to suit her better."
+
+"Didn't her ladyship try to persuade you to stay?"
+
+"Yes--but--I gave warning once before, and then I stayed. And it's no
+good. It seems as if you must do wrong. And I don't sleep, sir. It gets
+on your nerves so. But I didn't mean to complain. Good-night, sir."
+
+"Good-night. Don't sit up for your mistress. You look tired out. I'll
+help her."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the maid, in a depressed voice, and went.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later, Ashe mounted the staircase of a well-known house in
+Piccadilly. The evening party was beginning to thin, but in a side
+drawing-room a fine Austrian band was playing Strauss, and some of the
+intimates of the house were dancing.
+
+Ashe at once perceived his wife. She was dancing with a clever Cambridge
+lad, a cousin of Madeleine Alcot's, who had long been one of her
+adorers. And so charming was the spectacle, so exhilarating were the
+youth and beauty of the pair, that Ashe presently suspected what was
+indeed the truth, that most of the persons gathering in the room were
+there to watch Kitty dance, rather than to dance themselves. He himself
+watched her, though he professed to be talking to his hostess, a woman
+of middle age, with honest eyes and a brow of command.
+
+"It is a delight to see Lady Kitty dance," she said to him, smiling.
+"But she is tired. I am sure she wants the country."
+
+"Like my boy," said Ashe. "I wish to goodness they'd both go."
+
+"Oh, I know it's hard to leave the husband toiling in town!" said his
+companion, who, as the daughter, wife, and mother of politicians, had
+had a long experience of official life.
+
+Ashe glanced at her--at her face moulded by kind and scrupulous
+living--with a sudden relief from tension. Clearly no gossip had reached
+her. He lingered beside her, for the sheer pleasure of talking to her.
+But their _tête-à-tête_ was soon interrupted by the approach of Lady
+Parham, with a daughter--a slim and silent girl, to whom, it was
+whispered, her mother was giving "a last chance" this season, before
+sending her into the country as a failure, and bringing out her younger
+sister.
+
+Lady Parham greeted the hostess with effusion. It was a rich house, and
+these small, informal dances were said to be more helpful to matrimonial
+development than larger affairs. Then she perceived Ashe, and her whole
+manner changed. There was a very evident bristling, and she gave him a
+greeting deliberately careless.
+
+"Confound the woman!" thought Ashe, and his own pride rose.
+
+"Working as hard as usual, Lady Parham?" he asked her, with a smile.
+
+"If you like to put it so," was the stiff reply. "There is, of course, a
+good deal of going out."
+
+"I hope, if I may say so, you don't allow Lord Parham to do too much of
+it."
+
+"Lord Parham never was better in his life," said Lord Parham's spouse,
+with the air of putting down an impertinence.
+
+"That's good news. I must say when I saw him this afternoon I thought he
+seemed to be feeling his work a good deal."
+
+"Oh, he's worried," said Lady Parham, sharply. "Worried about a good
+many things." She turned suddenly, and looked at her companion--an
+insolent and deliberate look.
+
+"Ah, that's where the wives come in!" replied Ashe, unperturbed. "Look
+at Mrs. Loraine. She has the art to perfection--hasn't she? The way she
+cushions Loraine is something wonderful to see."
+
+Lady Parham flushed angrily. The suggested comparison between herself,
+and that incessant rattle and blare of social event through which she
+dragged her husband--conducting thereby a vulgar campaign of her own, as
+arduous as his and far more ambitious--and the ways and character of
+gentle Mrs. Loraine, absorbed in the man she adored, scatter-brained and
+absent-minded towards the rest of the world, but for him all eyes and
+ears, an angel of shelter and protection--this did not now reach the
+Prime Minister's wife for the first time. But she had no opportunity to
+launch a retort, even supposing she had one ready, for the music ceased,
+and the tide of dancers surged towards the doors. It brought Kitty
+abruptly face to face with Lady Parham.
+
+"Oh! how d'you do?" said Kitty, in a tone that was already an offence,
+and she held out a small hand with an indescribably regal air.
+
+Lady Parham just touched it, glanced at the owner from top to toe, and
+walked away. Kitty slipped in beside Ashe for a moment, with her back to
+the wall, laughing and breathless.
+
+"I say, Kitty," said Ashe, bending over her and speaking in her small
+ear, "I thought Lady Parham was eternally obliged to us. What's wrong
+with her?"
+
+"Only that I can't stand her," said Kitty. "What's the good of trying?"
+She looked up, a flame of mutiny in her cheeks.
+
+"What, indeed?" said Ashe, feeling as reckless as she. "Her manners are
+beyond the bounds. But look here, Kitty, don't you think you'll come
+home? You know you do look uncommonly tired."
+
+Kitty frowned.
+
+"Home? Why, I'm only just beginning to enjoy myself! Take me into the
+cool, please," she said to the boy who had been dancing with her, and
+who still hovered near, in case his divinity might allow him yet a few
+more minutes. But as she put out her hand to take his arm, Ashe saw her
+waver and look suddenly across the room.
+
+A group parted that had been clustering round a farther door, and Ashe
+perceived Cliffe, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed. He
+was surrounded by pretty women, with whom he seemed to be carrying on a
+bantering warfare. Involuntarily Ashe watched for the recognition
+between him and Kitty. Did Kitty's lips move? Was there a signal? If so,
+it passed like a flash; Kitty hurried away, and Ashe was left, haughtily
+furious with himself that, for the first time in his life, he had played
+the spy.
+
+He turned in his discomfort to leave the dancing-room. He himself
+enjoyed society frankly enough. Especially since his marriage had he
+found the companionship of agreeable women delightful. He went
+instinctively to seek it, and drive out this nonsense from his mind.
+Just inside the larger drawing-room, however, he came across Mary
+Lyster, sitting in a corner apparently alone. Mary greeted him, but
+with an evident coldness. Her manner brought back all the preoccupations
+of his walk from the House. In spite of her small cordiality, he sat
+down beside her, wondering with a vicarious compunction at what point
+her fortunes might be, and how Kitty's proceedings might have already
+affected them. But he had not yet succeeded in thawing her when a voice
+behind him said:
+
+"This is my dance, I think, Miss Lyster. Where shall we sit it out?"
+
+Ashe moved at once. Mary looked up, hesitated visibly, then rose and
+took Geoffrey Cliffe's arm.
+
+"Just read your remarks this evening," said Cliffe to Ashe. "Well, now,
+I suppose to-morrow will see your ship in port?"
+
+For it was reasonably expected that the morrow would see the American
+agreement ratified by a substantial ministerial majority.
+
+"Certainly. But you may at least reflect that you have lost us a deal of
+time."
+
+"And now you slay us," said Cliffe. "Ah, well--'_dulce et decorum est_,'
+etcetera."
+
+"Don't imagine that you'll get many of the honors of martyrdom," laughed
+Ashe--in Cliffe's eyes an offensive and triumphant figure, as he leaned
+carelessly upon a marble pedestal that carried a bust of Horace Walpole.
+
+"Why?" Cliffe's hand had gone instinctively to his mustache. Mary had
+dropped his arm, and now stood quietly beside him, pale and somewhat
+jaded, her fine eyes travelling between the speakers.
+
+"Why? Because the heresies have no martyrs. The halo is for the true
+Church!"
+
+"H'm!" said Cliffe, with a reflective sneer. "I suppose you mean for the
+successful?"
+
+"Do I?" said Ashe, with nonchalance. "Aren't the true Church the people
+who are justified by the event?"
+
+"The orthodox like to think so," said Cliffe. "But the heretics have a
+way of coming out top."
+
+"Does that mean you chaps are going to win at the next election? I
+devoutly hope you may--_we_'re all as stale as ditch-water--and as for
+places, anybody's welcome to mine!" And so saying, Ashe lounged away,
+attracted by the bow and smile of a pretty Frenchwoman, with whom it was
+always agreeable to chat.
+
+"Ashe trifles it as usual," said Cliffe, as he and Mary forced a passage
+into one of the smaller rooms. "Is there anything in the world that he
+really cares about?"
+
+Mary looked at him with a start. It was almost on her lips to say, "Yes!
+his wife." She only just succeeded in driving the words back.
+
+"His not caring is a pretence," she said. "At least, Lady Tranmore
+thinks so. She believes that he is becoming absorbed in politics--much
+more ambitious than she ever thought he would be."
+
+"That's the way of mothers," said Cliffe, with a sarcastic lip. "They
+have got to make the best of their sons. Tell me what you are going to
+do this summer."
+
+He had thrown one arm round the back of a chair, and sat looking down
+upon her, his colorless fair hair falling thick upon his brow, and
+giving by contrast a strange inhuman force to the dark and singular eyes
+beneath. He had a way of commanding a woman's attention by flashes of
+brusquerie, melting when he chose into a homage that had in it the note
+of an older world, a world that had still leisure for, passion and its
+refinements, a world still within sight of that other which had produced
+the _Carte du tendre_. Perhaps it was this, combined with the
+virilities, not to be questioned, of his aspect, the signs of hard
+physical endurance in the face burned by desert suns, and the
+suggestions of a frame too lean and gaunt for drawing-rooms, that gave
+him his spell and preserved it.
+
+Mary's conversation with him consisted at first of much cool fencing on
+her part, which gradually slipped back, as he intended it should, into
+some of the tones of intimacy. Each meanwhile was conscious of a secret
+range of thoughts--hers concerned with the effort and struggle, the
+bitter disappointments and disillusions of the past six weeks; and his
+with the schemes he had cherished in the East and on the way home, of
+marrying Mary Lyster, or more correctly, Mary Lyster's money, and so
+resigning himself to the inevitable boredoms of an English existence.
+For her the mental horizon was full of Kitty--Kitty insolent,
+Kitty triumphant. For him, too, Kitty made the background of
+thought--environed, however, with clouds of indecision and resistance
+that would have raised happiness in Mary could she have divined them.
+
+For he was now not easy to capture. There had been enough and more than
+enough of women in his life. The game of politics must somehow replace
+them henceforth, if, indeed, anything were still worth while, except the
+long day in the saddle and the dawn of new mornings in untrodden lands.
+
+Mingled, all these, with hot dislike of Ashe, with the fascination of
+Kitty, and a kind of venomous pleasure in the commotion produced by his
+pursuit of her; inter penetrated, moreover, through and through with the
+memory of his one true feeling, and of the woman who had died, alienated
+from and despising him. He and Mary passed a profitless half-hour. He
+would have liked to propitiate her, but he had no notion what he should
+do with the propitiation, if it were reached. He wanted her money, but
+he was beginning to feel with restlessness that he could not pay the
+cost. The poet in him was still strong, crossed though it were by the
+adventurer.
+
+He took her back to the dancing-room. Mary walked beside him with a
+dull, fierce sense of wrong. It was Kitty, of course, who had done
+it--Kitty who had taken him away from her.
+
+"That's finished," said Cliffe to himself, with a long breath of relief,
+as he delivered her into the hands of her partner. "Now for the other!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thenceforward, no one saw Kitty and no one danced with her. She spent
+her time in beflowered corners, or remote drawing-rooms, with Geoffrey
+Cliffe. Ashe heard her voice in the distance once or twice, answering a
+voice he detested; he looked into the supper-room with a lady on his
+arm, and across it he saw Kitty, with her white elbow on the table and
+her hand propping a face that was turned--half mocking and yet wholly
+absorbed--to Cliffe. He saw her flitting across vistas or disappearing
+through far doorways, but always with that sinister figure in
+attendance.
+
+His mind was divided between a secret fury--roused in him by the pride
+of a man of high birth and position, who has always had the world at
+command, and now sees an impertinence offered him which he does not know
+how to punish--and a mood of irony. Cliffe's persecution of Kitty was a
+piece of confounded bad manners. But to look at it with the round,
+hypocritical eyes some of these people were bringing to bear on it was
+really too much! Let them look to their own affairs--they needed it.
+
+At last the party broke up. Kitty touched him on the shoulder as he was
+standing on the stairs, apparently absorbed in a teasing skirmish with a
+charming child in her first season, who thought him the most delightful
+of men.
+
+"I'm ready, William."
+
+He turned sharply, and saw that she was alone.
+
+"Come along, then! In five minutes more I should have been asleep on the
+stairs."
+
+They descended. Kitty went for her cloak. Ashe sent for the carriage. As
+he was standing on the steps Cliffe pushed past him and called for a
+hansom. It came in the rear of two or three carriages already under the
+portico. He ran along the pavement and jumped in. The doors were just
+being shut by the linkman when a little figure in a white cloak flew
+down the steps of the house and held up a hand to the driver of the
+hansom.
+
+"Do you see that?" said Lady Parham, in a voice of suppressed but
+contemptuous amazement, as she turned to Mary Lyster, who was driving
+home with her. "Call my carriage, please!" she said, imperiously, to one
+of the footmen at the door. Her carriage, as it happened, was
+immediately behind the hansom; but the hansom could not move because of
+the small lady who had jumped upon the step and was leaning eagerly
+forward.
+
+There was a clamor of shouting voices: "Move on, cabby! Move on!" "Stand
+clear, ma'am, please," said the driver, while Cliffe opened the door of
+the cab, and seemed about to jump down again.
+
+"Who is it?" said an impatient judge behind Lady Parham. "What's the
+matter?"
+
+Lady Parham shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It's Lady Kitty Ashe," whispered the _débutante_, who was the judge's
+daughter, "talking to Mr. Cliffe. Isn't she pretty?"
+
+A sudden silence fell upon the group in the porch. Kitty's high, clear
+laugh seemed to ring back into the house. Then Ashe ran down the steps.
+
+"Kitty, don't stop the way." He peremptorily drew her back.
+
+Cliffe raised his hat, fell back into the hansom, and the man whipped up
+his horse.
+
+Kitty came back to the outer hall with Ashe. Her cheeks had a rose
+flush, her wild eyes laughed at the crowd on the steps, without really
+seeing them.
+
+"Are you going with Lady Parham?" she said, absently, to Mary Lyster.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Kitty looked up and Ashe saw the two faces as she and Mary confronted
+each other--the contempt in Mary's, the startled wrath in Kitty's.
+
+"Come, Miss Lyster!" said Lady Parham, and pushing past the Ashes
+without a good-night, she hurried to her carriage, drawing up the glass
+with a hasty hand, though the night was balmy.
+
+For a few moments none of those left on the steps spoke, except to fret
+in undertones for an absent carriage. Then Ashe saw his own groom, and
+stormed at him for delay. In another minute he and Kitty were in the
+carriage, and the figures under the porch dropped out of sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Better not do that again, Kitty, I think," said Ashe.
+
+Kitty glanced at him. But both voice and manner were as usual. "Why
+shouldn't I?" she said, haughtily; he saw that she had grown very white.
+"I was telling Geoffrey where to find me at Lord's."
+
+Ashe winced at the "Archangelism" of the Christian name.
+
+"You kept Lady Parham waiting."
+
+"What does that matter?" said Kitty, with an angry laugh.
+
+"And you did Cliffe too much honor," said Ashe. "It's the men who should
+stand on the steps--not the women!"
+
+Kitty sat erect. "What do you mean?" she said, in a low, menacing voice.
+
+"Just what I say," was the laughing reply.
+
+Kitty threw herself back in her corner, and could not be induced to open
+her lips or look at her companion till they reached home.
+
+On the landing, however, outside her bedroom, she turned and said:
+"Don't, please, say impertinent things to me again!" And drawn up to her
+full height, the most childish and obstinate of tragedy queens, she
+swept into her room.
+
+Ashe went into his dressing-room. And almost immediately afterwards he
+heard the key turn in the lock which separated his room from Kitty's.
+
+For the first time since their marriage! He threw himself on his bed,
+and passed some sleepless hours. Then fatigue had its way. When he
+awoke, there was a gray dawn in the room, and he was conscious of
+something pressing against his bed. Half asleep, he raised himself and
+saw Kitty, in a long white dressing-gown, sitting curled up on the
+floor, or rather on a pillow, her head resting on the edge of the bed.
+In a glass opposite he saw the languid grace of her slight form and the
+cloud of her hair.
+
+"Kitty"--he tried to shake himself into full consciousness--"do go to
+bed!"
+
+"Lie down," said Kitty, lifting her arm and pressing him down, "and
+don't say anything. I shall go to sleep."
+
+He lay down obediently. Presently he felt that her cheek was resting on
+one of his hands, and in his semi-consciousness he laid the other on her
+hair. Then they both fell asleep.
+
+His dreams were a medley of the fancy ball and of some pageant scene in
+which Iris and Ceres appeared, and there was a rustic dance of maidens
+and shepherds. Then a murmur as of thunder ran through the scene,
+followed by darkness. He half woke, in a hot distress, but the soft
+cheek was still there, his hand still felt the silky curls, and sleep
+recaptured him.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+When Ashe woke up in earnest he was alone. He sprang up in bed and
+looked round the darkened room, ashamed of his long sleep; but there was
+no sign of Kitty.
+
+After dressing, he knocked, as usual, at Kitty's door.
+
+"Oh, come in," cried Kitty's lightest voice. "Margaret's here; but if
+you don't mind her, she won't mind you."
+
+Ashe entered. Kitty, as was her wont four days out of the seven, was
+breakfasting in bed. Margaret French was beside her with a batch of
+notes, mostly bills and unanswered invitations, with which she was
+trying to make Kitty cope.
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Ashe," Margaret lifted a smiling face. "I had to be out
+on business for my brother all day, so I thought I'd come early and
+remind Kitty of some of these tiresome things while there was still a
+chance of finding her."
+
+"I don't know why guardian angels excuse themselves," said Ashe, as they
+shook hands.
+
+"Oh, dear, what a lot of them there are!" said Kitty, tossing over the
+notes with a bored air. "Refuse them all, Margaret; I'm tired to death
+of dining out."
+
+"Not all, I think," pleaded Margaret. "Here's that nice woman--you
+remember--who wanted to thank Mr. Ashe for what he'd done for her son.
+You promised to dine with her."
+
+"Did I?" Kitty wriggled with annoyance. "Well, then, I suppose we must.
+What did William do for her? When I ask him to do something for the
+nicest boys in the world, he won't lift a finger."
+
+"I gave him some introductions in Berlin," laughed Ashe. "What you
+generally want me to do, Kitty, is to stuff the public service with
+good-looking idiots. And there I really can't oblige you."
+
+"Every one knows that corruption gets the best men," said Kitty. "Hullo,
+what's that?" and she lifted a dinner-card, and looked at it strangely.
+
+"My dear Kitty! when did it come?" exclaimed Margaret French, in dismay.
+
+It was a dinner-card, whereby Lord and Lady Parham requested the honor
+of Mr. and Lady Kitty Ashe's company at dinner, on a date somewhere
+within the first week of July.
+
+Ashe bent over to look at it.
+
+"I think that came ten days ago," he said, quietly. "I imagined Kitty
+accepted it."
+
+"I never thought of it from that day to this," said Kitty, who had
+clasped her hands behind her head and was staring at the ceiling. "Say,
+please, that"--she spaced out the words deliberately--"Mr. and Lady
+Kitty Ashe--are unable to accept--Lord and Lady Parham's
+invitation--etc.--"
+
+"Kitty!" said Margaret, firmly, "there must be a 'regret' and a 'kind.'
+Think! Ten days! The party is next week!"
+
+"No 'regret,' and no 'kind'!" said Kitty, still staring overhead. "It's
+my affair, please, Margaret, altogether. And I'll see the note before it
+goes, or you'll be putting in civilities."
+
+Margaret, in despair, looked entreatingly at Ashe. He and she had often
+conspired before this to soften down Kitty's enormities. But he said
+nothing--made not the smallest sign.
+
+With difficulty Margaret got a few more directions out of Kitty, over
+whom a shade of sombre taciturnity had now fallen. Then, saying she
+would write the notes down-stairs and come back, she gathered up her
+basketful of letters and departed.
+
+As soon as she was alone with Ashe, Kitty took up a novel beside her,
+and pretended to be absorbed in it.
+
+He hesitated a moment, then he stooped over her and took her hand.
+
+"Why did you come in to visit me, Kitty?" he said, in a low voice.
+
+"I don't know," was her indifferent reply, and her hand pulled itself
+away, though not with violence.
+
+"I wish I could understand you, Kitty." His tone was not quite steady.
+
+"Well, I don't understand myself!" said Kitty, shortly, reaching out for
+a bunch of roses that Margaret had just brought her, and burying her
+face among them.
+
+"Perhaps, if you submitted the problem to me," said Ashe, laughing, "we
+might be able to thresh it out together!"
+
+He folded his arms and leaned against the foot of the bed, delighting
+his eyes with the vision of her amid the folds of muslin and lace, and
+all the costly refinements of pillow and coverlet with which she liked
+to surround herself at that hour of the morning. She might have been a
+French princess of the old regime, receiving her court.
+
+Kitty shook her head. The roses fell idly from her hands, and made
+bright patches of blush pink about her. Ashe went on:
+
+"Anyway, dear, don't give silly tongues _too_ good a handle!"
+
+He threw her a gay comrade's look, as though to say that they both knew
+the folly of the world, but he perhaps the better, as he was the elder.
+
+"You mean," said Kitty, calmly, "that I am not to talk so much to
+Geoffrey Cliffe?"
+
+"Is he worth it?" said Ashe. "That's what I want to know--worth the fuss
+that some people make?"
+
+"It's the fuss and the people that drive one on," said Kitty, under her
+breath.
+
+"You flatter them too much, darling! Do you think you were quite kind to
+me last night?--let's put it that way. I looked a precious fool, you
+know, standing on those steps, while you were keeping old Mother Parham
+and the whole show waiting!"
+
+She looked at him a moment in silence, at his heightened color and
+insistent eyes.
+
+"I can't think what made you marry me," she said, slowly.
+
+Ashe laughed, and came nearer.
+
+"And I can't think," he said, in a lower voice, "what made you come--if
+you weren't a little bit sorry--and lean your dear head against me like
+that, last night."
+
+"I wasn't sorry--I couldn't sleep," was her quick reply, while her eyes
+strove to keep up their war with his.
+
+A knock was heard at the door. Ashe moved hastily away. Kitty's maid
+entered.
+
+"I was to tell you, sir, that your breakfast was ready. And Lady
+Tranmore's servant has brought this note."
+
+Ashe took it and thrust it into his pocket.
+
+"Get my things ready, please," said Kitty to her maid. Ashe felt himself
+dismissed and went.
+
+As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang out of bed, threw on a
+dressing-gown, and ran across to Blanche, who was bending over a chest
+of drawers. "Why did you say those foolish things to me yesterday?" she
+demanded, taking the girl impetuously by the arm, and so startling her
+that she nearly dropped the clothes she held.
+
+"They weren't foolish, my lady," said Blanche, sullenly, with averted
+eyes.
+
+"They were!" cried Kitty. "Of course, I'm a vixen--I always was. But you
+know, Blanche, I'm not always as bad as I have been lately. Very soon I
+shall be quite charming again--you'll see!"
+
+"I dare say, my lady." Blanche went on sorting and arranging the
+_lingerie_ she had taken out of the drawer.
+
+Kitty sat down beside her, nursing a bare foot which was crossed over
+the other.
+
+"You know how I abused you about my hair, Blanche? Well, Mrs. Alcot
+said, that very night, she never saw it so well done. She thought it
+must be Pierrefitte's best man. Wasn't it hellish of me? I knew quite
+well you'd done it beautifully."
+
+The maid said nothing, but a tear fell on one of Kitty's night-dresses.
+
+"And you remember the green garibaldi--last week? I just loathed
+it--because you'd forgotten that little black rosette."
+
+"No!" said Blanche, looking up; "your ladyship had never ordered it."
+
+"I did--I did! But never mind. Two of my friends have wanted to copy it,
+Blanche. They wouldn't believe it was done by a maid. They said it had
+such style. One of them would engage you to-morrow if you really want to
+go--"
+
+A silence.
+
+"But you won't go, Blanchie, will you?" said Kitty's silver voice. "I'm
+a horrid fiend, but I did get Mr. Ashe to help your young man--and I did
+care about your poor brother--and--and--" she stroked the girl's arm--"I
+do look rather nice when I'm dressed, don't I? You wouldn't like a great
+gawk to dress, would you?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't want to leave your ladyship," said the girl, choking.
+"But I can't have no more--"
+
+"No more ructions?" said Kitty, meditating. "H'm, of course that's
+serious, because I'm made so. Well, now, look here, Blanchie, you won't
+give me warning again for a fortnight, whatever I do, mind. And if by
+then I'm past praying for, you may. And I'll import a Russian--or a
+Choctaw--who won't understand when I call her names. Is that a bargain,
+Blanchie?"
+
+The maid hesitated.
+
+"Just a fortnight!" said Kitty, in her most seductive tones.
+
+"Very well, my lady."
+
+Kitty jumped up, waltzed round the room, the white silk skirts of her
+dressing-gown floating far and wide, then thrust her feet into her
+slippers, and began to dress as though nothing had happened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when her toilette was accomplished, Kitty having dismissed her maid,
+sat for some time in front of her mirror in a brown study.
+
+"What _is_ the matter with me?" she thought. "William is an angel, and I
+love him. And I can't do what he wants--I _can't_!" She drew a long,
+troubled breath. The lips of the face reflected in the glass were dry
+and colorless, the eyes had a strange, shrinking expression. "People
+_are_ possessed--I know they are. They can't help themselves. I began
+this to punish Mary--and now--when I don't see Geoffrey, everything is
+odious and dreary. I can't care for anything. Of course, I ought to care
+for William's politics. I expect I've done him harm--I know I have.
+What's wrong with me?"
+
+But suddenly, in the very midst of her self-examination, the emotion and
+excitement that she had felt of late in her long conversations with
+Cliffe returned upon her, filling her at once with poignant memory and a
+keen expectation to which she yielded herself as a wild sea-bird to the
+rocking of the sea. They had started--those conversations--from her
+attempt to penetrate the secret history of the man whose poems had
+filled her with a thrilling sense of feelings and passions beyond her
+ken--untrodden regions, full, no doubt, of shadow and of poison, but
+infinitely alluring to one whose nature was best summed up in the two
+words, curiosity and daring. She had not found it quite easy. Cliffe, as
+we know, had resented the levity of her first attempt. But when she
+renewed it, more seriously and sweetly, combining with it a number of
+subtle flatteries, the flattery of her beauty and her position, of the
+private interest she could not help showing in the man who was her
+husband's public antagonist, and of an admiration for his poems which
+was not so much mere praise as an actual covetous sharing in them, a
+making their ideas and their music her own--Cliffe could not in the end
+resist her. After all, so far, she only asked him to talk of himself,
+and for a man of his type the process is the very breath of his being,
+the stimulus and liberation of all his powers.
+
+So that before they knew they were in the midst of the most burning
+subjects of human discussion--at first in a manner comparatively veiled
+and general, then with the sharpest personal reference to Cliffe's own
+story, as the intimacy between them grew. Jealousy, suffering, the "hard
+cases" of passion--why men are selfish and exacting, why women mislead
+and torment--the ugly waste and crudity of death--it was among these
+great themes they found themselves. Death above all--it was to a thought
+of death that Cliffe's harsh face owed its chief spell perhaps in
+Kitty's eyes. A woman had died for love of him, crushed by his jealousy
+and her own self-scorn. So Kitty had been told; and Cliffe's tortured
+vanity would not deny it. How could she have cared so much? That was the
+puzzle.
+
+But this vicarious relation had now passed into a relation of her own.
+Cliffe was to Kitty a problem--and a problem which, beyond a certain
+point, defied her. The element of sex, of course, entered in, but only
+as intensifying the contrasts and mysteries of imagination. And he made
+her feel these contrasts and mysteries as she had never yet felt them;
+and so he enlarged the world for her, he plunged her, if only by
+contact with his own bitter and irritable genius, into new regions of
+sentiment and feeling. For in spite of the vulgar elements in him there
+were also elements of genius. The man was a poet and a thinker, though
+he were at the same time, in some sense, an adventurer. His mind was
+stored with eloquent and beautiful imagery, the poetry of others, and
+poetry of his own. He could pursue the meanest personal objects in an
+unscrupulous way; but he had none the less passed through a wealth of
+tragic circumstance; he had been face to face with his own soul in the
+wilds of the earth; he had met every sort of physical danger with
+contempt; and his arrogant, imperious temper was of the kind which
+attracts many women, especially, perhaps, women physically small and
+intellectually fearless, like Kitty, who feel in it a challenge to their
+power and their charm.
+
+His society, then, had in these six weeks become, for Kitty, a
+passion--a passion of the imagination. For the man himself, she would
+probably have said that she felt more repulsion than anything else. But
+it was a repulsion that held her, because of the constant sense of
+reaction, of on-rushing life, which it excited in herself.
+
+Add to these the elements of mischief and defiance in the situation, the
+snatching him from Mary, her enemy and slanderer, the defiance of Lady
+Grosville and all other hypocritical tyrants, the pride of dragging at
+her chariot wheels a man whom most people courted even when they loathed
+him, who enjoyed, moreover, an astonishing reputation abroad, especially
+in that France which Kitty adored, as a kind of modern Byron, the only
+Englishman who could still display in public the "pageant of a bleeding
+heart," without making himself ridiculous, and perhaps enough has been
+heaped together to explain the infatuation that now, like a wild spring
+gust on a shining lake, was threatening to bring Kitty's light bark into
+dangerous waters.
+
+"I don't care for him," she said to herself, as she sat thinking alone,
+"but I must see him--I _will_! And I will talk to him as I please, and
+where I please!"
+
+Her small frame stiffened under the obstinacy of her resolution. Kitty's
+will at a moment of this kind was a fatality--so strong was it, and so
+irrational.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, down-stairs, Ashe himself was wrestling with another phase of
+the same situation. Lady Tranmore's note had said: "I shall be with you
+almost immediately after you receive this, as I want to catch you before
+you go to the Foreign Office."
+
+Accordingly, they were in the library, Ashe on the defensive, Lady
+Tranmore nervous, embarrassed, and starting at a sound. Both of them
+watched the door. Both looked for and dreaded the advent of Kitty.
+
+"Dear William," said his mother at last, stretching her hand across a
+small table which stood between them and laying it on her son's, "you'll
+forgive me, won't you?--even if I do seem to you prudish and absurd. But
+I am afraid you _ought_ to tell Kitty some of the unkind things people
+are saying! You know I've tried, and she wouldn't listen to me. And you
+ought to beg her--yes, William, indeed you ought!--not to give any
+further occasion for them."
+
+She looked at him anxiously, full Of that timidity which haunts the
+deepest and tenderest affections. She had just given him to read a
+letter from Lady Grosville to herself. Ashe ran through it, then laid it
+down with a gesture of scorn.
+
+"Kitty apparently enjoyed a moonlight walk with Cliffe. Why shouldn't
+she? Lady Grosville thinks the moon was made to sleep by--other people
+don't."
+
+"But, William!--at night--when everybody had gone to bed--escaping from
+the house--they two alone!"
+
+Lady Tranmore looked at him entreatingly, as though driven to protest,
+and yet hating the sound of her own words.
+
+Ashe laughed. He was smoking with an air so nonchalant that his mother's
+heart sank. For she divined that criticism in the society around her
+which she was never allowed to hear. Was it true, indeed, that his
+natural indolence could not rouse itself even to the defence of a young
+wife's reputation?
+
+"All the fault of the Grosvilles," said Ashe, after a moment, lighting
+another cigarette, "in shutting up their great heavy house, and drawing
+their great heavy curtains on a May night, when all reasonable people
+want to be out-of-doors. My dear mother, what's the good of paying any
+attention to what people like Lady Grosville say of people like Kitty?
+You might as well expect Deborah to hit it off with Ariel!"
+
+"William, don't laugh!" said his mother, in distress. "Geoffrey Cliffe
+is not a man to be trusted. You and I know that of old. He is a boaster,
+and--"
+
+"And a liar!" said Ashe, quietly. "Oh! I know that."
+
+"And yet he has this power over women--one ought to look it in the
+face. William, dearest William!" she leaned over and clasped his hand
+close in both hers, "do persuade Kitty to go away from London now--at
+once!"
+
+"Kitty won't go," said Ashe, quietly, "I am sorry, dear mother. I hate
+that you should be worried. But there's the fact. Kitty won't go!"
+
+"Then use your authority," said Lady Tranmore.
+
+"I have none."
+
+"William!" Ashe rose from his seat, and began to walk up and down. His
+aspect of competence and dignity, as of a man already accustomed to
+command and destined to a high experience, had never been more marked
+than at the very moment of this helpless utterance. His mother looked at
+him with mingled admiration and amazement.
+
+Presently he paused beside her.
+
+"I should like you to understand me, mother. I cannot fight with Kitty.
+Before I asked her to marry me, I made up my mind to that. I knew then
+and I know now that nothing but disaster could come of it. She must be
+free, and I shall not attempt to coerce her."
+
+"Or to protect her!" cried his mother.
+
+"As to that, I shall do what I can. But I clearly foresaw when we
+married that we should scandalize a good many of the weaker brethren."
+
+He smiled, but, as it seemed to his mother, with some effort.
+
+"William! as a public man--"
+
+He interrupted her.
+
+"If I can be both Kitty's husband and a public man, well and good. If
+not, then I shall be--"
+
+"Kitty's husband?" cried Lady Tranmore, with an accent of bitterness,
+almost of sarcasm, of which she instantly repented her. She changed her
+tone.
+
+"It is, of course, Kitty, first and foremost, who is concerned in your
+public position," she said, more gently. "Dearest William--she is so
+young still--she probably doesn't quite understand, in spite of her
+great cleverness. But she _does_ care--she _must_ care--and she ought to
+know what slight things may sometimes affect a man's prospects and
+future in this country."
+
+Ashe said nothing. He turned on his heel and resumed his pacing. Lady
+Tranmore looked at him in perplexity.
+
+"William, I heard a rumor last night--"
+
+He held his cigarette suspended.
+
+"Lord Crashaw told me that the resignations would certainly be in the
+papers this week, and that the ministry would go on--after a
+rearrangement of posts. Is it true?"
+
+Ashe resumed his cigarette.
+
+"True--as to the facts--so far as I know. As to the date, Lord Crashaw
+knows, I think, no more than I do. It may be this week, it may be next
+month."
+
+"Then I hear--thank goodness I never see her," Elizabeth went on,
+reluctantly--"that that dreadful woman, Lady Parham, is more infuriated
+than ever--"
+
+"With Kitty? Let her be! It really doesn't matter an old shoe, either to
+Kitty or me."
+
+"She can be a most bitter enemy, William. And she certainly influences
+Lord Parham."
+
+Ashe smoked and smiled. Lady Tranmore saw that his pride, too, had been
+aroused, and that here he was likely to prove as obstinate as Kitty.
+
+"I wish I could get her out of my mind!" she sighed.
+
+Ashe glanced at her kindly.
+
+"I daresay we shall hold our own. Xanthippe is not beloved, and I don't
+believe Parham will let her interfere with what he thinks best for the
+party. Will it pay to put me in the cabinet or not?--that's what he'll
+ask. I shall be strongly backed, too, by most of our papers."
+
+A number of thoughts ran through Lady Tranmore's brain. With her long
+experience of London, she knew well what the sudden lowering of a man's
+"consideration"--to use a French word--at a critical moment may mean. A
+cooling of the general regard--a breath of detraction coming no one
+knows whence--and how soon new claims emerge, and the indispensable of
+yesterday becomes the negligible of to-day!
+
+But even if she could have brought herself to put any of these anxieties
+into words, she had no opportunity. Kitty's voice was in the hall; the
+handle turned, and she ran in.
+
+"William! Ah!--I didn't know mother was here."
+
+She went up to Elizabeth, and lightly kissed that lady's cheek.
+
+"Good-morning. William, I just came to tell you that I may be late for
+dinner, so perhaps you had better dine at the House. I am going on the
+river."
+
+"Are you?" said Ashe, gathering up his papers. "Wish I was."
+
+"Are you going with the Crashaw's party?" asked Elizabeth. "I know they
+have one."
+
+"Oh, dear, no!" said Kitty. "I hate a crowd on the river. I am going
+with Geoffrey Cliffe."
+
+Ashe bent over his desk. Lady Tranmore's eyebrows went up, and she could
+not restrain the word:
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"_Naturellement_!" laughed Kitty. "He reads me French poetry, and we
+talk French. We let Madeleine Alcot come once, but her accent was so
+shocking that Geoffrey wouldn't have her again!"
+
+Lady Tranmore flushed deeply. The "Geoffrey" seemed to her intolerable.
+Kitty, arrayed in the freshest of white gowns, walked away to the
+farther end of the library to consult a _Bradshaw_. Elizabeth, looking
+up, caught her son's eyes--and the mingled humor and vexation in them,
+wherewith he appealed to her, as it were, to see the whole silly
+business as he himself did. Lady Tranmore felt a moment's strong
+reaction. Had she indeed been making a foolish fuss about nothing?
+
+Yet the impression left by the miserable meditations of her night was
+still deep enough to make her say--with just a signal from eye and lips,
+so that Kitty neither saw nor heard--"Don't let her go!"
+
+Ashe shook his head. He moved towards the door, and stood there
+despatch-box in hand, throwing a last look at his wife.
+
+"Don't be late, Kitty--or I shall be nervous. I don't trust Cliffe on
+the river. And please make it a rule that, in locks, he stops quoting
+French poetry."
+
+Kitty turned round, startled and apparently annoyed by his tone.
+
+"He is an excellent oar," she said, shortly.
+
+"Is he? At Oxford we tried him for the Torpids--" Ashe's shrug completed
+his remark. Then, still disregarding another imploring look from Lady
+Tranmore, he left the room.
+
+Kitty had flushed angrily. The belittling, malicious note in Ashe's
+manner had been clear enough. She braced herself against it, and Lady
+Tranmore's chance was lost. For when, summoning all her courage, and
+quite uncertain whether her son would approve or blame her, Elizabeth
+approached her daughter-in-law affectionately, trying in timid and
+apologetic words to unburden her own heart and reach Kitty's, Kitty met
+her with one of those outbursts of temper that women like Elizabeth
+Tranmore cannot cope with. Their moral recoil is too great. It is the
+recoil of the spiritual aristocrat; and between them and the children of
+passion the links are few, the antagonism eternal.
+
+She left the house, pale, dignified, the tears in her eyes. Kitty ran
+up-stairs, humming an air from "Faust," as though she would tear it to
+pieces, put on a flame-colored hat that gave a still further note of
+extravagance to her costume, ordered a hansom, and drove away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Whether Kitty got much joy out of the three weeks which followed must
+remain uncertain. She had certainly routed Mary Lyster, if there were
+any final satisfaction in that. Mary had left town early, and was now in
+Somersetshire helping her father to entertain, in order, said the
+malicious, to put the best face possible on a defeat which this time had
+been serious. And instead of devoting himself to the wooing of a
+northern constituency where he had been adopted as the candidate of a
+new Tory group, Cliffe lingered obstinately in town, endangering his
+chances and angering his supporters. Kitty's influence over his actions
+was, indeed, patent and undenied, whatever might be the general opinion
+as to her effect upon his heart. Some of Kitty's intimates at any rate
+were convinced that his absorption in the matter was by now, to say the
+least, no less eager and persistent than hers. At this point it was by
+no means still a relation of flattery on Kitty's side and a pleased
+self-love on his. It had become a duel of two personalities, or rather
+two imaginations. In fact, as Kitty, learning the ways of his character,
+became more proudly mistress of herself and him, his interest in her
+visibly increased. It might almost be said that she was beginning to
+hold back, and he for the first time pursued.
+
+Once or twice he had the grace to ask himself where it was all to end.
+Was he in love with her? An absurd question! He had paid his heavy
+tribute to passion if any man ever had, and had already hung up his
+votive tablet and his garments wet from shipwreck in the temple of the
+god. But it seemed that, after all said and done, the society of a
+woman, young, beautiful, and capricious, was still the best thing which
+the day--the London day, at all events--had to bring. At Kitty's
+suggestion he was collecting and revising a new volume of his poems. He
+and she quarrelled over them perpetually. Sometimes there was not a line
+which pleased her; and then, again, she would delight him with the
+homage of sudden tears in her brown eyes, and a praise so ardent and so
+refined that it almost compared--as Kitty meant it should--with that of
+the dead. In the shaded drawing-room, where every detail pleased his
+taste, Cliffe's harsh voice thundered or murmured verse which was
+beyond dispute the verse of a poet, and thereby sensuous and
+passionate. Ostensibly the verse concerned another woman; in truth, the
+slight and lovely figure sitting on the farther side of the flowered
+hearth, the delicate head bent, the finger-tips lightly joined, entered
+day by day more directly into the consciousness of the poet. What harm?
+All he asked was intelligence and response. As to her heart, he made no
+claim upon it whatever. Ashe, by-the-way, was clearly not jealous--a
+sensible attitude, considering Lady Kitty's strength of will.
+
+Into Cliffe's feeling towards Ashe there entered, indeed, a number of
+evil things, determined by quite other relations between the two
+men--the relation of the man who wants to the man who has, of the man
+beaten by the restlessness of ambition to the man who possesses all that
+the other desires, and affects to care nothing about it--of the
+combatant who fights with rage to the combatant who fights with a smile.
+Cliffe could often lash himself into fury by the mere thought of Ashe's
+opportunities and Ashe's future, combined with the belief that Ashe's
+mood towards himself was either contemptuous or condescending. And it
+was at such moments that he would fling himself with most resource into
+the establishing of his ascendency over Kitty.
+
+The two men met when they did meet--which was but seldom--on perfectly
+civil terms. If Ashe arrived unexpectedly from the House in the late
+afternoon to find Cliffe in the drawing-room reading aloud to Kitty, the
+politics of the moment provided talk enough till Cliffe could decently
+take his departure. He never dined with them alone, Kitty having no mind
+whatever for the discomforts of such a party; and in the evenings when
+he and Kitty met at a small number of houses, where the flirtation was
+watched nightly with a growing excitement, Ashe's duties kept him at
+Westminster, and there was nothing to hinder that flow of small and yet
+significant incident by which situations of this kind are developed.
+
+Ashe set his teeth. He had made up his mind finally that it was a plague
+and a tyranny which would pass, and could only be magnified by
+opposition. But his temper suffered. There were many small quarrels
+during these weeks between himself and Kitty, quarrels which betrayed
+the tension produced in him by what was--in essentials--an iron
+self-control. But they made daily life a sordid, unlovely thing, and
+they gave Kitty an excuse for saying that William was as violent as
+herself, and for seeking refuge in the exaltations of feeling or of
+fancy provided by Cliffe's companionship.
+
+Perhaps of all the persons in the drama, Lady Tranmore was the most to
+be pitied. She sat at home, having no heart to go to Hill Street, and
+more tied indeed than usual by the helpless illness of her husband.
+Never, in all these days, did Ashe miss his daily visit to his father.
+He would come in, apparently his handsome, good-humored self, ready to
+read aloud for twenty minutes, or merely to sit in silence by the sick
+man, his eyes making affectionate answer every now and then to the dumb
+looks of Lord Tranmore. Only his mother sought and found that slight
+habitual contraction of the brow which bore witness to some equally
+persistent disquiet of the mind. But he kept her at arm's-length on the
+subject of Kitty. She dared not tell him any of the gossip which
+reached her.
+
+Meanwhile these weeks meant for her not only the dread of disgrace, but
+the disappointment of a just ambition, the humiliation of her mother's
+pride. The political crisis approached rapidly, and Ashe's name was less
+and less to the front. Lady Parham was said to be taking an active part
+in the consultations and intrigues that surrounded her husband, and it
+was well known by now to the inner circle that her hostility to the
+Ashes, and her insistence on the fact that cabinet ministers must be
+beyond reproach, and their wives persons to whose houses the party can
+go without demeaning themselves, were likely to be of importance.
+Moreover, Ashe's success in the House of Commons was no longer what it
+had been earlier in the session. The party papers had cooled. Elizabeth
+Tranmore felt a blight in the air. Yet William, with his position in the
+country, his high ability, and the social weight belonging to the heir
+of the Tranmore peerage and estates, was surely not a person to be
+lightly ignored! Would Lord Parham venture it?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the resignations of the two ministers were in the _Times_; there
+were communications between the Queen and the Premier, and London
+plunged with such ardor as is possible in late July into the throes of
+cabinet-making. Kitty insisted petulantly that of course all would be
+well; William's services were far too great to be ignored; though Lord
+Parham would no doubt slight him if he dared. But the party and the
+public would see to that. The days were gone by when vulgar old women
+like Lady Parham could have any real influence on political
+appointments. Otherwise, who would condescend to politics?
+
+Ashe brought her amusing reports from the House or the clubs of the
+various intrigues going on, and, as to his own chances, refused to
+discuss them seriously. Once or twice when Kitty, in his presence,
+insisted on speaking of them to some political intimate, only to provoke
+an evident embarrassment, Ashe suffered the tortures which proud men
+know. But he never lost his tone of light detachment, and the conclusion
+of his friends was that, as usual, "Ashe didn't care a button."
+
+The hours passed, however, and no sign came from the Prime Minister.
+Everything was still uncertain; but Ashe had realized that at least he
+was not to be taken into the inner counsels of the party. The hopes and
+fears, the heartburnings and rivalries of such a state of things are
+proverbial. Ashe wondered impatiently when the beastly business would be
+over, and he could get off to Scotland for the air and sport of which he
+was badly in need.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a Friday, in the first week of August. Ashe was leaving the
+Athenæum with another member of the House when a newspaper boy rushing
+along with a fresh bundle of papers passed them with the cry, "New
+cabinet complete! Official list!" They caught him up, snatched a paper,
+and read. Two men of middle age, conspicuous in Parliament, but not
+hitherto in office, one of them of great importance as a lawyer, the
+other as a military critic, were appointed, the one to the Home Office,
+the other to the Ministry of War; there had been some shuffling in the
+minor offices, and a new Privy Seal had dawned upon the world. For the
+rest, all was as before, and in the formal list the name of the
+Honorable William Travers Ashe still remained attached to the
+Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs.
+
+Ashe's friend shrugged his shoulders, and avoided looking at his
+companion. "A bomb-shell, to begin with," he said; "otherwise the
+flattest thing out."
+
+"On the contrary," laughed Ashe. "Parham has shown a wonderful amount of
+originality. If you and I are taken by surprise, what will the public
+be? And they'll like him all the better--you'll see. He has shown
+courage and gone for new men--that's what they'll say. _Vive_ Parham!
+Well, good-bye. Now, please the Lord, we shall get off--and I may be
+among the grouse this day week."
+
+He stopped on his way out of the club to discuss the list with the men
+coming in. He was conscious that some would have avoided him. But he had
+no mind to be avoided, and his caustic, good-humored talk carried off
+the situation. Presently he was walking homeward, swinging his stick
+with the gayety of a school-boy expecting the holidays.
+
+As he mounted St. James's Street a carriage descended. Ashe mechanically
+took off his hat to the half-recognized face within, and as he did so
+perceived the icy bow and triumphant eyes of Lady Parham.
+
+He hurried along, fighting a curious sensation, as of a physical
+bruising and beating. The streets were full of the news, and he was
+stopped many times by mere acquaintances to talk of it. In Savile Row he
+turned into a small literary club of which he was a member, and wrote a
+letter to his mother. In very affectionate and amusing terms it begged
+her not to take the disappointment too seriously. "I think I won't come
+round to-night. But expect me first thing to-morrow."
+
+He sent the note by messenger and walked home. When he reached Hill
+Street it was close on eight. Outside the house he suddenly asked
+himself what line he was going to take with Kitty.
+
+Kitty, however, was not at home. As far as he could remember she had
+gone coaching with the Alcots into Surrey, Geoffrey Cliffe, of course,
+being of the party. Presently, indeed, he discovered a hasty line from
+her on his study table, to say that they were to dine at Richmond, and
+"Madeleine" supposed they would get home between ten and eleven. Not a
+word more. Like all strong men, Ashe despised the meditations of
+self-pity. But the involuntary reflection that on this evening of
+humiliation Kitty was not with him--did not apparently care enough about
+his affairs and his ambitions to be with him--brought with it a soreness
+which had to be endured.
+
+The next moment, he was inclined to be glad of her absence. Such things,
+especially in the first shock of them, are best faced alone. If, indeed,
+there were any shock in the matter. He had for some time had his own
+shrewd previsions, and he was aware of a strong inner belief that his
+defeat was but temporary.
+
+Probably, when she had time to remember such trifles, Kitty would feel
+the shock more than he did. Lady Parham had certainly won this round of
+the rubber!
+
+He settled to his solitary dinner, but in the middle of it put down
+Kitty's Aberdeen terrier, which, for want of other company, he was
+stuffing atrociously, and ran up to the nursery. The nurse was at her
+supper, and Harry lay fast asleep, a pretty little fellow, flushed into
+a semblance of health, and with a strong look of Kitty.
+
+Ashe bent down and put his whiskered cheek to the boy's. "Never mind,
+old man!" he murmured, "better luck next time!"
+
+Then raising himself with a smile, he looked affectionately at the
+child, noticed with satisfaction his bright color and even breathing,
+and stole away.
+
+He ran through the comments of the evening papers on the new cabinet
+list, finding in only two or three any reference to himself, then threw
+them aside, and seized upon a pile of books and reviews that were lying
+on his table. He carried them up to the drawing-room, hesitated between
+a theological review and a new edition of Horace, and finally plunged
+with avidity into the theological review.
+
+For some two hours he sat enthralled by an able summary of the chief
+Tübingen positions; then suddenly threw himself back with a stretch and
+a laugh.
+
+"Wonder what the chap's doing that's got my post! Not reading theology,
+I'll be bound."
+
+The reflection followed that were he at that moment Home Secretary and
+in the cabinet, he would not probably be reading it either--nor left to
+a solitary evening. Friends would be dropping in to congratulate--the
+modern equivalent of the old "turba clientium."
+
+As his thoughts wandered, the drawing-room clock struck eleven. He rose,
+astonished and impatient. Where was Kitty?
+
+By midnight she had not arrived. Ashe heard the butler moving in the
+hall and summoned him.
+
+"There may have been some mishap to the coach, Wilson. Perhaps they have
+stayed at Richmond. Anyway, go to bed. I'll wait for her ladyship."
+
+He returned to his arm-chair and his books, but soon drew Kitty's
+_couvre-pied_ over him and went to sleep.
+
+When he awoke, daylight was in the room. "What has happened to them?" he
+asked himself, in a sudden anxiety.
+
+And amid the silence of the dawn he paced up and down, a prey for the
+first time to black depression. He was besieged by memories of the last
+two months, their anxieties and quarrels--the waste of time and
+opportunity--the stabs to feeling and self-respect. Once he found
+himself groaning aloud, "Kitty! Kitty!"
+
+When this huge, distracting London was left behind, when he had her to
+himself amid the Scotch heather and birch, should he find her
+again--conquer her again--as in the exquisite days after their marriage?
+He thought of Cliffe with a kind of proud torment, disdaining to be
+jealous or afraid. Kitty had amused herself--had tested her freedom, his
+patience, to the utmost. Might she now be content, and reward him a
+little for a self-control, a philosophy, which had not been easy!
+
+A French novel on Kitty's little table drew his attention. He thought
+not without a discomfortable humor of what a French husband would have
+made of a similar situation--recalling the remark of a French
+acquaintance on some case illustrating the freedom of English wives. "Il
+y a un élément turc dans le mari français, qui nous rendrait ces
+moeurs-là impossibles!"
+
+_À la bonne heure_! Let the Frenchman keep up his seraglio
+standards as he pleased. An Englishman trusts both his wife and his
+daughter--scorns, indeed, to consider whether he trusts them or no! And
+who comes worst off? Not the Englishman--if, at least, we are to believe
+the French novel on the French _ménage!_
+
+He paced thus up and down for an hour, defying his unseen critics--his
+mother--his own heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then he went to bed and slept a little. But with the post next morning
+there was no letter from Kitty. There might be a hundred explanations of
+that. Yet he felt a sudden need of caution.
+
+"Her ladyship comes up this morning by train," he said to Wilson, as
+though reading from a note. "There seems to have been a mishap."
+
+Then he took a hansom and drove to the Alcots.
+
+"Is Mrs. Alcot at home?" he asked the butler. "Can I have an answer to
+this note?"
+
+"Mrs. Alcot has been in her room since yesterday morning, sir. She was
+taken ill just before the coach was coming round, and the horses had to
+be sent back. But the doctor last night hoped it would be nothing
+serious."
+
+Ashe turned and went home. Then Kitty was not with Madeleine Alcot--not
+on the coach! Where was she, and with whom?
+
+He shut himself into his library and fell to wondering, in bewilderment,
+what he had better do. A tide of rage and agony was mounting within him.
+How to master it--and keep his brain clear!
+
+He was sitting in front of his writing-table staring at the floor, his
+hands hanging before him, when the door opened and shut. He turned.
+There, with her back to the door, stood Kitty. Her aspect startled him
+to his feet. She looked at him, trembling--her little face haggard and
+white, with a touch of something in it which had blurred its youth.
+
+"William!" She put both her hands to her breast, as though to support
+herself. Then she flew forward. "William! I have done nothing
+wrong--nothing--nothing! William--look at me!"
+
+He sternly put out his hand, protecting himself.
+
+"Where have you been?" he said, in a low voice--"and with whom?"
+
+Kitty fell into a chair and burst into wild tears.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+There was silence for a few moments except for Kitty's crying. Ashe
+still stood beside his writing-table, his hand resting upon it, his eyes
+on Kitty. Once or twice he began to speak, and stopped. At last he said,
+with obvious difficulty:
+
+"It's cruel to keep me waiting, Kitty."
+
+"I sent you a telegram first thing this morning." The voice was choked
+and passionate.
+
+"I never got it."
+
+"Horrid little fiend!" cried Kitty, sitting up and dashing back her hair
+from her tear-stained cheeks. "I gave a boy half a crown this morning to
+be at the station with it by eight o'clock. And I couldn't possibly
+either write or telegraph last night--it was too late."
+
+"Where were you?" said Ashe, slowly. "I went to the Alcots' this
+morning, and--"
+
+"--the butler told you Madeleine was in bed? So she is. She was ill
+yesterday morning. There was no coach and no party. I went with
+Geoffrey."
+
+Kitty held herself erect; her eyes, from which the tears were
+involuntarily dropping, were fixed on her husband.
+
+"Of course I guessed that," said Ashe.
+
+"It was Geoffrey brought me the news--here, just as I was starting to go
+to the Alcots'. Then he said he had something to read me--and it would
+be delicious to go to Pangbourne--spend the day on the river--and come
+back from Windsor--at night--by train. And I had a horrid headache--and
+it was so hot--and you were at the office"--her lip quivered--"and I
+wanted to hear Geoffrey's poems--and so--"
+
+She interrupted herself, and once more broke down--hiding her face
+against the chair. But the next moment she felt herself roughly drawn
+forward, as Ashe knelt beside her.
+
+"Kitty!--look at me! That man behaved to you like a villain?"
+
+She looked up--she saw the handsome, good-humored face transformed--and
+wrenched herself away.
+
+"He did," she said, bitterly--"like a villain." She began to twist and
+torment her handkerchief as Ashe had seen her do once before, the small
+white teeth pressed upon the lower lip--then suddenly she turned upon
+him--
+
+"I suppose you want me to tell you the story?"
+
+All Kitty in the words! Her frankness, her daring, and the impatient,
+realistic tone she was apt to impose upon emotion--they were all there.
+
+Ashe rose and began to walk up and down.
+
+"Tell me your part in it," he said, at last--"and as little of that
+fellow as may be."
+
+Kitty was silent. Ashe, looking at her, saw a curious shade of reverie,
+a kind of dreamy excitement steal over her face.
+
+"Go on, Kitty!" he said, sharply. Then, restraining himself, he added,
+with all his natural courtesy--"I beg your pardon, Kitty, but the sooner
+we get through with this the better."
+
+The mist in which her expression had been for a moment wrapped fell
+away. She flushed deeply.
+
+"I told you I had done nothing vile!" she said, passionately. "Did you
+believe me?"
+
+Their eyes met in a shock of challenge and reply.
+
+"Those things are not to be asked between you and me," he said, with
+vehemence, and he held out his hand. She just touched it--proudly. Then
+she drew a long breath.
+
+"The day was--just like other days. He read me his poems--in a cool
+place we found under the bank. I thought he was rather absurd now and
+then--and different from what he had been. He talked of our going
+away--and his not seeing me--and how lonely he was. And of course I was
+awfully sorry for him. But it was all right till--"
+
+She paused and looked at Ashe.
+
+"You remember the inn near Hamel Weir--a few miles from Windsor--that
+lonely little place."
+
+Ashe nodded.
+
+"We dined there. Afterwards we were to row to Windsor and come home by a
+train about ten. We finished dinner early. By-the-way, there were two
+other people there--Lady Edith Manley and her boy. They had rowed down
+from somewhere--"
+
+"Did Lady Edith--"
+
+"Yes--she spoke to me. She was going back to town--to the Holland House
+party--"
+
+"Where she probably met mother?"
+
+"She did meet her!" cried Kitty. She pointed to a letter which she had
+thrown down as she entered. "Your mother sent round this note to me this
+morning--to ask when I should be at home. And Wilson sent word--There!
+Of course I know she thinks I'm capable of anything."
+
+She looked at him, defiant, but very miserable and pale.
+
+"Go on, please," said Ashe.
+
+"We finished dinner early. There was a field behind the inn, and then a
+wood. We strolled into the wood, and then Geoffrey--well, he went mad!
+He--"
+
+She bit her lip fiercely, struggling for composure--and words.
+
+"He proposed to you to throw me over?" said Ashe, as white as she.
+
+With a sudden gesture she held out her arms--like a piteous child.
+
+"Oh! don't stand there--and look at me like that--I can't bear it."
+
+Ashe came--unwillingly. She perceived the reluctance, and with a flaming
+face she motioned him back, while she controlled herself enough to pour
+out her story. Presently Ashe was able to reconstruct with tolerable
+clearness what had occurred. Cliffe, intoxicated by the long day of
+intimacy and of solitude, by Kitty's beauty and Kitty's folly, aware
+that parting was near at hand, and trusting to the wildness of Kitty's
+temperament, had suddenly assumed the language of the lover--and a lover
+by no means uncertain of his ultimate answer. So long as they understood
+each other--that, indeed, for the present, was all he asked. But she
+must know that she had broken off his marriage with Mary Lyster, and
+reopened in his nature all the old founts of passion and of storm. It
+had been her sovereign will that he should love her; it had been
+achieved. For her sake--knowing himself for the seared and criminal
+being that he was--for Ashe's sake--he had tried to resist her spell. In
+vain. A fatal fusion of their two natures--imaginations--sympathies--had
+come about. Each was interpenetrated by the other; and retreat was
+impossible.
+
+A kind of sombre power, indeed--the power of the poet and the
+dreamer--seemed to have spoken from Cliffe's strange wooing. He had
+taken no particular pains to flatter her, or to conceal his original
+hesitation. He put her own action in a hard, almost a brutal light. It
+was plain that he thought she had treated her husband badly; that he
+warned her of a future of treachery and remorse. At the same time he let
+her see that he could not doubt but that she would face it. They still
+had the last justifying cards in their hands--passion, and the courage
+to go where passion leads. When those were played, they might look each
+other and the world in the face. Till then they were but triflers--mean
+souls--fit neither for heaven nor for hell.
+
+Ashe's whole being was soon in a tumult of rage under the sting of this
+report, as he was able to piece it out from Kitty. But he kept his
+self-command, and by dint of it he presently arrived at some notion of
+her own share in the scene. Horror, recoil, disavowal--a wild resentment
+of the charges heaped upon her, of the pitiless interpretation of her
+behavior which broke from those harsh lips, of the incredulity passing
+into something like contempt with which Cliffe had endured her wrath and
+received her protestations--then a blind flight through the fields to
+the little wayside station, where she hoped to catch the last train;
+the arrival and departure of the train while she was still half a mile
+from the line, and her shelter at a cottage for the night; these things
+stood out plainly, whatever else remained in obscurity. How far she had
+provoked her own fate, and how far even now she was delivered from the
+morbid spell of Cliffe's personality, Ashe would not allow himself to
+ask. As she neared the end of her story, it was as though the great
+tempest wave in which she had been struggling died down, and with a
+merciful rush bore him to a shore of deliverance. She was there beside
+him; and she was still his own.
+
+He had been leaning over the side of a chair, his chin on his hand, his
+eyes fixed upon her, while she told her tale. It ended in a burst of
+self-pity, as she remembered her collapse in the cottage, the
+impossibility of finding any carriage in the small hamlet of which it
+made part, the faint weariness of the night--
+
+"I never slept," she said, piteously. "I got up at eight for the first
+train, and now I feel"--she fell back in her chair, and whispered
+desolately with shut eyes--"as if I should like to die!"
+
+Ashe knelt down beside her.
+
+"It's my fault, too, Kitty. I ought to have held you with a stronger
+hand. I hated quarrelling with you. But--oh, my dear, my dear--"
+
+She met the cry in silence, the tears running over her cheeks. Roughly,
+impetuously, he gathered her in his arms and kissed her, as though he
+would once more re-knit and reconsecrate the bond between them. She lay
+passively against him, the tangle of her fair hair spread over his
+shoulder--too frail and too exhausted for response.
+
+"This won't do," he said, presently, disengaging himself; "you must have
+some food and rest. Then we'll think what shall be done."
+
+She roused herself suddenly as he went to the door.
+
+"Why aren't you at the Foreign Office?"
+
+"I sent a message early. Lawson came"--Lawson was his private
+secretary--"but I must go down in an hour."
+
+"William!"
+
+Kitty had raised herself, and her eyes shone large and startled in the
+small, tear-stained face.
+
+"Yes." He paused a moment.
+
+"William, is the list out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Kitty tottered to her feet.
+
+"Is it all right?"
+
+"I suppose so," he said, slowly. "It doesn't affect me."
+
+And then, without waiting, he went into the hall and closed the door
+behind him. He wrote a note to the Foreign Office to say that he should
+not be at the office till the afternoon, and that important papers were
+to be sent up to him. Then he told Wilson to bring wine and sandwiches
+into the library for Lady Kitty, who had been detained by an accident on
+the river the night before, and was much exhausted. No visitors were to
+be admitted, except, of course, Lady Tranmore or Miss French.
+
+When he returned to the library he found Kitty with crimson cheeks, her
+hands locked behind her, walking up and down. As soon as she saw him she
+motioned to him imperiously.
+
+[Illustration: "HE GATHERED HER IN HIS ARMS"]
+
+"Shut the door, William. I have something very important to say to you."
+
+He obeyed her, and she walked up to him deliberately. He saw the
+fluttering of her heart beneath her white dress--the crushed, bedraggled
+dress, which still in its soft elegance, its small originalities, spoke
+Kitty from head to foot. But her manner was quite calm and collected.
+
+"William, we must separate! You must send me away."
+
+He started.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"What I say. It is--it is intolerable--that I should ruin your life like
+this."
+
+"Don't, please, exaggerate, Kitty! There is no question of ruin. I shall
+make my way when the time comes, and Lady Parham will have nothing to
+say to it!"
+
+"No! Nothing will ever go well--while I'm there--like a millstone round
+your neck. William"--she came closer to him--"take my advice--do it! I
+Warned you when you married me. And now you see--it was true."
+
+"You foolish child," he answered, slowly, "do you think I could forget
+you for an hour, wherever you were?"
+
+"Oh yes," she said, steadily, "I know you would forget me--- if I wasn't
+here. I'm sure of it. You're very ambitious, William--more than you
+know. You'll soon care--"
+
+"More for politics than for you? Another of your delusions, Kitty.
+Nothing of the sort. Moreover, if you will only let me advise you--trust
+your husband a little--think both for him and yourself. I see nothing
+either in politics or in our life together that cannot be retrieved."
+
+He spoke with manly kindness and reasonableness. Not a trace of his
+habitual indolence or indifference. Kitty, listening, was conscious of
+the most tempestuous medley of feelings--love, remorse, shame, and a
+strange gnawing desolation. What else, what better _could_ she have
+asked of him? And yet, as she looked at him, she thought suddenly of the
+moonlit garden at Grosville Park, and of that young, headlong chivalry
+with which he had thrown himself at her feet. This man before her, so
+much older and maturer, counting the cost of his marriage with her in
+the light of experience, and magnanimously, resolutely paying it--Kitty,
+in a flash, realized his personality as she had never yet done, his
+moral independence of her, his separateness as a human being. Her
+passionate self-love instinctively, unconsciously, had made of his life
+the appendage of hers. And now--? His devotion had never been so plain,
+so attested; and all the while bitter, terrifying voices rang upon the
+inner ear, voices of fate, vague and irrevocable.
+
+She dropped into a chair beside his table, trembling and white.
+
+"No, no," she said, drawing her handkerchief across her eyes, with a
+gesture of childish misery, "it's all been a--a horrid mistake. Your
+mother was quite right. Of course she hated your marrying me--and
+now--now she'll see what I've done. I guess perfectly what she's
+thinking about me to-day! And I can't help it--I shall go on--if you let
+me stay with you. There's a twist--a black drop in me. I'm not like
+other people."
+
+Her voice, which was very quiet, gave Ashe intolerable pain.
+
+"You poor, tired, starved child," he said, kneeling down beside her.
+"Put your arms round my neck. Let me carry you up-stairs."
+
+With a sob she did as she was told. Ashe's library a comparatively late
+addition to the rambling, old-fashioned house, communicated by a small
+staircase at the back with his dressing-room above. He lifted the small
+figure with ease, and half-way up-stairs he impetuously kissed the
+delicate cheek.
+
+"I'm glad you're not Polly Lyster, darling!"
+
+Kitty laughed through her tears. Presently he deposited her on the large
+sofa in her own room, and stood beside her, panting a little.
+
+"It's all very well," said Kitty, as she nestled down among the pillows,
+"but we're _none_ of us feathers!"
+
+Her eyes were beginning to recover a little of their sparkle. She looked
+at him with attention.
+
+"You look horribly tired. What--what did you do--last night?" She turned
+away from him.
+
+"I sat up reading--then went to sleep down-stairs. I thought the coach
+had come to grief, and you were somewhere with the Alcots."
+
+"If I had known that," she murmured, "_I_ might have gone to sleep. Oh,
+it was so horrible--the little stuffy room, and the dirty blankets." She
+gave a shiver of disgust. "There was a poor baby, too, with
+whooping-cough. Lucky I had some money. I gave the woman a sovereign.
+But she wasn't at all nice--she never smiled once. I know she thought I
+was a bad lot."
+
+Then she sprang up.
+
+"Sit there!" She pointed to the foot of the sofa. Ashe obeyed her.
+
+"When did you know?"
+
+"About the ministry? Between six and seven. I saw Lady Parham afterwards
+driving in St. James's Street. She never enjoyed anything so much in her
+life as the bow she gave me.'"
+
+Kitty groaned, and subsided again, a little crumpled form among her
+cushions.
+
+"Tell me the names."
+
+Ashe gave her the list of the ministry. She made one or two shrewd or
+bitter comments upon it. He fully understood that in her inmost mind she
+was registering a vow of vengeance against the Parhams; but she made no
+spoken threat. Meanwhile, in the background of each mind there lay that
+darker and more humiliating fact, to which both shrank from returning,
+while yet both knew that it must be faced.
+
+There was a knock at the door, and Blanche appeared with the tray which
+had been ordered down-stairs. She glanced in astonishment at her
+mistress.
+
+"We had an accident on the river last night, Blanche," said Kitty. "Come
+back in half an hour. I'm too tired to change just yet."
+
+She kept her face hidden from the maid, but when Blanche had departed,
+Ashe saw that her cheeks were flaming.
+
+"I hate lying!" she said, with a kind of physical disgust--"and now I
+suppose it will be my chief occupation for weeks."
+
+It was true that she hated lying, and Ashe was well aware of it. Of such
+a battle-stroke, indeed, as she had played at the ball, when her prompt
+falsehood snatched Cliffe from Mary Lyster, she was always capable. But
+in general her pride, her very egotism and quick temper kept her true.
+
+Perhaps the fact represented one of those deep sources whence the well
+of Ashe's tenderness was fed. At any rate, consciously or not, it was at
+this moment one of his chief motives for not finding the past
+intolerable or the future without hope. He took some wine and a sandwich
+from the tray, and began to feed her. In the middle, she pushed his
+hands away, and her eyes brimmed again with tears.
+
+"Put it down," she commanded. And when he had done so, she raised his
+hands deliberately, one after the other, and kissed them, crying:
+
+"William!--I have been a horrible wife to you!"
+
+"Don't be a goose, Kitty. You know very well that--till this last
+business--And don't imagine that I feel myself a model, either!"
+
+"No," she said, with a long sigh. "Of course, you ought to have beaten
+me."
+
+He smiled, with an unsteady lip.
+
+"Perhaps I might still try it."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Too late. I am not a child any more."
+
+Then throwing her soft arms round his neck, she clung to him, saying the
+most adorable and poignant things, dissolved, indeed, in a murmuring
+anguish of remorse; until, with the same unexpectedness as before, she
+again disengaged herself--urging, insisting that he should send her
+away.
+
+"Let me go and live at Haggart, baby and I." (Haggart was one of the
+Tranmore "places," recently handed over to the young people.) "You can
+come and see me sometimes. I'll garden--and write books. Half the smart
+women I know write stories--or plays. Why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Why, indeed? Meanwhile, madam, I take you to Scotland--next week."
+
+"Scotland?" She pressed her hands over her eyes.
+"'Anywhere--anywhere--out of the world!'"
+
+"Kitty!" Startled by the abandonment of her words, Ashe caught her hands
+and held them. "Kitty!--- you regret--"
+
+"That man? Do I?" She opened her eyes, frowning. "I loathe him! When I
+think of yesterday, I could drown myself. If I could pile the whole
+world between him and me--I would. But"--she shivered--"but yet--if he
+were sitting there--"
+
+"You would be once more under the spell?" said Ashe, bitterly.
+
+"Spell!" she repeated, with scorn. Then snatching her hands from his,
+she threw back the hair from her temples with a wild gesture. "I warned
+you," she said--"I warned you."
+
+"A man doesn't pay much attention to those warnings, Kitty."
+
+"Then it is not my fault. I don't know what's wrong with me," she said,
+sombrely; "but I remember saying to you that sometimes my brain was on
+fire. I seem to be always in a hurry--in a desperate, desperate
+hurry!--to know or to feel something--while there is still time--before
+one dies. There is always a passion--always an effort. More life--_more
+life_!--even if it lead to pain--and agony--and tears."
+
+She raised her strange, beautiful eyes, which had at the moment almost a
+look of delirium, and fixed them on his face. But Ashe's impression was
+that she did not see him.
+
+He was conscious of the same pang, the same sudden terror that he had
+felt on that never-to-be-forgotten evening when she had talked to him of
+the mask in the "Tempest." He thought of the Blackwater stories he had
+heard from Lord Grosville. "_Mad, my dear fellow, mad!_"--the old man's
+frequent comment ran through his memory. Was there, indeed, some unsound
+spot in Kitty?
+
+He sat dumb and paralyzed for a moment; then, recovering himself, he
+said, as he recaptured the cold little hands:
+
+"'More _light_,' Kitty, was what Goethe said, in dying. A better prayer,
+don't you think?"
+
+There was a strong, even a stern insistence in his manner which quieted
+Kitty. Her face as it came back to full consciousness was exquisitely
+sweet and mournful.
+
+"That's the prayer of the _calm_," she said, in a whisper, "and my
+nature is hunger and storm. And Geoffrey Cliffe is the same. That's why
+I couldn't help being--"
+
+She sprang up.
+
+"William, don't let's talk nonsense. I can't ever see that man again.
+How's it to be done?"
+
+She moved up and down--all practical energy and impatience--her mood
+wholly altered. His own adapted itself to hers.
+
+"For the present, fear nothing," he said, dryly. "For his own sake
+Cliffe will hold his tongue and leave London. And as to the future--I
+can get some message conveyed to him--by a man he won't disregard. Leave
+it to me."
+
+"You can't write to him, William!" cried Kitty, passionately.
+
+"Leave it to me," he repeated. "Then suppose you take the boy--and
+Margaret French--to Haggart till I can join you?"
+
+"And your mother?" she said, timidly, coming to stand beside him and
+laying a hand on each shoulder.
+
+"Leave that also to me."
+
+"How she'll hate the sight of me," she said, under her breath. Then,
+with another tone of voice--"How long, William, do you give the
+government?"
+
+"Six months, perhaps--perhaps less. I don't see how they can last beyond
+February."
+
+"And then--we'll _fight_!" said Kitty, with a long breath, smoothing
+back the hair from his brow.
+
+"Allow me, please, to command the forces! Well, now then, I must be
+off!" He tried to rise, but she still held him.
+
+"Did you have any breakfast, William?"
+
+"I don't remember."
+
+"Sit still and eat one of my sandwiches." She divided one into strips,
+and standing over him began to feed him. A knock at the door arrested
+her.
+
+"Don't move!" she said, peremptorily, before she ran to open the door.
+
+"Please, my lady," said Blanche, "Lady Tranmore would like to see you."
+
+Kitty started and flushed. She looked round uncertainly at Ashe.
+
+"Ask her ladyship to come up," said Ashe, quietly.
+
+The maid departed.
+
+"Feed me if you want to, Kitty," said Ashe, still seated.
+
+Kitty returned, her breath hurried, her step wavering. She looked
+doubtfully at Ashe--then her eyes sparkled--as she understood. She
+dropped on her knees beside him, kissing the sleeve of his coat, against
+which her cheek was pressed--in a passion of repentance.
+
+He bent towards her, touching her hair, murmuring over her. His mind
+meanwhile was torn with feelings which, so to speak, observed each
+other. This thing which had happened was horribly serious--important. It
+might easily have wrecked two lives. Had he dealt with it as he
+ought--made Kitty feel the gravity of it?
+
+Then the optimist in him asked impatiently what was "the good of
+exaggerating the damned business"? That fellow has got his lesson--could
+be driven headlong out of his life and Kitty's henceforward. And how
+could _he_ doubt the love shown in this clinging penitence, these soft
+kisses? How would the Turk theory of marriage, please, have done any
+better? Kitty had had her own wild way. No fiat from without had bound
+her; but love had brought her to his feet. There was something in him
+which triumphed alike in her revolt and her submission.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, in the cool drawing-room to which the green _persiennes_ gave
+a pleasant foreign look, Lady Tranmore had been waiting for the maid's
+return. She shrank from every sound in the house; from her own
+reflection in Kitty's French mirrors; from her own thoughts most of all.
+
+Lady Edith Manley--at Holland House--had been the most innocent of
+gossips. A little lady who did no wrong herself--and thought no wrong of
+others; as white-minded and unsuspicious as a convent child. "Poor Lady
+Kitty! Something seemed to have gone wrong with the Alcots' coach, and
+they were somehow divided from all their party. I can't remember exactly
+what it was they said, but Mr. Cliffe was confident they would catch
+their train. Though my boy--you remember my boy? they've just put him in
+the eight!--thought they were running it _rather_ fine."
+
+Then, five minutes later, in the supper-room, Lady Tranmore had run
+across Madeleine Alcot's husband, who had given her in passing the whole
+story of the frustrated expedition--Mrs. Alcot's chill, and the despatch
+of Cliffe to Hill Street. "Horrid bore to have to put it off! Hope he
+got there in time to stop Lady Kitty getting ready. Oh, thanks,
+Madeleine's all right."
+
+And then no more, as the rush of the crowd swept them apart.
+
+After that, sleep had wholly deserted Lady Tranmore--if, indeed, after
+the publication of the cabinet list in the afternoon, and William's
+letter following upon it, any had been still possible. And in the early
+morning she had sent her note to Kitty--a _ballon d'essai_, despatched
+in a horror of great fear.
+
+"Her ladyship has not yet returned." The message from Hill Street,
+delivered by the footman's indifferent mouth, struck Lady Tranmore with
+trembling.
+
+"Where is William?" she said to herself, in anguish. "I must find
+him--but--what shall I say to him?" Then she went up-stairs, and,
+without calling for her maid, put on her walking things with shaking
+hands.
+
+She slipped out unobserved by her household, and took a hansom from the
+corner of Grosvenor Street. In the hansom she carefully drew down her
+veil, with the shrinking of one on whom disgrace--the long pursuing,
+long expected--has seized at last. All the various facts, statements,
+indications as to Kitty's behavior, which through the most diverse
+channels had been flowing steadily towards her for weeks past, were now
+surging through her mind and memory--a grievous, damning host. And every
+now and then, as she caught the placards in the streets, her heart
+contracted anew. Her son, her William, in what should have been the
+heyday of his gifts and powers, baffled, tripped up, defeated!--by his
+own wife, the selfish, ungrateful, reckless child on whom he had
+lavished the undeserved treasures of the most generous and untiring
+love. And had she not only checked or ruined his career--was he to be
+also dishonored, struck to the heart?
+
+She could scarcely stand as she rang the bell at Hill Street, and it was
+only with a great effort that she could ask her question:
+
+"Is Mr. Ashe at home?"
+
+"Mr. Ashe, my lady, is, I believe, just going out," said Wilson. "Her
+ladyship arrived just about an hour ago, and that detained him."
+
+Elizabeth betrayed nothing. The training of her class held good.
+
+"Are they in the library?" she asked--"or up-stairs?"
+
+Wilson replied that he believed her ladyship was in her room, and Mr.
+Ashe with her.
+
+"Please ask Mr. Ashe if I can see him for a few minutes."
+
+Wilson disappeared, and Lady Tranmore stood motionless, looking round at
+William's books and tables. She loved everything that his hand had
+touched, every sign of his character--the prize books of his college
+days, the pictures on the wall, many of which had descended from his
+Eton study, the photographs of his favorite hunter, the drawing she
+herself had made for him of his first pony.
+
+On his writing-table lay a despatch-box from the Foreign Office. Lady
+Tranmore turned away from it. It reminded her intolerably of the shock
+and defeat of the day before. During the past six months she had become
+more rejoicingly conscious than ever before of his secret, deepening
+ambition, and her own heart burned with the smart of his disappointment.
+No one else, however, should guess at it through her. No sooner had she
+received his letter from the club than, after many weeks of withdrawal
+from society, she had forced herself to go to the Holland House party,
+that no one might say she hid herself, that no one might for an instant
+suppose that any hostile act of such a man as Lord Parham, or any malice
+of that low-minded woman, could humiliate her son or herself.
+
+Suddenly she saw Kitty's gloves--Kitty's torn and soiled gloves--lying
+on the floor. She clasped her trembling hands, trying to steady herself.
+Husband and wife were together. What tragedy was passing between them?
+
+Of course there _might_ have been an accident; her thoughts might be all
+mistake and illusion. But Lady Tranmore hardly allowed herself to
+encourage the alternative of hope. It was like Kitty's audacity to have
+come back. Incredible!--unfathomable!--like all she did.
+
+"Her ladyship says, my lady, would you please go up to her room?"
+
+The message was given in Blanche's timid voice. Lady Tranmore started,
+looked at the girl, longed to question her, and had not the courage. She
+followed mechanically, and in silence. Could she, must she face it?
+Yes--for her son's sake. She prayed inwardly that she might meet the
+ordeal before her with Christian strength and courage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The door opened. She saw two figures in the pretty, bright-colored room,
+William sat astride upon a chair in front of Kitty, who, like some small
+mother-bird, hovered above him, holding what seemed to be a tiny strip
+of bread-and-butter, which she was dropping with dainty deliberation
+into his mouth. Her face, in spite of the red and swollen eyes, was
+alive with fun, and Ashe's laugh reflected hers. The domesticity, the
+intimate affection of the scene--before these things Elizabeth Tranmore
+stood gasping.
+
+"Dearest mother!" cried Ashe, starting up.
+
+Kitty turned. At sight of Lady Tranmore she hung back; her smiles
+departed; her lip quivered.
+
+"William!"--she pursued him and touched him on the shoulder. "I--I
+can't--I'm afraid. If mother ever means to speak to me again--come and
+tell me."
+
+And, hiding her face, Kitty escaped like a whirlwind. The dressing-room
+door closed behind her, and mother and son were left alone.
+
+"Mother!" said Ashe, coming up to her gayly, both hands out-stretched.
+"Ask me nothing, dear. Kitty has been a silly child--but things will go
+better now. And as for the Parhams--what does it matter?--come and help
+me send them to the deuce!"
+
+Lady Tranmore recoiled. For once the good-humor of that handsome
+face--pale as the face was--seemed to her an offence--nay, a disgrace.
+That what had happened had been no mere _contretemps_, no mere accident
+of trains and coaches, was plain enough from Kitty's eyes--from all that
+William did _not_ say, no less than from what he said. And still this
+levity!--this inconceivable levity! Was it true, as she knew was said,
+that William had no high sense of honor, that he failed in delicacy and
+dignity?
+
+In reality, it was the same cry as the Dean's--upon another and smaller
+occasion. But in this case it was unspoken. Lady Tranmore dropped into a
+chair, one hand abandoned to her son, the other hiding her face. He
+talked fast and tenderly, asking her help--neither of them quite knew
+for what--her advice as to the move to Haggart--and so forth. Lady
+Tranmore said little. But it was a bitter silence; and if Ashe himself
+failed in indignation, his mother's protesting heart supplied it amply.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+DEVELOPMENT
+
+
+"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Sich ein Character in dem
+Strom, der Welt."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+"What does Lady Kitty do with herself here?" said Darrell, looking round
+him. He had just arrived from town on a visit to the Ashes, to find the
+Haggart house and garden completely deserted, save for Mrs. Alcot, who
+was lounging in solitude, with a cigarette and a novel, on the wide lawn
+which surrounded the house on three sides.
+
+As he spoke he lifted a chair and placed it beside her, under one of the
+cedars which made deep shade upon the grass.
+
+"She plays at Lady Bountiful," said Mrs. Alcot. "She doesn't do it well,
+but--"
+
+"--The wonder is, in Johnsonian phrase, that she should do it at all.
+Anything else?"
+
+"I understand--she is writing a book--a novel."
+
+Darrell threw back his head and laughed long and silently.
+
+"Il ne manquait que cela," he said--"that Lady Kitty should take to
+literature!"
+
+Mrs. Alcot looked at him rather sharply.
+
+"Why not? We frivolous people are a good deal cleverer than you think."
+
+The languid arrogance of the lady's manner was not at all unbecoming.
+Darrell made an inclination.
+
+"No need to remind me, madam!" A recent exhibition at an artistic club
+of Mrs. Alcot's sketches had made a considerable mark. "Very soon you
+will leave us poor professionals no room to live."
+
+The slight disrespect of his smile annoyed his companion, but the day
+was hot and she had no repartee ready. She only murmured as she threw
+away her cigarette:
+
+"Kitty is much disappointed in the village."
+
+"They are greater brutes than she thought?"
+
+"Quite the contrary. There are no poachers--and no murders. The girls
+prefer to be married, and the Tranmores give so much away that no one
+has the smallest excuse for starvation. Kitty gets nothing out of them
+whatever."
+
+"In the way of literary material?"
+
+Mrs. Alcot nodded.
+
+"Last week she was so discouraged that she was inclined to give up
+fiction and take to journalism."
+
+"Heavens! Political?"
+
+"Oh, _la haute politique_, of course."
+
+"H'm. The wives of cabinet ministers have often inspired articles. I
+don't remember an instance of their writing them."
+
+"Well, Kitty is inclined to try."
+
+"With Ashe's sanction?"
+
+"Goodness, no! But Kitty, as you are aware"--Mrs. Alcot threw a prudent
+glance to right and left--"goes her own way. She believes she can be of
+great service to her husband's policy."
+
+Darrell's lip twitched.
+
+"If you were in Ashe's position, would you rather your wife neglected or
+supported your political interests?"
+
+Mrs. Alcot shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Kitty made a considerable mess of them last year."
+
+"No doubt. She forgot they existed. But I think if I were Ashe, I should
+be more afraid of her remembering. By-the-way--the glass here seems to
+be at 'Set Fair'?"
+
+His interrogative smile was not wholly good-natured. But mere
+benevolence was not what the world asked of Philip Darrell--even in the
+case of his old friends.
+
+"Astonishing!" said Mrs. Alcot, with lifted brows. "Kitty is immensely
+proud of him--and immensely ambitious. That, of course, accounts for
+Lord Parham's visit."
+
+"Lord Parham!" cried Darrell, bounding on his seat. "Lord
+Parham!--coming here?"
+
+"He arrives to-morrow. On his way from Scotland--to Windsor."
+
+Mrs. Alcot enjoyed the effect of her communication on her companion. He
+sat open-mouthed, evidently startled out of all self-command.
+
+"Why, I thought that Lady Kitty--"
+
+"Had vowed vengeance? So, in a sense, she has. It is understood that she
+and Lady Parham don't meet, except--"
+
+"On formal occasions, and to take in the groundlings," said Darrell, too
+impatient to let her finish her sentence. "Yes, that I gathered. But you
+mean that _Lord_ Parham is to be allowed to make his peace?"
+
+Madeleine Alcot lay back and laughed.
+
+"Kitty wishes to try her hand at managing him."
+
+Darrell joined her in mirth. The notion of the white-haired,
+bullet-headed, shrewd, and masterful man who at that moment held the
+Premiership of England managed by Kitty, or any other daughter of
+Eve--always excepting his wife--must needs strike those who had the
+slightest acquaintance with Lord Parham as a delicious absurdity.
+
+Suddenly Darrell checked himself, and bent forward.
+
+"Where--if I may ask--is the poet?"
+
+"Geoffrey? Somewhere in the Balkans, isn't he?--making a revolution."
+
+Darrell nodded.
+
+"I remember. They say he is with the revolutionary committee at
+Marinitza. Meanwhile there is a new volume of poems out--to-day," said
+Darrell, glancing at a newspaper thrown down beside him.
+
+"I have seen it. The 'portrait' at the end--"
+
+"Is Lady Kitty." They spoke under their breaths.
+
+"Unmistakable, I think," said Kitty's best friend. "As poetry, it seems
+to me the best thing in the book, but the audacity of it!" She raised
+her eyebrows in a half-unwilling, half-contemptuous admiration.
+
+"Has she seen it?"
+
+Mrs. Alcot replied that she had not noticed any copy in the house, and
+that Kitty had not spoken of it, which, given the Kitty-nature, she
+probably would have done, had it reached her.
+
+Then they both fell into reverie, from which Darrell emerged with the
+remark:
+
+"I gather that last year some very important person interfered?"
+
+This opened another line of gossip, in which, however, Mrs. Alcot showed
+herself equally well informed. It was commonly reported, at any rate,
+that the old Duke of Morecambe, the head of Lady Eleanor Cliffe's
+family, the great Tory evangelical of the north, who was a sort of
+patriarch in English political and aristocratic life, had been induced
+by some undefined pressure to speak very plainly to his kinsman on the
+subject of Lady Kitty Ashe. Cliffe had expectations from the duke which
+were not to be trifled with. He had, accordingly, swallowed the lecture,
+and, after the loss of his election, had again left England with an
+important newspaper commission to watch events in the Balkans.
+
+"May he stay there!" said Darrell. "Of course, the whole thing was
+absurdly exaggerated."
+
+"Was it?" said Mrs. Alcot, coolly. "Kitty richly deserved most of what
+was said." Then--on his start--"Don't misunderstand me, of course. If
+twenty actions for divorce were given against Kitty, I should believe
+nothing--_nothing_!" The words were as emphatic as voice and gesture
+could make them. "But as for the tales that people who hate her tell of
+her, and will go on telling of her--"
+
+"They are merely the harvest of what she has sown?"
+
+"Naturally. Poor Kitty!"
+
+Madeleine Alcot rested her thin cheek on a still frailer hand and looked
+pensively out into the darkness of the cedars. Her tone was neither
+patronizing nor unkind; rather, the shade of ironic tenderness which it
+expressed suited the subject, and that curious intimacy which had of
+late sprung up between herself and Darrell. She had begun, as we have
+seen, by treating him _de haut en bas_. He had repaid her with manner of
+the same type; in this respect he was a match for any Archangel. Then
+some accident--perhaps the publication by the man of a volume of essays
+which expressed to perfection his acid and embittered talent--perhaps a
+casual meeting at a northern country-house, where the lady had found the
+man of letters her only resource amid a crowd of uncongenial
+nonentities--had shown them their natural compatibility. Both were in a
+secret revolt against circumstance and their own lives; but whereas the
+reasons for the man's attitude--his jealousies, defeats, and
+ambitions--were fairly well understood by the woman, he was almost as
+much in the dark about her as when their friendship began.
+
+He knew her husband slightly--an eager, gifted fellow, of late years a
+strong High Churchman, and well known in a certain group as the friend
+of Mrs. Armagh, that muse--fragile, austere, and beautiful--of several
+great men, and great Christians, among the older generation. Mrs. Alcot
+had her own intimates, generally men; but she tired of them and changed
+them often. Mr. Alcot spent part of every year within reach of the
+Cornish home of Mrs. Armagh; and during that time his wife made her
+round of visits.
+
+Meanwhile her thin lips were sealed as to her own affairs. Certainly she
+made the impression of an unhappy woman, and Darrell was convinced of
+some tragic complication. But neither he nor any one of whom he had yet
+inquired had any idea what it might be.
+
+"By-the-way--where is Lady Kitty?--and are there many people here?"
+
+Darrell turned, as he spoke, to scrutinize the house and its approaches.
+Haggart Hall was a large and commonplace mansion, standing in the midst
+of spreading "grounds" and dull plantations, beyond which could be
+sometimes seen the tall chimneys of neighboring coal-mines. It wore an
+air of middle-class Tory comfort which brought a smile to Darrell's
+countenance as he surveyed it.
+
+"Kitty is at the Agricultural Show--with a party."
+
+"Playing the great lady? _What_ a house!"
+
+"Yes. Kitty abhors it. But it will do very well for the party
+to-morrow."
+
+"Half the county--that kind of thing?"
+
+"_All_ the county--some royalties--and Lord Parham."
+
+"Lord Parham being the end and aim? I thought I heard wheels."
+
+Mrs. Alcot rose, and they strolled back towards the house.
+
+"And the party?" resumed Darrell.
+
+"Not particularly thrilling. Lord Grosville--"
+
+"Also, I presume, _en garçon_."
+
+Mrs. Alcot smiled.
+
+"--the Manleys, Lady Tranmore, Miss French, the Dean of Milford and his
+wife, Eddie Helston--"
+
+"That, I understand, is Lady Kitty's undergraduate adorer?"
+
+"It's no use talking to you--you know all the gossip. And some county
+big-wigs, whose names I can't remember--come to dinner to-night." Mrs.
+Alcot stifled a yawn.
+
+"I am very curious to see how Ashe takes his triumph," said Darrell, as
+they paused half-way.
+
+"He is just the same. No!" said Madeleine Alcot, correcting
+herself--"no--not quite. He _meant_ to triumph, and he _knows_ that he
+has done so."
+
+"My dear lady!" cried Darrell--"a quite _enormous_ difference! Ashe
+never took stock of himself or his prospects in his life before."
+
+"Well, now--you will find he takes stock of a good many things."
+
+"Including Lady Kitty?"
+
+His companion smiled.
+
+"He won't let her interfere again."
+
+"_L'homme propose_," said Darrell. "You mean he has grown ambitious?"
+
+Mrs. Alcot seemed to find it difficult to cope with these high things.
+Fanning herself, she languidly supposed that the English political
+passion, so strong and unspent still in the aristocratic families, had
+laid serious hold at last on William Ashe. He had great schemes of
+reform, and, do what he might to conceal it, his heart was in them. His
+wife, therefore, was no longer his occupation, but--
+
+Mrs. Alcot hesitated for a word.
+
+"Scarcely his repose?" laughed Darrell.
+
+"I really won't discuss Kitty any more," said Mrs. Alcot, impatiently.
+"Here they are! Hullo! What has Kitty got hold of now?"
+
+Three carriages were driving up the long approach, one behind the other.
+In the first sat Kitty, a figure beside her in the dress of a nurse, and
+opposite to them both an indistinguishable bundle, which presently
+revealed a head. The carriage drew up at the steps. Kitty jumped down,
+and she and the nurse lifted the bundle out. Footmen appeared; some
+guests from the next carriage went to help; there was a general movement
+and agitation, in the midst of which Kitty and her companions
+disappeared into the house.
+
+Lady Edith Manley and Lord Grosville began to cross the lawn.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Mrs. Alcot, as they converged.
+
+"Kitty ran over a boy," said Lord Grosville, in evident annoyance. "The
+rascal hadn't a scratch, but Kitty must needs pick him up and drive him
+home with a nurse. 'I ain't hurt, mum,' says the boy. 'Oh! but you must
+be,' said Kitty. I offered to take him to his mother and give him half a
+crown. 'It's my duty to look after him,' says Kitty. And she lifted him
+up herself--dirty little vagabond!--and put him in the carriage. There
+were some laborers and grooms standing near, and one of them sang out,
+'Three cheers for Lady Kitty Ashe!' Such a ridiculous scene as you never
+saw!"
+
+The old man shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
+
+"Lady Kitty is always so kind," said the amicable Lady Edith. "But her
+pretty dress--I _was_ sorry!"
+
+"Oh no--only an excuse for a new one," said Mrs. Alcot.
+
+The Dean and Lady Tranmore approached--behind them again Ashe and Mrs.
+Winston.
+
+"Well, old fellow!" said Ashe, clapping a hand on Darrell's shoulder.
+"Uncommonly glad to see you. You look as though that damned London had
+been squeezing the life out of you. Come for a stroll before dinner?"
+
+The two men accordingly left the talkers on the lawn, and struck into
+the park. Ashe, in a straw hat and light suit, made his usual impression
+of strength and good-humor. He was gay, friendly, amusing as ever. But
+Darrell was not long in discovering or imagining signs of change. Any
+one else would have thought Ashe's talk frankness--nay,
+indiscretion--itself. Darrell at once divined or imagined in it shades
+of official reserve, tracts of reticence, such as an old friend had a
+right to resent.
+
+"One can see what a personage he feels himself!"
+
+Yet Darrell would have been the first to own that Ashe had some right to
+feel himself a personage. The sudden revelation of his full intellectual
+power, and of his influence in the country, for which the general
+election of the preceding winter had provided the opportunity, was still
+an exciting memory among journalists and politicians. He had gone into
+the election a man slightly discredited, on whose future nobody took
+much trouble to speculate. He had emerged from it--after a series of
+speeches laying down the principles and vindicating the action of his
+party--one of the most important men in England, with whom Lord Parham
+himself must henceforth treat on quasi-equal terms. Ashe was now Home
+Secretary, and, if Lord Parham's gout should take an evil turn, there
+was no saying to what height fortune might not soon conduct him.
+
+The will--the iron purpose--with which it had all been done--that was
+the amazing part of it. The complete independence, moreover. Darrell
+imagined that Lord Parham must often have regretted the small intrigue
+by which Ashe's promotion had been barred in the crisis of the summer.
+It had roused an indolent man to action, and freed him from any
+particular obligation towards the leader who had ill-treated him. Ashe's
+campaign had not been in all respects convenient; but Lord Parham had
+had to put up with it.
+
+The summer evening broadened as the two men sauntered on through the
+park, beside a small stream fringed with yellow flags. Even the dingy
+Midland landscape, with its smoke-blackened woods and lifeless grass,
+assumed a glory of great light; the soft, interlacing clouds parted
+before the dying sun; the water received the golden flood, and each coot
+and water-hen shone jet and glossy in the blaze. A few cries of birds,
+the distant shouts of harvesters, the rustling of the water-flags along
+the stream, these were the only sounds--traditional sounds of English
+peace.
+
+"Jolly, isn't it?" said Ashe, looking round him--"even this spoiled
+country! Why did we go and stifle in that beastly show!"
+
+The sensuous pleasure and relaxation of his mood communicated itself to
+Darrell. They talked more intimately, more freely than they had done for
+months. Darrell's gnawing consciousness of his own meaner fortunes, as
+contrasted with the brilliant and expanding career of his school-friend,
+softened and relaxed. He almost forgave Ashe the successes of the
+winter, and that subtly heightened tone of authority and self-confidence
+which here and there bore witness to them in the manner or talk of the
+minister. They scarcely touched on politics, however. Both were tired,
+and their talk drifted into the characteristic male gossip--"What's ----
+doing now?" "Do you ever see So-and-so?" "You remember that fellow at
+Univ.?"--and the like, to the agreeable accompaniment of Ashe's best
+cigars.
+
+So pleasant was the half-hour, so strongly had the old college intimacy
+reasserted itself, that suddenly a thought struck upward in Darrell's
+mind. He had not come to Haggart bent merely on idle holiday--far from
+it. At the moment he was weary of literature as a profession, and
+sharply conscious that the time for vague ambitions had gone by. A post
+had presented itself, a post of importance, in the gift of the Home
+Office. It meant, no doubt, the abandonment of more brilliant things;
+Darrell was content to abandon them. His determination to apply for it
+seemed, indeed, to himself an act of modesty--almost of sacrifice. As to
+the technical qualifications required, he was well aware there might be
+other men better equipped than himself. But, after all, to what may not
+general ability aspire--general ability properly stiffened with
+interest?
+
+And as to interest, when was it ever to serve him if not now--through
+his old friendship with Ashe? Chivalry towards a much-solicited mortal,
+also your friend--even the subtler self-love--might have counselled
+silence--or at least approaches more gradual. It had been far from his
+purpose, indeed, to speak so promptly. But here were the hour and the
+man! And there, in a distant country town, a woman--whereof the mere
+existence was unsuspected by Darrell's country-house acquaintance--sat
+waiting, in whose eyes the post in question loomed as a
+condition--perhaps indispensable. Darrell's secret eagerness could not
+withstand the temptation.
+
+So, with a nervous beginning--"By-the-way, I wished to consult you about
+a personal matter. Of course, answer or not, as you like. Naturally, I
+understand the difficulties!"--the plunge was taken, and the petitioner
+soon in full career.
+
+After a first start--a lifted brow of astonishment--Ashe was
+uncomfortably silent--till suddenly, in a pause of Darrell's eloquence,
+his face changed, and with a burst of his old, careless freedom and
+affection, he flung an arm along Darrell's shoulder, with an impetuous--
+
+"I say, old fellow--don't--don't be a damned fool!"
+
+An ashen white overspread the countenance of the man thus addressed. His
+lips twitched. He walked on in silence. Ashe looked at him--stammered:
+
+"Why, my dear Philip, it would be the extinguishing of you!"
+
+Darrell said nothing. Ashe, still holding his friend captive, descanted
+hurriedly on the disadvantages of the post "for a man of your gifts,"
+then--more cautiously--on its special requirements, not one of which did
+Darrell possess--hinted at the men applying for it, at the scientific
+and professional influences then playing upon himself, at his strong
+sense of responsibility--"Too bad, isn't it, that a duffer like me
+should have to decide these things"--and so on.
+
+In vain. Darrell laughed, recovered himself, changed the subject; but as
+they walked quickly back to the house, Ashe knew, perchance, that he had
+lost a friend; and Darrell's smarting soul had scored another reckoning
+against a day to come.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they neared the house they found a large group still lingering on the
+lawn, and Kitty just emerging from a garden door. She came out
+accompanied by the handsome Cambridge lad who had been her partner at
+Lady Crashaw's dance. He was evidently absorbed in her society, and they
+approached in high spirits, laughing and teasing each other.
+
+"Well, Kitty, how's the bruised one?" said Ashe, as he sank into a chair
+beside Mrs. Alcot.
+
+"Doing finely," said Kitty. "I shall send him home to-night."
+
+"Meanwhile, have you put him up in my dressing-room? I only ask for
+information."
+
+"There wasn't another corner," said Kitty.
+
+"There!" Ashe appealed to gods and men. "How do you expect me to dress
+for dinner?"
+
+"Oh, now, William, don't be tiresome!" said Kitty, impatiently. "He was
+bruised black and blue"--("Serve him right for getting in the way,"
+grumbled Lord Grosville)--"and nurse and I have done him up in arnica."
+
+She came to stand by Ashe, talking in an undertone and as fast as
+possible. The little Dean, who never could help watching her, thought
+her more beautiful--and wilder--than ever. Her eyes--it was hardly
+enough to say they shone--they glittered--in her delicate face; her
+gestures were more extravagant than he remembered them; her movements
+restlessness itself.
+
+Ashe listened with patience--then said:
+
+"I can't help it, Kitty--you really must have him removed."
+
+"Impossible!" she said, her cheek flaming.
+
+"I'll go and talk to Wilson; he'll manage it," said Ashe, getting up.
+
+Kitty pursued him, arguing incessantly.
+
+He lounged along, turning every now and then to look at her, smiling and
+demurring, his hat on the back of his head.
+
+"You see the difference," said Mrs. Alcot, in Darrell's ear. "Last year
+Kitty would have got her way. This year she won't."
+
+Darrell shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"These domesticities should be kept out of sight, don't you think?"
+
+Madeleine Alcot looked at him curiously.
+
+"Did you have a pleasant walk?" she said.
+
+Darrell made a little face.
+
+"The great man was condescending."
+
+Madeleine Alcot's face was still interrogative.
+
+"A touch of the _folie des grandeurs?_"
+
+"Well, who escapes it?" said Darrell, bitterly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Most of the party had dispersed. Only Lady Tranmore and Margaret French
+were on the lawn. Margaret was writing some household notes for Kitty;
+Lady Tranmore sat in meditation, with a book before her which she was
+not reading. Miss French glanced at her from time to time. Ashe's mother
+was beginning to show the weight of years far more plainly than she had
+yet done. In these last three years the face had perceptibly altered; so
+had the hair. The long strain of nursing, and that pathetic change which
+makes of the husband who has been a woman's pride and shelter her
+half-conscious dependent, had, no doubt, left deep marks upon a beauty
+which had so long resisted time. And yet Margaret French believed it was
+rather with her son than with her husband that the constant and wearing
+anxiety of Lady Tranmore's life should be connected. All the ambition,
+the pride of race and history which had been disappointed in her husband
+had poured themselves into her devotion to her son. She lived now for
+his happiness and success. And both were constantly threatened by the
+personality and the presence of Kitty.
+
+Such, at least, as Margaret French well knew, was the inmost
+persuasion--fast becoming a fanaticism--of Ashe's mother. William might,
+indeed, for the moment have triumphed over the consequences of Kitty's
+bygone behavior. But the reckless, untamed character was there still at
+his side, preparing Heaven knew what pitfalls and catastrophes. Lady
+Tranmore lived in fear. And under the outward sweetness and dignity of
+her manner was there not developing something worse than fear--that
+hatred which is one of the strange births of love?
+
+If so, was it just? There were many moments when Margaret would have
+indignantly denied it.
+
+It was true, indeed, that Kitty's eccentricity seemed to develop with
+every month that passed. The preceding winter had been marked, first by
+a mad folly of table-turning--involving the pursuit of a particular
+medium whose proceedings had ultimately landed him in the dock; then by
+a headlong passion for hunting, accompanied by a series of new
+flirtations, each more unseemly than its predecessor, as it seemed to
+Lady Tranmore. Afterwards--during the general election--a political
+phase! Kitty had most unfortunately discovered that she could speak in
+public, and had fallen in love with the sound of her own voice. In
+Ashe's own contest, her sallies and indiscretions had already begun to
+do mischief when Lady Tranmore had succeeded in enticing her to London
+by the bait of a French _clairvoyante_, with whom Kitty nightly tempted
+the gods who keep watch over the secrets of fate--till William's poll
+had been declared.
+
+All this was deplorably true. And yet no one could say that Kitty in
+this checkered year had done her husband much harm. Ashe was no longer
+her blind slave; and his career had carried him to heights with which
+even his mother might have been satisfied. Sometimes Margaret was
+inclined to think that Kitty had now less influence with him and his
+mother more than was the just due of each. She--the younger woman--felt
+the tragedy of Ashe's new and growing emancipation. Secretly--often--she
+sided with Kitty!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Margaret!"
+
+The voice was Kitty's. She came running out, her pale-pink skirts flying
+round her. "Have you seen the babe?"
+
+Margaret replied that he and his nurse were just in sight.
+
+Kitty fled over the lawn to meet the child's perambulator. She lifted
+him out, and carried him in her arms towards Margaret and Lady Tranmore.
+
+"Isn't it piteous?" said Margaret, under her breath, as the mother and
+child approached. Lady Tranmore gave her a sad, assenting look.
+
+For during the last six months the child had shown signs of brain
+mischief--a curious apathy, broken now and then by fits of temper. The
+doctors were not encouraging. And Kitty varied between the most
+passionate attempts to rouse the child's failing intelligence and
+days--even weeks--when she could hardly bring herself to see him at all.
+
+She brought him now to a seat beside Lady Tranmore. She had been trying
+to make him take notice of a new toy. But the child looked at her with
+blank and glassy eyes, and the toy fell from his hand.
+
+"He hardly knows me," said Kitty, in a low voice of misery, as she
+clasped her hands round the baby of three, and looked into his face, as
+though she would drag from it some sign of mind and recognition.
+
+But the blue eyes betrayed no glimmer of response, till suddenly, with a
+gesture as of infinite fatigue, the child threw itself back against her,
+laying its fair head upon her breast with a long sigh.
+
+Kitty gave a sob, and bent over him, kissing--and kissing him.
+
+"Dear Kitty!" said Lady Tranmore, much moved. "I think--partly--he is
+tired with the heat."
+
+Kitty shook her head.
+
+"Take him!" she said to the nurse--"take him! I can't bear it."
+
+The nurse took him from her, and Kitty dried her tears with a kind of
+fierceness.
+
+"There is the post!" she said, springing up, as though determined to
+throw off her grief as quickly as possible, while the nurse carried the
+child away.
+
+The footman brought the letters across the lawn. There were some for
+Lady Tranmore and for Margaret French. In the general opening and
+reading that ensued, neither lady noticed Kitty for a while. Suddenly
+Margaret French looked up. She saw Kitty sitting motionless with a book
+on her lap, a book of which the wrapper lay on the grass beside her. Her
+finger kept a page; her eyes, full of excitement, were fixed on the
+distant horizon of the park; the hurried breathing was plainly
+noticeable under the thin bodice.
+
+"Kitty--time to dress!" said Margaret, touching her.
+
+Kitty rose, without a word to either of them, and walked quickly away,
+her hands, still holding the book, dropped in front of her, her eyes on
+the ground.
+
+"Oh, Kitty!" cried Margaret, in laughing protest, as she stooped to pick
+up the litter of Kitty's letters, some of them still unopened, which lay
+scattered on the grass, as they had fallen unheeded from her lap.
+
+But the little figure in the trailing skirts was already out of hearing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At dinner Kitty was in her wildest spirits--a sparkling vision of
+diamonds and lace, much beyond--so it seemed to Lord Grosville--what the
+occasion required. "Dressed out like a comedy queen at a fair!" was his
+inward comment, and he already rolled the phrases in which he should
+describe the whole party to his wife. Like the expected Lord Parham, he
+was there in sign of semi-reconciliation. Nothing would have induced
+Kitty to invite her aunt; the memory of a certain Sunday was too strong.
+On her side, Lady Grosville averred that nothing would have induced her
+to sit at Kitty's board. As to this, her husband cherished a certain
+scepticism. However, her resolution was not tried. It was Ashe, in fact,
+who had invited Lord Grosville, and Lord Grosville, who was master in
+his own house, and had no mind to break with William Ashe just as that
+gentleman's company became even better worth having than usual, had
+accepted the invitation.
+
+But his patience was sorely tried by Kitty. After dinner she insisted on
+table-turning, and Lord Grosville was dragged breathless through the
+drawing-room window, in pursuit of a table that broke a chair and
+finally danced upon a flower-bed. His theology was harassed by these
+proceedings and his digestion upset. The Dean took it with smiles; but
+then the Dean was a Latitudinarian.
+
+Afterwards Kitty and the Cambridge boy--Eddie Helston--performed a
+duologue in French for the amusement of the company. Whatever could be
+understood in it had better not have been understood--such at least was
+Lord Grosville's impression. He wondered how Ashe--who laughed
+immoderately--could allow his wife to do such things; and his only
+consolation was that, for once, the Dean--whose fancy for Kitty was
+ridiculous!--seemed to be disturbed. He had at any rate walked away to
+the library in the middle of the piece. Kitty was, of course, making a
+fool of the boy all through. Any one could see that he was head over
+ears in love with her. And she seemed to have all sorts of mysterious
+understandings with him. Lord Grosville was certain they passed each
+other notes, and made assignations. And one night, on going up himself
+to bed very late, he had actually come upon the pair pacing up and down
+the long passage after midnight!--Kitty in such a _negligée_ as only an
+actress should wear, with her hair about her ears--and the boy out of
+his wits and off his balance, as any one could see. Kitty, indeed, had
+been quite unabashed--trying even to draw _him_ into their unseemly talk
+about some theatrical nonsense or other; and such blushes as there were
+had been entirely left to the boy.
+
+He supposed there was no harm in it. The lad was not a Geoffrey Cliffe,
+and it was no doubt Kitty's mad love of excitement which impelled her
+to these defiances of convention. But Ashe should put his foot down;
+there was no knowing with a creature so wild and so lovely where these
+things might end. And after the scandal of last year--
+
+As to that scandal, Lord Grosville, as a man of the world, by no means
+endorsed the lurid imaginations of his wife. Kitty and Cliffe had
+certainly behaved badly at Grosville Park--that is to say, judged by any
+ordinary standards. And the gossip of the season had apparently gathered
+and culminated round some incident of a graver character than the
+rest--though nobody precisely knew what it might be. But it seemed that
+Ashe had at last asserted himself; and if in Kitty's abrupt departure to
+the country, and the sudden dissolution of the intimacy between herself
+and Cliffe, those who loved her not had read what dark things they
+pleased, her uncle by marriage was quite content to see in it a mere
+disciplinary act on the part of the husband.
+
+Lord Grosville believed that some rumors as to Cliffe's private
+character had entered into the decisive defeat--in a constituency
+largely Nonconformist--which had befallen that gentleman at the polls.
+Poor Lady Tranmore! He saw her anxieties in her face, and was truly
+sorry for her. At the same time, inveterate gossip that he was, he
+regarded her with a kind of hunger. If she only _would_ talk things over
+with him! So far, however, she had given him very little opening. If she
+ever did, he would certainly advise her to press something like a
+temporary separation on her son. Why should not Lady Kitty be left at
+Haggart when the next session began? Lord Grosville, who had been a
+friend of Melbourne's, recalled the early history of that great man.
+When Lady Caroline Lamb had become too troublesome to a political
+husband, she had been sent to Brocket. And then Mr. Lamb was only Irish
+Secretary--without a seat in the cabinet. How was it possible to take an
+important share in steering the ship of state, and to look after a giddy
+wife at the same time?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ashe and his guests lingered late below-stairs. When, somewhere about
+one o'clock, he entered his dressing-room, he was suddenly alarmed by a
+smell of burning. It seemed to come from Kitty's room. He knocked
+hastily at her door.
+
+"Kitty!"
+
+No answer. He opened the door, and stood arrested.
+
+The room was in complete darkness save for some weird object in the
+centre of it, on which a fire was burning, sending up a smoke which hung
+about the room. Ashe recognized an old Spanish brazier of beaten copper,
+standing on iron feet, which had been a purchase of his own in days when
+he trifled with _bric-à-brac_. Upon it, a heap of some light material,
+which fluttered and crackled as it burned, was blazing and smoking away,
+while beside it--her profile set and waxen amid the drifts of smoke, her
+fair hair blanched to whiteness by the strange illumination from below,
+and all her slight form, checkered with the light and shade of the fire,
+drawn into a curve of watchfulness, vindictive and intent--stood Kitty.
+
+"What in the name of fortune are you doing, Kitty?" cried Ashe.
+
+She made no answer, and he approached. Then he saw that in the centre
+of the pile, and propped up against some small pieces of wood, a
+photograph of Geoffrey Cliffe was consuming slow and dismally. The fire
+had just sent a line across his cheek. The lower limbs were already
+charred, and the right hand was shrivelling.
+
+All around were letters, mostly consumed; while at the top of the pile
+above the culprit's head, stuck in a cleft stick, and just beginning to
+be licked by the flames, was what seemed to be a leaf torn out of a
+book. The book from which it had apparently been wrenched lay open on a
+chair near.
+
+Kitty drew a long breath as Ashe came near her.
+
+"Keep off!" she said--"don't touch it!"
+
+"You little goose!" cried Ashe--"what are you about?"
+
+"Burning a coward in effigy," said Kitty, between her teeth.
+
+Ashe thrust his hands into his pockets.
+
+"I wish to God you'd forget the creature, instead of flattering him with
+these attentions!"
+
+Kitty made no reply, but as she drew the fire together Ashe captured her
+hand.
+
+"What's he been doing now, Kitty?"
+
+"There are his poems," said Kitty, pointing to the chair. "The last one
+is about me."
+
+"May I be allowed to see it?"
+
+"It isn't there."
+
+"Ah! I see. You've topped the pile with it. With your leave, I'll delay
+its doom." He snatched the leaf from its stick, and bending down read it
+by the light of the burning paper. Kitty watched him, frowning, her hand
+on her hip, the white wrap she wore over her night-dress twining round
+her in close folds a slender, brooding sorceress, some Canidia or
+Simaetha, interrupted in her ritual of hate.
+
+But Ashe was in no mood for literary reminiscence. His lip was
+contemptuous, his brow angry as he replaced the leaf in its cleft stick,
+whither the flames immediately pursued it.
+
+"Wretched stuff, and damned impertinence!--that's all there is to say.
+For Heaven's sake, Kitty, don't let any one suppose you mind the
+thing--for an instant!"
+
+She looked at him with strange eyes. "But if I do mind it?"
+
+His face darkened to the shade of hers. "Does that mean--that you still
+think of him--still wish to see him?"
+
+"I don't know," said Kitty, slowly. The fire had died away. Nothing but
+a few charred remnants remained in the brazier. Ashe lit the gas, and
+disclosed a tragic Kitty, flushed by the audacity of her last remark. He
+took her masterfully in his arms.
+
+"That was bravado," he said, kissing her. "You love _me_! And I may be a
+poor stick, but I'm worth a good many Cliffes. Defy me--and I'll write
+you a better poem, too!"
+
+The color leaped afresh in Kitty's cheek. She pushed him away, and,
+holding him, perused his handsome, scornful face, and all the manly
+strength of form and attitude. Her own lids wavered.
+
+"What a silly scene!" she said, and fell--a little, soft, yielding
+form--into his arms.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The church clock of Haggart village had just struck half-past six. A
+white, sunny mist enwrapped the park and garden. Voices and shouts rang
+through the mist; little could yet be seen, but the lawns and the park
+seemed to be pervaded with bustle and preparation, and every now and
+then as the mist drifted groups of workmen could be distinguished,
+marquees emerged, flags floated, and carts laden with benches and
+trestle-tables rumbled slowly over the roads and tracks of the park.
+
+The house itself was full of gardeners, arranging banks of magnificent
+flowers in the hall and drawing-rooms, and superintended by the head
+gardener, a person of much greater dignity than Ashe himself, who swore
+at any underling making a noise, as though the slumbers of the "quality"
+in the big house overhead and the danger of disturbing them were the
+dearest interests of a burdened life.
+
+As to the mistress of the house, at any rate, there was no need for
+caution. The clocks of the house had barely followed the church clock in
+striking the half-hour when the workmen on the ground floor saw Lady
+Kitty come down-stairs and go through the drawing-room window into the
+garden. There she gave her opinion on the preparations, pushing on
+afterwards into the park, where she astounded the various contractors
+and their workmen by her appearance at such an hour, and by the vigor
+and decision of her orders. Finally she left the park behind, just as
+its broad, scorched surfaces began everywhere to shake off the mist, and
+entered one of the bordering woods.
+
+She had a basket on her arm, and, when she had found for herself a mossy
+seat amid the roots of a great oak, she unpacked it. It contained a mass
+of written pages, some fresh scribbling-paper, ink and pens, and a small
+portfolio. When they were all lying on the moss beside her, Kitty turned
+over the sheets with a loving hand, reading here and there.
+
+"It is good!" she said to herself. "I vow it is!"
+
+Dipping her pen in the ink, she began upon corrections. The sun filtered
+through the thick leafage overhead, touching her white dress, her small
+shoes, and the masses of her hair. She wore a Leghorn garden-hat, tied
+with pink ribbons under her chin, and in her morning freshness and
+daintiness she looked about seventeen. The hours of sleep had calmed the
+restlessness of the wide, brown eyes; they were full now of gentleness
+and mirth.
+
+"I wonder if he'll come?"
+
+She looked up and listened. And as she did so, her eyes and sense were
+seized with the beauty of the wood. The mystery of early solitary hours
+seemed to be still upon it; both in the sunlight and the shadow there
+was a magic unknown to the later day. In a clearing before her spread a
+lake of willow-herb, of a pure bright pink, hemmed in by a golden shore
+of ragwort. The splash of color gave Kitty a passionate delight.
+
+"Dear, dear world!" She stretched out her hands to it in a childish
+greeting.
+
+Then the joy died sharply from her eyes. "How many years left--to enjoy
+it in--before one dies--or one's heart dies?"
+
+Invariably, now, her moments of sensuous pleasure ended in this dread of
+something beyond--of a sudden drowning of beauty and delight--of a
+future unknown and cruel, coming to meet her, like some armed assassin
+in a narrow path.
+
+William! When it came could William save her? "William is a _darling_!"
+she said to herself, her face full of yearning.
+
+As for that other--it gave her an intense pleasure to think of the
+flames creeping up the form and face of the photograph. Should she hear,
+perhaps, in a week or two that he had been seized with some mysterious
+illness, like the witch-victims of old? A shiver ran through her, a
+thrill of repentance--till the bitter lines of the poem came back to
+memory--lines describing a woman with neither the courage for sin nor
+the strength for virtue, a "light woman" indeed, whom the great passions
+passed eternally by, whom it was a humiliation to court and a mere
+weakness to regret. Then she laughed, and began again with passionate
+zest upon the sheets before her.
+
+A sound of approaching footsteps on the wood-path. She half rose,
+smiling.
+
+The branches parted, and Darrell appeared. He paused to survey the oread
+vision of Lady Kitty.
+
+"Am I not to the minute?" He held up his watch in front of her.
+
+"So you got my note?"
+
+"Certainly. I was immensely flattered." He threw himself down on the
+moss beside her, his sallow, long-chinned face and dark eyes toned to a
+morning cheerfulness, his dress much fresher and more exact than usual.
+"But he is one of the men who look so much better in their old clothes!"
+thought Kitty.
+
+"Well, what can I do for you, Lady Kitty?" he resumed, smiling.
+
+"I wanted your advice," said Kitty--not altogether sure, now that he was
+there beside her, that she did want it.
+
+"About your literary work?"
+
+She threw him a quick glance.
+
+"Do you know? How do you know? I have been writing a book!"
+
+"So I imagined--"
+
+"And--and--" She broke now into eagerness, bending forward, "I want you
+to help me get it published. It is a deadly secret. Nobody knows--"
+
+"Not even William?"
+
+"No one," she repeated. "And I can't tell you about it, or show you a
+line of it, unless you vow and swear to me--"
+
+"Oh! I swear," said Darrell, tranquilly--"I swear."
+
+Kitty looked at him doubtfully a moment--then resumed:
+
+"I have written it at all sorts of times--when William was away--in the
+middle of the night--out in the woods. _Nobody_ knows. You see"--her
+little fingers plucked at the moss--"I have a good many advantages. If
+people want 'Society' with a big S, I can give it them!"
+
+"Naturally," said Darrell.
+
+"And it always amuses people--doesn't it?"
+
+Kitty clasped her hands round her knees and looked at him with candor.
+
+"Does it?" said Darrell. "It has been done a good deal."
+
+"Oh, of course," said Kitty, impatiently, "mine's not the proper thing.
+You don't imagine I should try and write like Thackeray, do you? Mine's
+_real_ people--_real_ things that happened--with just the names
+altered."
+
+"Ah!" said Darrell, sitting up--"that sounds exciting. Is it libellous?"
+
+"Well, that's just what I want to know," said Kitty, slowly. "Of course,
+I've made a kind of story out of it. But you'd have to be a great fool
+not to guess. I've put myself in, and--"
+
+"And Ashe?"
+
+Kitty nodded. "All the novels that are written about politics
+nowadays--except Dizzy's--are such nonsense, aren't they? I just wanted
+to describe--from the inside--how a real statesman"--she threw up her
+head proudly--"lives, and what he does."
+
+"Excellent subject," said Darrell. "Well--anybody else?"
+
+Kitty flushed. "You'll see," she said, uncertainly.
+
+Darrell's involuntary smile was hidden by a bunch of honeysuckle at
+which he was sniffing. "May I look?" he asked, stretching out a hand for
+the sheets.
+
+She pushed them towards him, half unwilling, half eager, and he began to
+turn them over. Apparently it had a thread of story--both slender and
+extravagant. And on the thread--Hullo!--here was the fancy ball; he
+pounced upon it. A portrait of Lady Parham--Ye powers! he chuckled as he
+read. On the next page the Chancellor of the Exchequer--snub-nosed
+_parvenu_ and Puritan--admirably caught. Further on a speech of Ashe's
+in the House--with caricature to right and caricature to left ... Ah! the
+poet!--at last! He bent over the page till Kitty coughed and fidgeted,
+and he thought it best to hurry on. But it was war, he perceived--open,
+undignified, feminine war. On the next page, the Archbishop of
+Canterbury--with Lady Kitty's views on the Athanasian Creed! Heavens!
+what a book! Next, Royalty itself, not too respectfully handled. Then
+Ashe again--Ashe glorified, Ashe explained, Ashe intrigued against, and
+Ashe triumphant--everywhere the centre of the stage, and everywhere, of
+course, all unknown to the author, the fool of the piece. Political
+indiscretions also, of the most startling kind, as coming from the wife
+of a cabinet minister. Allusions, besides, scattered broadcast, to the
+scandals of the day--material as far as he could see for a dozen libel
+actions. And with it all, much fantastic ability, flashes of wit and
+romance, enough to give the book wings beyond its first personal
+audience--enough, in fact, to secure to all its scandalous matter the
+widest possible chance of fame.
+
+"Well!"
+
+He rolled over on his elbows, and lay staring at the sheets before
+him--dumb. What was he to say?
+
+A thought struck him. As far as he could perceive, there was an empty
+niche.
+
+"And Lord Parham?"
+
+A smile of mischief broadened on Kitty's lips.
+
+"That'll come," she said--and checked herself. Darrell bowed his face on
+his hands and laughed, unseen. To what sacrificial rite was the
+unconscious victim hurrying--at that very moment--in the express train
+which was to land him at Haggart Station that afternoon?
+
+"Well!" said Kitty, impatiently--"what do you think? Can you help me?"
+
+Darrell looked up.
+
+"You know, Lady Kitty, that book can't be published like that. Nobody
+would risk it."
+
+"Well, I suppose they'll tell me what to cut out."
+
+"Yes," said Darrell, slowly, caught by many reflections--"no doubt some
+clever fellow will know how near the wind it's possible to sail. But,
+anyway, trim it as you like, the book will make a scandal."
+
+"Will it?" Kitty's eyes flashed. She sat up radiant, her breath quick
+and defiant.
+
+"I don't see," he resumed, "how you can publish it without consulting
+Ashe."
+
+Kitty gave a cry of protest.
+
+"No, no, _no_! Of course he'd disapprove. But then--he soon forgives a
+thing, if he thinks it clever. And it is clever, isn't it?--some of it.
+He'd laugh--and then it would be all right. _He'd_ never pay out his
+enemies, but he couldn't help enjoying it if some one else did--could
+he?" She pleaded like a child.
+
+"'No need to forgive them,'" murmured Darrell, as he rolled over on his
+back and put his hat over his eyes--"for you would have 'shot them
+all.'"
+
+Under the shelter of his hat he tried to think himself clear. What
+_really_ were her motives? Partly, no doubt, a childish love of
+excitement--partly revenge? The animus against the Parhams was clear in
+every page. Cliffe, too, came badly out of it--a fantastic Byronic
+mixture of libertine and cad. Lady Kitty had better beware! As far as
+he knew, Cliffe had never yet been struck, with impunity to the striker.
+
+If these precious sheets ever appeared, Ashe's position would certainly
+be shaken. Poor wretch!--endeavoring to pursue a serious existence,
+yoked to such an impish sprite as this! His own fault, after all. That
+first night, at Madame d'Estrées', was not her madness written in her
+eyes?
+
+"Now tell me, Lady Kitty"--he roused himself to look at her with some
+attention--"what do you want me to do?"
+
+"To find me a publisher, and"--she stooped towards him with a laughing
+shyness--"to get me some money."
+
+"Money!"
+
+"I've been so awfully extravagant lately," said Kitty, frankly.
+"Something really will have to be done. And the book's worth some money,
+isn't it?"
+
+"A good deal," said Darrell. Then he added, with emphasis--"I really
+can't be responsible for it in any way, Lady Kitty."
+
+"Of course not. I will never, _never_ say I told you! But, you see, I'm
+not literary--I don't know in the least how to set about it. If you
+would just put me in communication?"
+
+Darrell pondered. None of the well-known publishers, of course, would
+look at it. But there were plenty of people who would--and give Lady
+Kitty a large sum of money for it, too.
+
+What part, however, could he--Darrell--play in such a transaction?
+
+"I am bound to warn you," he said, at last, looking up, "that your
+husband will probably strongly disapprove this book, and that it may do
+him harm."
+
+Kitty bit her lip.
+
+"But if I tell nobody who wrote it--and you tell nobody?"
+
+"Ashe would know at once. Everybody would know."
+
+"William would know," his companion admitted, unwillingly. "But I don't
+see why anybody else should. You see, I've put myself in--I've said the
+most shocking things!"
+
+Darrell replied that she would not find that device of much service to
+her.
+
+"However--I can no doubt get an opinion for you."
+
+Kitty, all delight, thanked him profusely.
+
+"You shall have the whole of it before you go--Friday, isn't it?" she
+said, eagerly gathering it up.
+
+Darrell was certainly conscious of no desire to burden himself with the
+horrid thing. But he was rarely able to refuse the request of a pretty
+and fashionable woman, and it flattered his conceit to be the sole
+recipient of what might very well turn out to be a political secret of
+some importance. Not that he meant to lay himself open to any just
+reproach whatever in the matter. He would show it to some fitting
+person--to pacify Lady Kitty--write a letter of strong protest to her
+afterwards--and wash his hands of it. What might happen then was not his
+business.
+
+Meanwhile his inner mind was full of an acrid debate which turned
+entirely upon his interview with Ashe of the day before. No doubt, as an
+old friend, aware of Lady Kitty's excitable character, he might have
+felt it his duty to go straight to Ashe, _coûte que coûte_, and warn
+him of what was going on. But what encouragement had been given him to
+play so Quixotic a part? Why should he take any particular thought for
+Ashe's domestic peace, or Ashe's public place? What consideration had
+Ashe shown for _him_? "Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin!"
+
+So it ended in his promising to take the MS. to London with him, and let
+Lady Kitty know the result of his inquiries. Kitty's dancing step as
+they returned to the house betrayed the height of her spirits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A rumor flew round the house towards the middle of the day that Harry,
+the little heir, was worse. Kitty did not appear at luncheon, and the
+doctor was sent for. Before he came, it was known only to Margaret
+French that Kitty had escaped by herself from the house and could not be
+found. Ashe and Lady Tranmore saw the doctor, who prescribed, and would
+not admit that there was any cause for alarm. The heat had tried the
+child, and Lady Kitty--he looked round the nursery for her in some
+perplexity--might be quite reassured.
+
+Margaret found her, wandering in the park--very wild and pale--told her
+the doctor's verdict, and brought her home. Kitty said little or
+nothing, and was presently persuaded to change her dress for Lord
+Parham's arrival. By the time the operation was over she was full as
+usual of smiles and chatter, with no trace apparently of the mood which
+had gone before.
+
+Lord Parham found the house-party assembled on the lawn, with Kitty in a
+three-cornered hat, fantastically garnished at the side with a great
+plume of white cock's feathers, presiding at the tea-table.
+
+"Ah!" thought the Premier, as he approached--"now for the tare in Ashe's
+wheat!"
+
+Nothing, however, could have been more gracious than Kitty's reception
+of him, or more effusive than his response. He took his seat beside her,
+a solid and impressive figure, no less closely observed by such of the
+habitual guests of the political country-houses as happened to be
+present, than by the sprinkling of local clergy and country neighbors to
+whom Kitty was giving tea. Lord Parham, though now in the fourth year of
+his Premiership, was still something of a mystery to his countrymen;
+while for the inner circle it was an amusement and an event that he
+should be seen without his wife.
+
+For some time all went well. Kitty's manners and topics were alike
+beyond reproach. When presently she inquired politely as to the success
+of his Scottish tour, Lord Parham hoped he had not altogether disgraced
+himself. But, thank Heaven, it was done. Meanwhile Ashe, he supposed,
+had been enjoying the pursuits of a scholar and a gentleman?--lucky
+fellow!
+
+"He has been reading the Bible," said Kitty, carelessly, as she handed
+cake. "Just now he's in the Acts. That's why, I suppose, he didn't hear
+the carriage. John!" She called a footman. "Tell Mr. Ashe that Lord
+Parham has arrived!"
+
+The Premier opened astonished eyes.
+
+"Does Ashe generally study the Scriptures of an afternoon?"
+
+Kitty nodded--with her most confiding smile. "When he can. He says"--she
+dropped her voice to a theatrical whisper--"the Bible is such a 'd----d
+interesting' book!"
+
+Lord Parham started in his seat. Ashe and some of his friends still
+faintly recalled, in their too familiar and public use of this
+particular naughty word, the lurid vocabulary of the Peel and Melbourne
+generation. But in a lady's mouth the effect was prodigious. Lord
+Grosville frowned sternly and walked away; Eddie Helston smothered a
+burst of laughter; the Dean, startled, broke off a conversation with a
+group of archaeological clergymen and came to see what he could do to
+keep Lady Kitty in order; while Lady Tranmore flushed deeply, and began
+a hasty conversation with Lady Edith Manley. Meanwhile Kitty,
+quite unconscious, "went on cutting"--or rather, dispensing
+"bread-and-butter"; and Lord Parham changed the subject.
+
+"What a charming house!" he said, unwarily, waving his hand towards the
+Haggart mansion. He was short-sighted, and, in truth, saw only that it
+was big.
+
+Kitty looked at him in wonder--a friendly and amiable wonder. She said
+it was very kind of him to try and spare her feelings, but, really,
+anybody might say what they liked of Haggart. She and William weren't
+responsible.
+
+Lord Parham, rather nettled, put on his eye-glass, and, being an
+obstinate man, still maintained that he saw no reason at all to be
+dissatisfied with Haggart, from the æsthetic point of view. Kitty said
+nothing, but for the first time a gleam of mockery showed itself in her
+changing look.
+
+Lady Tranmore, always nervously on the watch, moved forward at this
+point, and Lord Parham, with marked and pompous suavity, transferred his
+conversation to her.
+
+Thus assured, as he thought, of a good listener, and delivered from his
+uncomfortable hostess, Lord Parham crossed his legs and began to talk at
+his ease. The guests round the various tea-tables converged, some
+standing and some sitting, and made a circle about the great man. About
+Kitty, too, who sat, equally conspicuous, dipping a biscuit in milk, and
+teasing her small dog with it. Lord Parham meanwhile described to Lady
+Tranmore--at wearisome length--the demonstrations which had attended his
+journey south, the railway-station crowds, addresses, and so forth. He
+handled the topic in a tone of jocular humility, which but slightly
+concealed the vast complacency beneath. Kitty's lip twitched; she fed
+Ponto hastily with all possible cakes.
+
+"No one, of course, can keep any count of what he says on these
+occasions," resumed Lord Parham, with a gracious smile. "I hope I talked
+some sense--"
+
+"Oh, but why?" said Kitty, looking up, her large fawn's eyes bent on the
+speaker.
+
+"Why?" repeated Lord Parham, suddenly stiffening. "I don't follow you,
+Lady Kitty."
+
+"Anybody can talk sense!" said Kitty, throwing a big bit of muffin at
+Ponto's nose. "It's the other thing that's hard--isn't it?"
+
+"Lady Kitty," said the Dean, lifting a finger, "you are plagiarizing
+from Mr. Pitt."
+
+"Am I?" said Kitty. "I didn't know."
+
+"I imagine that Mr. Pitt talked sense sometimes," said Lord Parham,
+shortly.
+
+"Ah, that was when he was drunk!" said Kitty. "Then he wasn't
+responsible."
+
+Lord Parham and the circle laughed--though the Premier's laugh was a
+little dry and perfunctory.
+
+"So you worship nonsense, Lady Kitty?"
+
+Kitty nodded sweetly.
+
+"And so does William. Ah, here he is!"
+
+For Ashe appeared, hurrying over the lawn, and Lord Parham rose to greet
+his host.
+
+"Upon my word, Ashe, how well you look! _You_ have had some holiday!"
+
+"Which is more than can be said of yourself," said Ashe, with smiling
+sympathy. "Well!--how have the speeches gone? Is there anything left of
+you? Edinburgh was magnificent!"
+
+He wore his most radiant aspect as he sat down beside his guest; and
+Kitty watching him, and already conscious of a renewed and excitable
+dislike for her guest, thought William was overdoing it absurdly, and
+grew still more restive.
+
+The Premier brought the tips of his fingers lightly together, as he
+resumed his seat.
+
+"Oh! my dear fellow, people were very kind--too much so! Yes--I think it
+did good--it did good. I should now rest and be thankful--if it weren't
+for the Bishops!"
+
+"The Bishops!" said the Rector of the parish standing near. "What have
+the Bishops been doing, my lord?"
+
+"Dying," said Kitty, as she fell into an attitude which commanded both
+William and Lord Parham. "They do it on purpose."
+
+"Another this morning!" said Ashe, throwing up his hands.
+
+"Oh! they die to plague me," said the Prime Minister, with the air of
+one on whom the universe weighs heavy. "There never was such a
+conspiracy!"
+
+"You should let William appoint them," said Kitty, leaning her chin upon
+her hands and studying Lord Parham with eyes all the more brilliant for
+the dark circles which fatigue, or something else, had drawn round them.
+
+"Ah, to be sure!" said Lord Parham, affably. "I had forgotten that Ashe
+was our theologian. Take me a walk before dinner!" he added, addressing
+his host.
+
+"But you won't take his advice," said Kitty, smiling.
+
+The Premier turned rather sharply.
+
+"How do you know that, Lady Kitty?"
+
+Kitty hesitated--then said, with the prettiest, slightest laugh:
+
+"Lady Parham has such strong views--hasn't she?--on Church questions!"
+
+Lord Parham's feeling was that a more insidiously impertinent question
+had never been put to him. He drew himself up.
+
+"If she has, Lady Kitty, I can only say I know very little about them!
+She very wisely keeps them to herself."
+
+"Ah!" said Kitty, as her lovely eyebrows lifted, "that shows how little
+people know."
+
+"I don't quite understand," said Lord Parham. "To what do you allude,
+Lady Kitty?"
+
+Kitty laughed. She raised her eyes to the Rector, a spare High
+Churchman, who had retreated uncomfortably behind Lady Tranmore.
+
+"Some one--said to me last week--that Lady Parham had saved the
+Church!"
+
+The Prime Minister rose. "I must have a little exercise before dinner.
+Your gardens, Ashe--is there time?"
+
+Ashe, scarlet with discomfort and annoyance, carried his visitor off. As
+he did so, he passed his wife. Kitty turned her little head, looked at
+him half shyly, half defiantly. The Dean saw the look; saw also that
+Ashe deliberately avoided it.
+
+The party presently began to disperse. The Dean found himself beside his
+hostess--strolling over the lawn towards the house. He observed her
+attentively--vexed with her, and vexed for her! Surely she was thinner
+than he had ever seen her. A little more, and her beauty would suffer
+seriously. Coming he knew not whence, there lit upon him the sudden and
+painful impression of something undermined, something consumed from
+within.
+
+"Lady Kitty, do you ever rest?" he asked her, unexpectedly.
+
+"Rest!" she laughed. "Why should I?"
+
+"Because you are wearing yourself out."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Do you ever lie down--alone--and read a book?" persisted the Dean.
+
+"Yes. I have just finished Renan's _Vie de Jésus_!"
+
+Her glance, even with him, kept its note of audacity, but much softened
+by a kind of wistfulness.
+
+"Ah! my dear Lady Kitty, let Renan alone," cried the Dean--then with a
+change of tone--"but are you speaking truth--or naughtiness?"
+
+"Truth," said Kitty. "But--of course--I am in a temper."
+
+The Dean laughed.
+
+"I see Lord Parham is not a favorite of yours."
+
+Kitty compressed her small lips.
+
+"To think that William should have to take his orders from that man!"
+she said, under her breath.
+
+"Bear it--for William's sake," said the Dean, softly, "and,
+meanwhile--take my advice--and don't read any more Renan!"
+
+Kitty looked at him curiously.
+
+"I prefer to see things as they are."
+
+The Dean sighed.
+
+"That none of us can do, my dear Lady Kitty. No one can satisfy his
+_intelligence_. But religion speaks to the _will_--and it is the only
+thing between us and the void. Don't tamper with it! It is soon gone."
+
+A satirical expression passed over the face of his companion.
+
+"Mine was gone before we had been a month married. William killed it."
+
+The Dean exclaimed:
+
+"I hear always of his interest in religious matters!"
+
+"He cares for nothing so much--and he doesn't believe one single word of
+anything! I was brought up in a convent, you know--but William laughed
+it all out of me."
+
+"Dear Lady Kitty!"
+
+Kitty nodded. "And now, of course, I know there's nothing in it. Oh! I
+_do_ beg your pardon!" she said, eagerly. "I never meant to say anything
+rude to _you._ And I must go!" She looked up at an open window on the
+second floor of the house. The Dean supposed it was the nursery, and
+began to ask after the boy. But before he could frame his question she
+was gone, flying over the grass with a foot that scarcely seemed to
+touch it.
+
+"Poor child, poor child!" murmured the Dean, in a most genuine distress.
+But it was not the boy he was thinking of.
+
+Presently, however, he was overtaken by Miss French, of whom he inquired
+how the baby was.
+
+Margaret hesitated. "He seems to lose strength," she said, sadly. "The
+doctor declares there is no danger, unless--"
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"Oh! but it's so unlikely!" was her hasty reply. "Don't let's think of
+it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kitty was just giving a last look at herself in the large mirror which
+lined half one of the sides of her room when Ashe invaded her. She
+glanced at him askance a little, and when the maid had gone Kitty
+hurriedly gathered up gloves and fan and prepared to follow her.
+
+"Kitty--one word!"
+
+He caught her in his arm, and held her while he looked down upon her
+sparkling dress and half-reluctant face. "Kitty, do be nice to that old
+fellow to-night! It's only for two nights. Take him in the right way,
+and make a conquest of him--for good. He's been very decent to me in our
+walk--though you did say such extraordinary things to him this
+afternoon. I believe he really wants to make amends."
+
+"I do hate his white eyelashes so," said Kitty, slowly.
+
+"What does it matter," cried Ashe, angrily, "whether he were a
+blue-faced baboon!--for two nights? Just listen to him a little,
+Kitty--that's all he wants. And--don't be offended!--but hold your own
+small tongue--just a little!"
+
+Kitty pulled herself away.
+
+"I believe I shall do something dreadful," she said, quietly.
+
+A sternness to which Ashe's good-humored face was almost wholly strange
+showed itself in his expression.
+
+"Why should you do anything dreadful, please? Lord Parham is your guest,
+and my political chief. Is there any woman in England who would not do
+her best to be civil to him under the circumstances?"
+
+"I suppose not," said Kitty, with deliberation. "No, I don't think there
+can be."
+
+"Kitty!"
+
+For the first time Ashe was conscious of real exasperation. What was to
+be done with a temperament and a disposition like this?
+
+"Do you never think that you have it in your power to help me or to ruin
+me?" he said, with vehemence.
+
+"Oh yes--often. I mean--to help you--in my own way."
+
+Ashe's laugh was a sound of pure annoyance.
+
+"But please understand, it would be _infinitely_ better if you would
+help me, in _my_ way--in the natural, accepted way--the way that
+everybody understands."
+
+"The way Lord Parham recommends?" Kitty looked at him quietly. "Never
+mind, William. I _am_ trying to help you."
+
+Her eyes shone with the strangest glitter. Ashe was conscious of another
+of those sudden stabs of anxiety about her which he had felt at
+intervals through the preceding year. His face softened.
+
+"Dear, don't let's talk nonsense! Just look at me sometimes at dinner,
+and say to yourself, 'William asks me--for his sake--to be nice to Lord
+Parham.'"
+
+He again drew her to him, but she repulsed him almost with violence.
+
+"Why is he here? Why have we people dining? We ought to be alone--in the
+dark!"
+
+Her face had become a white mask. Her breast rose and fell, as though
+she fought with sobs.
+
+"Kitty--what do you mean?" He recoiled in dismay.
+
+"Harry!"--she just breathed the word between her closed lips.
+
+"My darling!" cried Ashe, "I saw Dr. Rotherham myself this afternoon. He
+gave the most satisfactory account, and Margaret told me she had
+repeated everything to you. The child will soon be himself again."
+
+"He is _dying_!" said Kitty, in the same low, remote voice, her gaze
+still fixed on Ashe.
+
+"Kitty! Don't say such things--don't think them!" Ashe had himself grown
+pale. "At any rate"--he turned on her reproachfully--"tell me _why_ you
+think them. Confide in me, Kitty. Come and talk to me about the boy. But
+three-fourths of the time you behave as though there were nothing the
+matter with him--you won't even see the doctor--and then you say a thing
+like this!"
+
+She was silent a moment; then with a wild gesture of the head and
+shoulders, as of one shaking off a weight, she moved away--drew on her
+long gloves--and going to the dressing-table, gave a touch of rouge to
+her cheeks.
+
+"Kitty, why did you say that?" Ashe followed her entreatingly.
+
+"I don't know. At least, I couldn't explain. Now, shall we go down?"
+
+Ashe drew a long breath. His frail son held the inmost depths of his
+heart.
+
+"You have made the party an abomination to me!" he said, with energy.
+
+"Don't believe me, then--believe the doctor," said Kitty, her face
+changing. "And as for Lord Parham, I'll try, William--I'll try."
+
+She passed him--the loveliest of visions--flung him a hand to kiss--and
+was gone.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+There could be no question that in all external matters Lord Parham was
+that evening magnificently entertained by the Home Secretary and Lady
+Kitty Ashe. The chef was extravagantly good; the wines, flowers, and
+service lavish to a degree which made both Ashe and Lady Tranmore
+secretly uncomfortable. Lady Tranmore in particular detested "show,"
+influenced as much by aristocratic instinct as by moral qualms; and
+there was to her mind a touch of vulgarity in the entertaining at
+Haggart, which might be tolerated in the case of financiers and
+_nouveaux riches_, while, as connected with her William and his wife,
+who had no need whatever to bribe society, it was unbecoming and
+undignified. Moreover, the winter had been marked by a financial crisis
+caused entirely by Kitty's extravagance. A large sum of money had had to
+be raised from the Tranmore estates; times were not good for the landed
+interest, and the head agent had begun to look grave.
+
+If only William would control his wife! But Haggart contained one of
+those fine, slowly gathered libraries which make the distinction of so
+many English country-houses; and in the intervals of his official work,
+which even in holiday time was considerable, Ashe could not be beguiled
+from the beloved company of his books to help Kitty sign checks, or
+scold her about expenditure.
+
+So Kitty signed and signed; and the smaller was Ashe's balance, the
+more, it seemed, did Kitty spend. Then, of course, every few months,
+there were deficits which had to be made good. And as to the debts which
+accumulated, Lady Tranmore preferred not to think about them. It all
+meant future trouble and clipping of wings for William; and it all
+entered into that deep and hidden resentment, half anxious love, half
+alien temperament, which Elizabeth Tranmore felt towards Ashe's wife.
+
+However--to repeat--Lord Parham, as far as the fleshpots went, was
+finely treated. Kitty was in full force, glittering in a spangled dress,
+her dazzling face and neck, and the piled masses of her hair, thrown out
+in relief against the panelled walls of the dining-room with a
+brilliance which might have tempted a modern Rembrandt to paint an
+English Saskia. Eddie Helston, on her left, could not take his eyes from
+her. And even Lord Parham, much as he disliked her, acknowledged, during
+the early courses, that she was handsome, and in her own way--thank God!
+it was not the way of any womankind belonging to him--good company.
+
+He saw, too, or thought he saw, that she was anxious to make him amends
+for her behavior of the afternoon. She restrained herself, and talked
+politics. And within the lines he always observed when talking to women,
+lines dictated by a contempt innate and ineradicable, Lord Parham was
+quite ready to talk politics too. Then--it suddenly struck him that she
+was pumping him, and with great adroitness. Ashe, he knew, wanted an
+early place in the session for a particular measure in which he was
+interested. Lord Parham had no mind to give him the precedence that he
+wanted; was, in fact, determined on something quite different. But he
+was well aware by now that Ashe was a person to be reckoned with; and he
+had so far taken refuge in vagueness--an amiable vagueness, by which
+Ashe, on their walk before dinner, had been much taken in, misled no
+doubt by the strength of his own wishes.
+
+And now here was Lady Kitty--whom, by-the-way, it was not at all easy to
+take in--trying to "manage" him, to pin him to details, to wheedle him
+out of a pledge!
+
+Lord Parham, presently, looked at her with cold, smiling eyes.
+
+"Ah! you are interested in these things, Lady Kitty? Well--tell me your
+views. You women have such an instinct--"
+
+--whereby the moth was kept hovering round the flame. Till, in a flash,
+Kitty awoke to the fact that while she had been listening happily to her
+own voice, taking no notice whatever of the signals which William
+endeavored to send her from the other end of the table--while she had
+been tripping gayly through one indiscretion after another, betraying
+innumerable things as to William's opinions and William's plans that she
+had infinitely better not have betrayed--Lord Parham had said nothing,
+betrayed nothing, promised nothing. A quiet smile--a courteous nod--and
+presently a shade of mockery in the lips--the meaning of them, all in a
+moment, burst on Kitty.
+
+Her face flamed. Thenceforward it would be difficult to describe the
+dinner. Conversationally, at Kitty's end it became an uproar. She
+started the wildest topics, and Lord Parham had afterwards a bruised
+recollection as of one who has been dragged or driven, Caliban-like,
+through brake and thicket, pinched and teased and pelted by elfish
+fingers, without one single uncivil speech or act of overt offence to
+which an angry guest could point. With each later course, the Prime
+Minister grew stiffer and more silent. Endurance was written in every
+line of his fighting head and round, ungraceful shoulders, in his veiled
+eyes and stolid mouth. Lady Tranmore gave a gasp of relief when at last
+Kitty rose from her seat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening went no better. Lord Parham was set down to cards with
+Kitty, Eddie Helston, and Lord Grosville. Lord Grosville, his partner,
+played, to the Premier's thinking, like an idiot, and Lady Kitty and the
+young man chattered and sparred, so that all reasonable play became
+impossible. Lord Parham lost more than he at all liked to lose, and at
+half-past ten he pleaded fatigue, refused to smoke, and went to his
+room.
+
+Ashe was perfectly aware of the failure of the evening, and the
+discomfort of his guest. But he said nothing, and Kitty avoided his
+neighborhood. Meanwhile, between him and his mother a certain tacit
+understanding began to make itself felt. They talked quietly, in
+corners, of the arrangements for the speech and fête of the morrow. So
+far, they had been too much left to Kitty. Ashe promised his mother to
+look into them. He and she combined for the protection of Lord Parham.
+
+When about one o'clock Ashe went to bed, Kitty either was or pretended
+to be fast asleep. The room was in darkness save for the faint
+illumination of a night-light, which just revealed to Ashe the delicate
+figure of his wife, lying high on her pillows, her cheek and brow hidden
+in the confusion of her hair.
+
+One window was wide open to the night, and once more Ashe stood lost in
+"recollection" beside it, as on that night in Hill Street, more than a
+year before. But the thoughts which on that former occasion had been
+still as tragic and unfamiliar guests in a mind that repelled them had
+now, alack, lost their strangeness; they entered habitually,
+unannounced--frequent, irritating, deplorable.
+
+Had the relation between himself and Kitty ever, in truth, recovered the
+shock of that incident on the river--of his night of restlessness, his
+morning of agonized alarm, and the story to which he listened on her
+return? It had been like some physical blow or wound, easily healed or
+conquered for the moment, which then, as time goes on, reveals a hidden
+series of consequences.
+
+Consequences, in this case, connected above all with Kitty's own nature
+and temperament. The excitement of Cliffe's declaration, of her own
+resistance and dramatic position, as between her husband and her lover,
+had worked ever since, as a poison in Kitty's mind--Ashe was becoming
+dismally certain of it. The absurd incident of the night before with the
+photograph had been enough to prove it.
+
+Well, the thing, he supposed, would right itself in time. Meanwhile,
+Cliffe had been dismissed, and this foolish young fellow Eddie Helston
+must soon follow him. Ashe had viewed the affair so far with an amused
+tolerance; if Kitty liked to flirt with babes it was her affair, not
+his. But he perceived that his mother was once more becoming restless,
+under the general _inconvenance_ of it; and he had noticed distress and
+disapproval in the little Dean, Kitty's stanchest friend.
+
+Luckily, no difficulty there! The lad was almost as devoted to
+him--Ashe--as he was to Kitty. He was absurd, affected, vain; but there
+was no vice in him, and a word of remonstrance would probably reduce him
+to abject regret and self-reproach. Ashe intended that his mother should
+speak it, and as he made up his mind to ask her help, he felt for the
+second time the sharp humiliation of the husband who cannot secure his
+own domestic peace, but must depend on the aid of others. Yet how could
+he himself go to young Helston? Some men no doubt could have handled
+such an incident with dignity. Ashe, with his critical sense for ever
+playing on himself and others; with the touch of moral shirking that
+belonged to his inmost nature; and, above all, with his half-humorous,
+half-bitter consciousness that whoever else might be a hero, he was
+none: Ashe, at least, could and would do nothing of the sort. That he
+should begin now to play the tyrannous or jealous husband would make him
+ridiculous both in his own eyes and other people's.
+
+And yet Kitty must somehow be protected from herself!... Then--as to
+politics? Once, in talking with his mother, he had said to her that he
+was Kitty's husband first, and a public man afterwards. Was he prepared
+now to make the statement with the same simplicity, the same
+whole-heartedness?
+
+Involuntarily he moved closer to the bed and looked down on Kitty.
+Little, delicate face!--always with something mournful and fretful in
+repose.
+
+He loved her surely as much as ever--ah! yes, he loved her. His whole
+nature yearned over her, as the wife of his youth, the mother of his
+poor boy. Yet, as he remembered the mood in which he had proposed to
+her, that defiance of the world and life which had possessed him when he
+had made her marry him, he felt himself--almost with bitterness--another
+and a meaner man. No!--he was _not_ prepared to lose the world for
+her--the world of high influence and ambition upon which he had now
+entered as a conqueror. She _must_ so control herself that she did not
+ruin all his hopes--which, after all, were hers--and the work he might
+do for his country.
+
+What incredible perversity and caprice she had shown towards Lord
+Parham! How was he to deal with it--he, William Ashe, with his ironic
+temper and his easy standards? What could he say to her but "Love me,
+Kitty!--love yourself!--and don't be a little fool! Life might be so
+amusing if you would only bridle your fancies and play the game!"
+
+As for loftier things, "self-reverence, self-knowledge,
+self-control"--duty--and the passion of high ideals--who was he to prate
+about them? The little Dean, perhaps!--most spiritual of worldlings.
+Ashe knew himself to be neither spiritual nor a hypocrite. A certain
+measure, a certain order and harmony in life--laughter and good-humor
+and affection--and, for the fight that makes and welds a man, those
+great political and social interests in the midst of which he found
+himself--he asked no more, and with these he would have been abundantly
+content.
+
+He sighed and frowned, his muscles stiffening unconsciously. Yes, for
+both their sakes he must try and play the master with Kitty, ridiculous
+as it seemed.
+
+... He turned away, remembering his sick child--and went noiselessly to
+the nursery. There, along the darkened passages, he found a night-nurse,
+sitting working beside a shaded lamp. The child was sleeping, and the
+report was good. Ashe stole on tiptoe to look at him, holding his
+breath, then returned to his dressing-room. But a faint call from Kitty
+pursued him. He opened the door, and saw her sitting up in bed.
+
+"How is he?"
+
+She was hardly awake, but her expression struck him as very wild and
+piteous. He went to her and took her in his arms.
+
+"Sleeping quietly, darling--so must you!"
+
+She sank back on her pillows, his arm still round her.
+
+"I was there an hour ago," she murmured. "I shall soon wake up--"
+
+But for the moment she was asleep again, her fair head lying against his
+shoulder. He sat down beside her, supporting her. Suddenly, as he looked
+down upon her with mingled passion, tenderness, and pain, a sharp
+perception assailed him. How thin she was--a mere feather's weight! The
+face was smaller than ever--the hands skin and bone! Margaret French had
+once or twice bade him notice this, had spoken with anxiety. He bent
+over his wife and observed her attentively. It was merely the effect of
+a hot summer, surely, and of a constant nervous fatigue? He would take
+her abroad for a fortnight in September, if his official work would let
+him, and perhaps leave her in north Italy, or Switzerland, with Margaret
+French.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great day was half-way through, and the throng in Haggart Park and
+grounds was at its height. A flower-show in the morning; then a tenants'
+dinner with a speech from Ashe; and now, in a marquee erected for the
+occasion, Lord Parham was addressing his supporters in the county.
+Around him on the platform sat the Whig gentry, the Radical
+manufacturers, the town wire-pullers and local agents on whom a great
+party depended; in front of him stretched a crowded meeting drawn in
+almost equal parts from the coal-mining districts to the north of
+Haggart and from the agricultural districts to the south....
+
+The August air was stifling; perspiration shone on the broad brows and
+cheeks of the farmers sitting in the front half of the audience; Lord
+Parham's gray face was almost white; his harsh voice labored against the
+acoustic difficulties of the tent; effort and heat, discomfort and ennui
+breathed from the packed benches, and from the short-necked,
+large-headed figure of the Premier.
+
+Ashe sat to the speaker's right, outwardly attentive, inwardly ashamed
+of his party and his chief. He himself belonged to a new generation, for
+whom formulæ that had satisfied their fathers were empty and dead. But
+with these formulas Lord Parham was stuffed. A man of average intriguing
+ability, he had been raised, at a moment of transition, to the place he
+held, by a consummate command of all the meaner arts of compromise and
+management, no less than by an invaluable power of playing to the
+gallery. He led a party who despised him--and he complacently imagined
+that he was the party. His speech on this occasion bristled with
+himself, and had, in truth, no other substance; the I's swarmed out upon
+the audience like wasps.
+
+Ashe groaned in spirit, "We have the ideas," he thought, "but they are
+damned little good to us--it is the Tories who have the men! Ye gods!
+must we all talk like this at last?"...
+
+Suddenly, on the other side of the platform, behind Lord Parham, he
+noticed that Kitty and Eddie Helston were exchanging signs. Kitty drew
+out a tablet, wrote upon it, and, leaning over some white-frocked
+children of the Lord Lieutenant who sat behind her, handed the torn leaf
+to Helston. But from some clumsiness he let it drop; at the moment a
+door opened at the back of the platform, and the leaf, caught by the
+draught, was blown back across the bench where Kitty and the house-party
+were sitting, and fluttered down to a resting-place on the piece of red
+baize wheron Lord Parham was standing--close beside his left foot.
+
+Ashe saw Kitty's start of dismay, her scarlet flush, her involuntary
+movement. But Lord Parham had started on his peroration. The rustics
+gaped, the gentry sat expressionless, the reporters toiled after the
+great man. Kitty all the time kept her eyes fixed on the little white
+paper; Ashe no less. Between him and Lord Parham there was first the
+Lord Lieutenant, a portly man, very blind and extremely deaf--then a
+table with a Liberal peer behind it for chairman.
+
+Lord Parham had resumed his seat. The tent was shaken with cheers, and
+the smiling chairman had risen.
+
+"Can you ask Lord Parham to hand me on that paper on the floor," said
+Ashe, in the ear of the Lord Lieutenant, "it seems to have dropped from
+my portfolio."
+
+The Lord Lieutenant, bending backward behind the chairman as the next
+speaker rose, tried to attract Lord Parham's attention. Eddie Helston
+was, at the same time, endeavoring to make his way forward through the
+crowded seats behind the Prime Minister.
+
+Meanwhile Lord Parham had perceived the paper, raised it, and adjusted
+his spectacles. He thought it was a communication from the audience--a
+question, perhaps, that he was expected to answer.
+
+"Lord Parham!" cried the Lord Lieutenant again, "would you--"
+
+"Silence, please! Speak up!"--from the audience, who had so far failed
+to catch a word of what the new speaker was saying.
+
+"What _is_ the matter? You really can't get through here!" said a
+gray-haired dowager crossly to Eddie Helston.
+
+Lord Parham looked at the paper in mystification. It contained these
+words:
+
+"Hope you've been counting the 'I's.' I make it fifty-seven.--K."
+
+And in the corner of the paper a thumb-nail sketch of himself,
+perorating, with a garland of capital I's round his neck.
+
+The Premier's face became brick-red, then gray again. He folded up the
+paper and put it in his waistcoat-pocket.
+
+The meeting had broken up. For the common herd, it was to be followed by
+sports in the park and refreshments in big tents. For the gentry, Lady
+Kitty had a garden-party to which Royalty was coming. And as her guests
+streamed out of the marquee, Lord Parham approached his hostess.
+
+"I think this belongs to you, Lady Kitty." And taking from his pocket a
+folded slip of paper he offered it to her.
+
+Kitty looked at him. Her color was high, her eyes sparkled.
+
+"Nothing to do with me!" she said, gayly, as she glanced at it. "But
+I'll look for the owner."
+
+"Sorry to give you the trouble," said Lord Parham, with a ceremonious
+inclination. Then, turning to Ashe, he remarked that he was extremely
+tired--worn out, in fact--and would ask his host's leave to desert the
+garden-party while he attended to some most important letters. Ashe
+offered to escort him to the house. "On the contrary, look after your
+guests," said the Premier, dryly, and, beckoning to the Liberal peer who
+had been his chairman, he engaged him in conversation, and the two
+presently vanished through a window open to the terrace.
+
+Kitty had been joined meanwhile by Eddie Helston, and the two stood
+talking together, a flushed, excited pair. Ashe overtook them.
+
+"May I speak to you a moment, Kitty?"
+
+Eddie Helston glanced at the fine form and stiffened bearing of his
+host, understood that his presence counted for something in the
+annoyance of Ashe's expression, and departed abashed.
+
+"I should like to see that paper, Kitty, if you don't mind."
+
+His frown and straightened lip brought fresh wildness into Kitty's
+expression.
+
+"It is my property." She kept one hand behind her.
+
+"I heard you just disavow that."
+
+Kitty laughed angrily.
+
+"Yes--that's the worst of Lord Parham--one has to tell so many lies for
+his _beaux yeux_!"
+
+"You must give it me, please," said Ashe, quietly. "I ought to know
+where I am with Lord Parham. He is clearly bitterly offended--by
+something, and I shall have to apologize."
+
+Kitty breathed fast.
+
+"Well, don't let's quarrel before the county!" she said, as she turned
+aside into a shrubbery walk edged by clipped yews and hidden from the
+big lawn. There she paused and confronted him. "How did you know I wrote
+it?"
+
+"I saw you write it and throw it."
+
+He stretched out his hand. Kitty hesitated, then slowly unclosed her
+own, and held out the small, white palm on which lay the crumpled slip.
+
+Ashe read it and tore it up.
+
+"That game, Kitty, was hardly worth the candle!"
+
+"It was a perfectly harmless remark--and only meant for Eddie! Any one
+else than Lord Parham would have laughed. _Then_ I might have begged his
+pardon."
+
+"It is what you ought to do now," said Ashe. "A little note from you,
+Kitty--you could write it to perfection--"
+
+"Certainly not," said Kitty, hastily, locking her hands behind her.
+
+"You prefer to have failed in hospitality and manners," he said,
+bitterly. "Well, I'm afraid if you don't feel any disgrace in it I do.
+Lord Parham in our _guest_!"
+
+And Ashe turned on his heel and would have left her, when Kitty caught
+him by the arm.
+
+"William!"
+
+She had grown very pale.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You've never spoken to me like that before, William--never! But--as I
+told you long ago, you can stop it all if you like--in a moment."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Kitty--but we mustn't stay arguing here any
+longer--"
+
+"No!--but--don't you remember? I told you, you can always send me away.
+Then I shouldn't be putting spokes in your wheel."
+
+"I don't deny," said Ashe, slowly, "it might be wisest if, next spring,
+you stayed here, for part at least of the session--or abroad. It is
+certainly difficult carrying on politics under these conditions. I
+could, of course, come backward and forward--"
+
+Kitty's brown eyes that were fixed upon his face wavered a little, and
+she grew even whiter.
+
+"Very well. That would be a kind of separation, wouldn't it?"
+
+"There would be no need to call it by any such name. Oh! Kitty!" cried
+Ashe, "why can't you behave like a reasonable woman?"
+
+"Separation," she repeated, steadily. "I know that's what your mother
+wants."
+
+A wave of sound reached them amid the green shadow of the yews. The
+cheers that heralded Royalty had begun.
+
+"Come!" said Kitty.
+
+And she flew across the grass, reaching her place by the central tent
+just as the Royalties drove up.
+
+The Prime Minister sulked in-doors; and Kitty, with the most engaging
+smiles, made his apologies. The heat--the fatigue of the speech--a
+crushing headache, and a doctor's order!--he begged their Royal
+Highnesses to excuse him. The Royal Highnesses were at first astonished,
+inclined, perhaps, to take offence. But the party was so agreeable, and
+Lady Kitty so charming a hostess, that the Premier's absence was soon
+forgotten, and as the day cooled to a delicious evening, and the most
+costly bands from town discoursed a melting music, as garlanded boats
+appeared upon the river inviting passengers, and, with the dusk,
+fireworks began to ascend from a little hill; as the trees shone green
+and silver and rose-color in the Bengal lights, and amid the sweeping
+clouds of smoke the wide stretches of the park, the close-packed groups
+of human beings, appeared and vanished like the country and creatures of
+a dream--the success of Lady Kitty's fête, the fame of her gayety and
+her beauty, filled the air. She flashed hither and thither, in a dress
+embroidered with wild roses and a hat festooned with them--attended
+always by Eddie Helston, by various curates who cherished a hopeless
+attachment to her, and by a fat German grand-duke, who had come in the
+wake of the Royalties.
+
+Her cleverness, her resource, her organizing power were lauded to the
+skies, Royalty was gracious, and the grand-duke resentfully asked an
+aide-de-camp on the way home why he had not been informed that such a
+pretty person awaited him.
+
+"I should den haf looked beforehand--as vel as tinking behind," said the
+grand-duke, as he wrapped himself sentimentally in his military cloak,
+to meditate on Lady Kitty's brown eyes.
+
+Meanwhile Lord Parham remained closeted in his sitting-room with his
+secretary. Ashe tried to gain admittance, but in vain. Lord Parham
+pleaded great fatigue and his letters; and asked for a _Bradshaw_.
+
+"His lordship has inquired if there is a train to-night," said the
+little secretary, evidently much flustered.
+
+Ashe protested. And, indeed, as it turned out, there was no train worth
+the taking. Then Lord Parham sent a message that he hoped to appear at
+dinner.
+
+Kitty locked her door while she was dressing, and Ashe, whose mind was a
+confusion of many feelings--anger, compunction, and that fascination
+which in her brilliant moods she exercised over him no less than over
+others--could get no speech with her.
+
+They met on the threshold of the child's room, she coming out, he going
+in. But she wrenched herself from him and would say nothing. The report
+of the little boy was good; he smiled at his father, and Ashe felt a
+cooling balm in the touch of his soft hands and lips. He descended--in a
+more philosophical mind; inclined, at any rate, to "damn" Lord Parham.
+What a fool the man must be! Why couldn't he have taken it with a laugh,
+and so turned the tables on Kitty?
+
+Was there any good to be got out of apologizing? Ashe supposed he must
+attempt it some time that night. A precious awkward business! But
+relations had got to be restored somehow.
+
+Lady Tranmore overtook him on the way down-stairs. In the press of the
+afternoon they had hardly seen each other.
+
+"What is really wrong with Lord Parham, William?" she asked him,
+anxiously. Ashe hesitated, then whispered a word or two in her ear,
+begging her to keep the great man in play for the evening. He was to
+take her in, while Kitty would fall to the Bishop of the diocese.
+
+"She gets on perfectly with the clergy," said Lady Tranmore, with an
+involuntary sigh. Then, as the sense of humor was strong in both, they
+laughed. But it was a chilly and perfunctory laughter.
+
+They had no sooner passed into the main hall than Kitty came running
+down-stairs, with a large packet in her hand.
+
+"Mr. Darrell!"
+
+"At your service!" said Darrell, emerging from the shadows of one of the
+broad corridors of the ground-floor.
+
+"Take it, please!" said Kitty, panting a little, as she gave the packet
+into his hands. "If I look at it any more, I _might_ burn it!"
+
+"Suppose you do!"
+
+"No, no!" said Kitty, pushing the bundle away, as he laughingly tendered
+it. "I must see what happens!"
+
+"Is the gap filled?"
+
+She laid her finger on her lips. Her eyes danced. Then she hurried on to
+the drawing-room.
+
+Whether it were the soothing presence of the clergy or no, certainly
+Kitty was no less triumphant at dinner than she had been in the
+afternoon. The chorus of fun and pleasure that surrounded her, while he
+himself sat, tired and bored, between Lady Edith Manley and Lady
+Tranmore, did but make her offence the greater in the eyes of Lord
+Parham. He had so far buried it in a complete and magnificent silence.
+The meeting between him and his hostess before dinner had been marked by
+a strict conformity to all the rules. Kitty had inquired after his
+headache; Lord Parham expressed his regrets that he had missed so
+brilliant a party; and Kitty, flirting her fan, invented messages from
+the Royalties which, as most of those present knew, the Royalties had
+been far too well amused to think of. Then after this _pas seul_, in the
+presence of the crowded drawing-room, had been duly executed, Kitty
+retired to her Bishop, and Lord Parham led forth Lady Tranmore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What a lovely moon!" said Lady Edith Manley to the Dean. "It makes even
+this house look romantic."
+
+They were walking outside the drawing-room windows, on a terrace which
+was, indeed, the only feature of the Haggart façade which possessed some
+architectural interest. A low balustrade of terra-cotta, copied from a
+famous Italian villa, ran round it, broken by large terra-cotta pots now
+filled with orange-trees. Here and there between the orange-trees were
+statues transported from Naples in the late eighteenth century by a
+former Lord Tranmore. There was a Ceres and a Diana, a Vestal Virgin, an
+Athlete, and an Antinous, now brought into strange companionship under
+the windows of this ugly English house. Chipped and blackened as they
+were, and, to begin with, of a mere decorative importance, they still
+breathed into the English evening a note of Italy or Greece, of things
+lovely and immortal. The lamps in the sitting-rooms streamed out through
+the widely opened windows upon the terrace, checkering the marble
+figures, which now emerged sharply in the light, and now withdrew in the
+gloom; while at one point they shone plainly upon an empty pedestal
+before which the Dean and his companion paused.
+
+The Dean looked at the inscription. "What a pity! This once held a
+statue of Hebe holding a torch. It was struck by lightning fifty years
+ago."
+
+"Lady Kitty might stand for her to-night," said Edith Manley.
+
+For Kitty, the capricious, had appeared at dinner in a _quasi_-Greek
+dress, white, soft, and flowing, without an ornament. The Dean
+acquiesced, but rather sadly.
+
+"I wish she had the bloom of Hebe! My dear Lady Edith, our hostess looks
+_ill_!"
+
+"Does she? I can't tell--I admire her so!" said the woman beside him,
+upon whose charming eyes some fairy had breathed kindness and optimism
+from her cradle.
+
+"_Ouf!_" cried Kitty, as she sprang across the sill of the window behind
+them. "They're _all_ gone! The Bishop wishes me to become a
+vice-president of the Women's Diocesan Association. And I've promised
+three curates to open bazaars. _Ah, mon Dieu!_" She raised her white
+arms with a wild gesture, and then beckoned to Eddie Helston, who was
+close beside her.
+
+"Shall we try our dance?"
+
+The young men of the house, a group of young guardsmen and diplomats,
+gathered round, laughing and clapping. Kitty's dancing had become famous
+during the winter as one of her many extravagances. She no longer
+recited; literature bored her; motion was the only poetry. So she had
+been carefully instructed by a _danseuse_ from the Opera, and in many
+points, so the enthusiasts declared, had bettered her instructions. She
+was now in love with a tempestuous Spanish dance, taught her by a gypsy
+_señorita_ who had been one of the sensations of the London season. It
+required a partner, and she had been practising it with young Helston,
+for several mornings past, in the empty ballroom. Helston had spread its
+praises abroad; and all Haggart desired to see it.
+
+"There!" said Kitty, pointing her partner to a particular spot on the
+terrace. "I think that will do. Where are the castanets, I wonder?"
+
+"Kitty!" said a voice behind her. Ashe emerged from the drawing-room.
+
+"Kitty, please! It is nearly midnight. Everybody is tired--and you
+yourself must be worn out! Say good-night, and let us all go to bed."
+
+She turned. Willam's voice was low, but peremptory. She shook back her
+hair from her temples and neck, with the gesture he had learned to
+dread.
+
+"Nobody's tired--and nobody wants to go to bed. Please stand out of the
+way, William. I want plenty of room for my steps."
+
+And she began pirouetting, as though to try the capacities of the space,
+humming to herself.
+
+"Helston--this must be, please, for another night," said Ashe,
+resolutely, in the young man's ear. "Lady Kitty is much too tired."
+Then to Lady Edith, and the Dean--"Lady Edith, it would be very kind of
+you to persuade my wife to go to bed. She never knows when she is done!"
+
+Lady Edith warmly acquiesced, and, hurrying up to Kitty, she tried to
+persuade her in soft, caressing phrases.
+
+"I stand on my rights!" said the Dean, following her. "If my hostess is
+used up to-night, there'll be no hostess for me to-morrow."
+
+Kitty looked at them all, silent--her head bending forward, a curious
+_méchant_ look in the eyes that shone beneath the slightly frowning
+brows. Meanwhile, by her previous order, a footman had brought out two
+silver lamps and placed them on a small table a little way behind her.
+Whether it was from some instinctive sense of the beauty of the small
+figure in the slender, floating dress under the deep blue of the night
+sky and amid the romantic shadows and lights of the terrace--or from
+some divination of things significant and hidden--it would be hard to
+say; but the group of spectators had fallen back a little from Kitty, so
+that she stood alone, a picture lit from the left by the lamps just
+brought in.
+
+The Dean looked at her--troubled by her wild aspect and the evident
+conflict between her and Ashe. Then an idea flashed into his mind,
+filled always, like that of an innocent child, with the images of poetry
+and romance.
+
+"One moment!" he said, raising his hand. "Lady Kitty, you spoil us!
+After amusing us all day, now you would dance for us all night. But your
+guests won't let you! We love you too well, and we want a bit of you
+left for to-morrow. Never mind! You offered us a dance--you bring us a
+vision--and a poem!--Friends!"
+
+He turned to those crowding round him, his white hair glistening in the
+lamplight, his delicate face, so old and yet so eager, the smile on his
+kind lips, and all the details of his Dean's dress--apron and
+knee-breeches, slender legs and silver buckles--thrown out in sharp
+relief upon the dark....
+
+"Friends! you see this pedestal. Once Hebe, the cup-bearer of the gods,
+stood there. Then--ungrateful Zeus smote her, and she fell! But the
+Hours and the Graces bore her safe away, into a golden land, and now
+they bring her back again. Behold her!--Hebe reborn!"
+
+He bowed, his courtly hand upon his breast, and a wave of laughter and
+applause ran through the young group round him as their eyes turned from
+the speaker to the exquisite figure of Kitty. Lady Edith smiled kindly,
+clapping her soft hands. Mrs. Winston, the Dean's wife, had eyes only
+for the Dean. In the background Lady Tranmore watched every phase of
+Kitty's looks, and Lord Grosville walked back into the dining-room,
+growling unutterable things to Darrell as he passed.
+
+Kitty raised her head to reply. But the Dean checked her. Advancing a
+step or two, he saluted her again--profoundly.
+
+"Dear Lady Kitty!--dear bringer of light and ambrosia!--rest, and
+good-night! Your guests thank you by me, with all their hearts. You have
+been the life of their day, the spirit of their mirth. Good-night to
+Hebe!--and three cheers for Lady Kitty!"
+
+Eddie Helston led them, and they rang against the old house. Kitty with
+a fluttering smile kissed her hand for thanks, and the Dean saw her look
+round--dart a swift glance at Ashe. He stood against the window-frame,
+in shadow, motionless, his arms folded.
+
+Then suddenly Kitty sprang forward.
+
+"Give me that lamp!" she said to the young footman behind her.
+
+And in a second she had leaped upon the low wall of the terrace and on
+the vacant pedestal. The lad to whom she had spoken lost his head and
+obeyed her. He raised the lamp. She stooped and took it. Ashe, who was
+now standing in the open window with his back to the terrace, turned
+round, saw, and rushed forward.
+
+"Kitty!--put it down!"
+
+"Lady Kitty!" cried the Dean, in dismay, while all behind him held their
+breath.
+
+"Stand back!" said Kitty, "or I shall drop it!" She held up the lamp,
+straight and steady. Ashe paused--in an agony of doubt what to do, his
+whole soul concentrated on the slender arm and on the brightly burning
+lamp.
+
+"If you make me speeches," said Kitty, "I must reply, mustn't I? (Keep
+back, William!--I'm all right.) Hebe thanks you, please--_mille fois_!
+She herself hasn't been happy--and she's afraid she hasn't been good!
+_N'importe!_ It's all done--and finished. The play's over!--and the
+lights go out!"
+
+She waved the lamp above her head.
+
+"Kitty! for God's sake!" cried Ashe, rushing to her.
+
+"She is mad!" said Lord Parham, standing at the back. "I always knew
+it!"
+
+The other spectators passed through a second of anguish. The bright
+figure on the pedestal wavered; one moment, and it seemed as though the
+lamp must descend crashing upon the head and neck and the white dress
+beneath it; the next, it had fallen from Kitty's hand--fallen away from
+her--wide and safe--into the depths of the garden below. A flash of wild
+light rose from the burning oil and from the dry shrubs amid which it
+fell. Kitty, meanwhile, swayed--and dropped--heavily--unconscious--into
+William Ashe's arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kitty barely recovered life and sense during the night that followed.
+And while she was still unconscious her boy passed away. The poor babe,
+all ignorant of the straits in which his mother lay, was seized with
+convulsions in the dawn, and gave up his frail life gathered to his
+father's breast.
+
+Some ten weeks later, towards the end of October, society knew that the
+Home Secretary and Lady Kitty had started for Italy--bound first of all
+for Venice. It was said that Lady Kitty was a wreck, and that it was
+doubtful whether she would ever recover the sudden and tragic death of
+her only child.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+STORM
+
+     "Myself, arch-traitor to myself;
+     My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
+     My clog whatever road I go."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+"'Among the numerous daubs with which Tintoret, to his everlasting
+shame, has covered this church--'"
+
+"Good Heavens!--what does the man mean?--or is he talking of another
+church?" said Ashe, raising his head and looking in bewilderment, first
+at the magnificent Tintoret in front of him, and then at the lines he
+had just been reading.
+
+"William!" cried Kitty, "_do_ put that fool down and come here; one sees
+it splendidly!"
+
+She was standing in one of the choir-stalls of San Giorgio Maggiore,
+somewhat raised above the point where Ashe had been studying his German
+hand-book.
+
+"My dear, if this man doesn't know, who does!" cried Ashe, flourishing
+his volume in front of him as he obeyed her.
+
+"'Dans le royaume des aveugles,'" said Kitty, contemptuously. "As if any
+German could even begin to understand Tintoret! But--don't talk!"
+
+And clasping both hands round Ashe's arm, she stood leaning heavily upon
+him, her whole soul gazing from the eyes she turned upon the picture,
+her lips quivering, as though, from some physical weakness, she could
+only just hold back the tears with which, indeed, the face was charged.
+
+She and Ashe were looking at that "Last Supper" of Tintoret's which
+hangs in the choir of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice.
+
+It is a picture dear to all lovers of Tintoret, breathing in every line
+and group the passionate and mystical fancy of the master.
+
+The scene passes, it will be remembered, in what seems to be the
+spacious guest-chamber of an inn. The Lord and His disciples are
+gathered round the last sacred meal of the Old Covenant, the first of
+the New. On the left, a long table stretches from the spectator into the
+depths of the picture; the disciples are ranged along one side of it;
+and on the other sits Judas, solitary and accursed. The young Christ has
+risen; He holds the bread in His lifted hands and is about to give it to
+the beloved disciple, while Peter beyond, rising from his seat in his
+eagerness, presses forward to claim his own part in the Lord's body.
+
+The action of the Christ has in it a very ecstasy of giving; the bending
+form, indeed, is love itself, yearning and triumphant. This is further
+expressed in the light which streams from the head of the Lord, playing
+upon the long line of faces, illuminating the vehement gesture of Peter,
+the adoring and radiant silence of St. John--and striking even to the
+farthest corners of the room, upon a woman, a child, a playing dog.
+Meanwhile, from the hanging lamps above the supper-party there glows
+another and more earthly light, mingled with fumes of smoke which darken
+the upper air. But such is the power of the divine figure that from this
+very darkness breaks adoration. The smoke-wreaths change under the
+gazer's eye into hovering angels, who float round the head of the
+Saviour, and look down with awe upon the first Eucharist; while the
+lamp-light, interpenetrated by the glory which issues from the Lord,
+searches every face and fold and surface, displays the figures of the
+serving men and women in the background, shines on the household stuff,
+the vases and plates, the black and white of the marble floor, the beams
+of the old Venetian ceiling. Everywhere the double ray, the two-fold
+magic! Steeped in these "majesties of light," the immortal scene lives
+upon the quiet wall. Year after year the slender, thought-worn Christ
+raises His hands of blessing; the disciples strain towards Him; the
+angels issue from the darkness; the friendly domestic life, happy,
+natural, unconscious, frames the divine mystery. And among those who
+come to look there are, from time to time, men and women who draw from
+it that restlessness of vague emotion which Kitty felt as she hung now,
+gazing, on Ashe's arm.
+
+For there is in it an appeal which torments them--like the winding of a
+mystic horn, on purple heights, by some approaching and unseen
+messenger. Ineffable beauty, offering itself--and in the human soul, the
+eternal human discord: what else makes the poignancy of art--the passion
+of poetry?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That's enough!" said Kitty, at last, turning abruptly away.
+
+"You like it?" said Ashe, softly, detaining her, while he pressed the
+little hand upon his arm. His heart was filled with a great pity for his
+wife in these days.
+
+"Oh, I don't know!" was Kitty's impatient reply.
+
+"It haunts me. There's still another to see--in a chapel. The
+sacristan's making signs to us."
+
+"Is there?" Ashe stifled a yawn. He asked Margaret French, who had come
+up with them, whether Kitty had not had quite enough sight-seeing. He
+himself must go to the Piazza, and get the news before dinner. As an
+English cabinet minister, he had been admitted to the best club of the
+Venice residents. Telegrams were to be seen there; and there was anxious
+news from the Balkans.
+
+Kitty merely insisted that she could not and would not go without her
+remaining Tintoret, and the others yielded to her at once, with that
+indulgent tenderness one shows to the wilfulness of a sick child. She
+and Margaret followed the sacristan. Ashe lingered behind in a passage
+of the church, surreptitiously reading an Italian newspaper. He had the
+ordinary cultivated pleasure in pictures; but this ardor which Kitty was
+throwing into her pursuit of Tintoret--the Wagner of painting--left him
+cold. He did not attempt to keep up with her.
+
+Two ladies were already in the cloister chapel, with a gentleman. As
+Kitty and her friend entered, these persons had just finished their
+inspection of the damaged but most beautiful "Pietà" which hangs over
+the altar, and their faces were towards the entrance.
+
+"Maman!" cried Kitty, in amazement.
+
+The lady addressed started, put up a gold-rimmed eye-glass, exclaimed,
+and hurried forward.
+
+Kitty and she embraced, amid a torrent of laughter and interjections
+from the elder lady, and then Kitty, whose pale cheeks had put on
+scarlet, turned to Margaret French.
+
+"Margaret!--my mother, Madame d'Estrées."
+
+Miss French, who found herself greeted with effusion by the strange
+lady, saw before her a woman of fifty, marvellously preserved. Madame
+d'Estrées had grown stout; so much time had claimed; but the elegant
+gray dress with its floating chiffon and lace skilfully concealed the
+fact; and for the rest, complexion, eyes, lips were still defiant of the
+years. If it were art that had achieved it, nature still took the
+credit; it was so finely done, the spectator could only lend himself and
+admire. Under the pretty hat of gray tulle, whereof the strings were
+tied bonnet-fashion under the plump chin, there looked out, indeed, a
+face gay, happy, unconcerned, proof one might have thought of an
+innocent past and a good conscience.
+
+Kitty, who had drawn back a little, eyed her mother oddly.
+
+"I thought you were in Paris. Your letter said you wouldn't be able to
+move for weeks--"
+
+"_Ma chère!_--_un miracle!_" cried Madame d'Estrées, blushing, however,
+under her thin white veil. "When I wrote to you, I was at death's
+door--wasn't I?" She appealed to her companion, without waiting for an
+answer. "Then some one told me of a new doctor, and in ten days, _me
+voici_! They insisted on my going away--this dear woman--Donna Laura
+Vercelli--my daughter, Lady Kitty Ashe!--knew of an apartment here
+belonging to some relations of hers. And here we are--charmingly
+_installées_!--and really _nothing_ to pay!"--Madame d'Estrées
+whispered, smiling, in Kitty's ear--"nothing, compared to the hotels.
+I'm economizing splendidly. Laura looks after every sou. Ah! my dear
+William!"
+
+For Ashe, puzzled by the voices within, had entered the chapel, and
+stood in his turn, open-mouthed.
+
+"Why, we thought you were an invalid."
+
+For, some three weeks before, a letter had reached him at Haggart, so
+full of melancholy details as to Madame d'Estrées' health and
+circumstances that even Kitty had been moved. Money had been sent;
+inquiries had been made by telegraph; and but for a hasty message of a
+more cheerful character, received just before they started, the Ashes,
+instead of journeying by Brussels and Cologne, would have gone by Paris
+that Kitty might see her mother. They had intended to stop there on
+their way back. Ashe was not minded that Kitty should see more of Madame
+d'Estrées than necessity demanded; but on this occasion he would have
+felt it positively brutal to make difficulties.
+
+And now here was this moribund lady, this forsaken of gods and men,
+disporting herself at Venice, evidently in the pink of health and
+attired in the freshest of Paris toilettes! As he coldly shook hands,
+Ashe registered an inner vow that Madame d'Estrées' letters henceforward
+should receive the attention they deserved.
+
+And beside her was her somewhat mysterious friend of London days, the
+Colonel Warington who had been so familiar a figure in the gatherings of
+St. James's Place--grown much older, almost white-haired, and as
+gentlemanly as ever. Who was the lady? Ashe was introduced, was aware of
+a somewhat dark and Jewish cast of face, noticed some fine jewels, and
+could only suppose that his mother-in-law had picked up some one to
+finance her, and provide her with creature comforts in return for the
+social talents that Madame d'Estrées still possessed in some abundance.
+He had more than once noticed her skill in similar devices; but, indeed,
+they were indispensable, for while he allowed Madame d'Estrées one
+thousand a year, she was, it seemed, firmly determined to spend a
+minimum of three.
+
+He and Warington looked at each other with curiosity. The bronzed face
+and honest eyes of the soldier betrayed nothing. "Are you going to marry
+her at last?" thought Ashe. "Poor devil!"
+
+Meanwhile Madame d'Estrées chattered away as though nothing could be
+more natural than their meeting, or more perfect than the relations
+between herself and her daughter and son-in-law.
+
+As they all strolled down the church she looked keenly at Kitty.
+
+"My dear child, how ill you look!--and your mourning! Ah, yes, of
+course!"--she bit her lip--"I remember--the poor, poor boy--"
+
+"Thank you!" said Kitty, hastily. "I got your letter--thank you very
+much. Where are you staying? We've got rooms on the Grand Canal."
+
+"Oh, but, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées--"I was so sorry for you!"
+
+"Were you?" said Kitty, under her breath. "Then, please, never speak of
+him to me again!"
+
+Startled and offended, Madame d'Estrées looked at her daughter. But what
+she saw disarmed her. For once even she felt something like the pang of
+a mother. "You're _dreadfully_ thin, Kitty!"
+
+Kitty frowned with annoyance.
+
+"It's not my fault," she said, pettishly. "I live on cream, and it's no
+good. Of course, I know I'm an object and a scarecrow; but I'd rather
+people didn't tell me."
+
+"What nonsense, _chére enfant!_ You're much prettier than you ever
+were."
+
+A wild and fugitive radiance swept across the face beside her.
+
+"Am I?" said Kitty, smiling. "That's all right! If I had died it
+wouldn't matter, of course. But--"
+
+"Died! What do you mean, Kitty?" said Madame d'Estrées, in bewilderment.
+"When William wrote to me I thought he meant you had overtired
+yourself."
+
+"Oh, well, the doctors said it was touch and go," said Kitty,
+indifferently. "But, of course, it wasn't. I'm much too tough. And then
+they fussed about one's heart. And that's all nonsense, too. I couldn't
+die if I tried."
+
+But Madame d'Estrées pondered--the bright, intermittent color, the
+emaciation, the hollowness of the eyes. The effect, so far, was to add
+to Kitty's natural distinction, to give, rather, a touch of pathos to a
+face which even in its wildest mirth had in it something alien and
+remote. But she, too, reflected that a little more, a very little more,
+and--in a night--the face would have dropped its beauty, as a rose its
+petals.
+
+The group stood talking awhile on the steps outside the church. Kitty
+and her mother exchanged addresses, Donna Laura opened her mouth once or
+twice, and produced a few contorted smiles for Kitty's benefit, while
+Colonel Warington tipped the sacristan, found the gondolier, and studied
+the guide-book.
+
+As Madame d'Estrées stepped into her gondola, assisted by him, she
+tapped him on the arm.
+
+"Are you coming, Markham?"
+
+The low voice was pitched in a very intimate note. Kitty turned with a
+start.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A casa!" said Madame d'Estrées, and she and her friend made for one of
+the canals that pierce the Zattere, while Colonel Warington went off for
+a walk along the Giudecca.
+
+Kitty and Ashe bade their gondoliers take them to the Piazzetta, and
+presently they were gliding across waters of flame and silver, where the
+white front and red campanile of San Giorgio--now blazing under the
+sunset--mirrored themselves in the lagoon. The autumn evening was fresh
+and gay. A light breeze was on the water; lights that only Venice knows
+shone on the tawny sails of fishing-boats making for the Lido, on the
+white sides of an English yacht, on the burnished prows of the gondolas,
+on the warm reddish-white of the Ducal Palace. The air blowing from the
+Adriatic breathed into their faces the strength of the sea; and in the
+far distance, above that line of buildings where lies the heart of
+Venice, the high ghosts of the Friulian Alps glimmered amid the sweeping
+regiments and purple shadows of the land-hurrying clouds.
+
+"This does you good, darling!" said Ashe, stooping down to look into his
+wife's face, as she nestled beside him on the soft cushions of the
+gondola.
+
+Kitty gave him a slight smile, then said, with a furrowed brow:
+
+"Who could ever have thought we should find maman here!"
+
+"Don't have her on your mind!" said Ashe, with some sharpness. "I can't
+have anything worrying you."
+
+She slipped her hand into his.
+
+"Is that man going to marry her--at last? She called him 'Markham.'
+That's new."
+
+"Looks rather like it," said Ashe. "Then _he'll_ have to look after the
+debts!"
+
+They began to piece together what they knew of Colonel Warington and his
+relation to Madame d'Estrées. It was not much. But Ashe believed that
+originally Warington had not been in love with her at all. There had
+been a love-affair between her and Warington's younger brother, a smart
+artillery officer, when she was the widowed Lady Blackwater. She had
+behaved with more heart and scruple than she had generally been known to
+do in these matters, and the young officer adored her--hoped, indeed, to
+marry her. But he was called on--in Paris--to fight a duel on her
+account, and was killed. Before fighting, he had commended Lady
+Blackwater to the care of his much older brother, also a soldier,
+between whom and himself there existed a rare and passionate devotion;
+and ever since the poor lad's death, Markham Warington had been the
+friend and quasi-guardian of the lady--through her second marriage,
+through the checkered years of her existence in London, and now through
+the later years of her residence on the Continent, a residence forced
+upon her by her agreement with the Tranmores. Again and again he had
+saved her from bankruptcy, or from some worse scandal which would have
+wrecked the last remnants of her fame.
+
+But, all the time, he was himself bound by strong ties of gratitude and
+affection to an elder sister who had brought him up, with whom he lived
+in Scotland during half the year. And this stout Puritan lady detested
+the very name of Madame d'Estrées.
+
+"But she's dead," said Ashe. "I remember noticing her death in the
+_Times_ some three months ago. That, of course, explains it. Now he's
+free to marry."
+
+"And so maman will settle down, and be happy ever afterwards!" said
+Kitty, with a sarcastic lifting of the brow. "Why should anybody be
+good?"
+
+The bitterness of her look struck Ashe disagreeably. That any child
+should speak so of a mother was a tragic and sinister thing. But he was
+well aware of the causes.
+
+"Were you very unhappy when you were a child, Kitty?" He pressed the
+hand he held.
+
+"No," said Kitty, shortly. "I'm too like maman. I suppose, really, at
+bottom, I liked all the debts, and the excitement, and the shady
+people!"
+
+"That wasn't the impression you gave me, in the first days of our
+acquaintance!" said Ashe, laughing.
+
+"Oh, then I was grown up--and there were drawbacks. But I'm made of the
+same stuff as maman," she said, obstinately--"except that I can't tell
+so many fibs. That's really why we didn't get on."
+
+Her brown eyes held him with that strange, unspoken defiance it seemed
+so often beyond her power to hide. It was like the fluttering of some
+caged thing hungering for it knows not what. Then, as they scanned the
+patient good-temper of his face, they melted; and her little fingers
+squeezed his; while Margaret French kept her eyes fixed on the two
+columns of the Piazzetta.
+
+"How strange to find her here!" said Kitty, under her breath. "Now, if
+it had been Alice--my sister Alice!"
+
+William nodded. It had been known to them for some time that Lady Alice
+Wensleydale, to whom Italy had become a second country, had settled in a
+villa near Treviso, where she occupied herself with a lace school for
+women and girls.
+
+The mention of her sister threw Kitty into what seemed to be a
+disagreeable reverie. The flush brought by the sea-wind faded. Ashe
+looked at her with anxiety.
+
+"You have done too much, Kitty--as usual!"
+
+His voice was almost angry.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"What does it matter? You know very well it would be much better for you
+if--"
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If I followed Harry." The words were just breathed, and her eyes shrank
+from meeting his. Ashe, on the other hand, turned and looked at her
+steadily.
+
+"Are you quite determined I sha'n't get _any_ joy out of my holiday?"
+
+She shook her head uncertainly. Then, almost immediately, she began to
+chatter to Margaret French about the sights of the lagoon, with her
+natural trenchancy and fun. But her hand, hidden under the folds of her
+black cloak, still clung to William's.
+
+"It is her illness," he said to himself, "and the loss of the child."
+
+And at the remembrance of his little son, a wave of sore yearning filled
+his own heart. Deep under the occupations and interests of the mind lay
+this passionate regret, and at any moment of pause or silence its
+"buried life" arose and seized him. But he was a busy politician,
+absorbed even in these days of holiday by the questions and problems of
+the hour. And Kitty was a delicate woman--with no defence against the
+torture of grief.
+
+He thought of those first days after the child's death, when in spite of
+the urgency of the doctors it had been impossible to keep the news from
+Kitty; of the ghastly effect of it upon nerves and brain already
+imperilled by causes only half intelligible; of those sudden flights
+from her nurses, when the days of convalescence began, to the child's
+room, and, later, to his grave. There was stinging pain in these
+recollections. Nor was he, in truth, much reassured by his wife's more
+recent state. It was impossible, indeed, that he should give it the same
+constant thought as a woman might--or a man of another and more
+emotional type. At this moment, perhaps, he had literally no _time_ for
+the subtleties of introspective feeling, even had his temperament
+inclined him to them, which was, in truth, not the case. He knew that
+Kitty had suddenly and resolutely ceased to talk about the boy, had
+thrown herself with the old energy into new pursuits, and, since she
+came to Venice in particular, had shown a feverish desire to fill every
+hour with movement and sight-seeing.
+
+But was she, in truth, much better--in body or soul?--poor child! The
+doctors had explained her illness as nervous collapse, pointing back to
+a long preceding period of overstrain and excitement. There had been
+suspicions of tubercular mischief, but no precise test was then at
+command; and as Kitty had improved with rest and feeding the idea had
+been abandoned. But Ashe was still haunted by it, though quite
+ready--being a natural optimist--to escape from it, and all other
+incurable anxieties, as soon as Kitty herself should give the signal.
+
+As to the moral difficulties and worries of those months at Haggart,
+Ashe remembered them as little as might be. Kitty's illness, indeed, had
+shown itself in more directions than one, as an amending and appeasing
+fact. Even Lord Parham had been moved to compassion and kindness by the
+immediate results of that horrible scene on the terrace. His
+leave-taking from Ashe on the morning afterwards had been almost
+cordial--almost intimate. And as to Lady Tranmore, whenever she had been
+able to leave her paralyzed husband she had been with Kitty, nursing her
+with affectionate wisdom night and day. While on the other members of
+the Haggart party the sheer pity of Kitty's condition had worked with
+surprising force. Lord Grosville had actually made his wife offer
+Grosville Park for Kitty's convalescence--Kitty got her first laugh out
+of the proposal. The Dean had journeyed several times from his distant
+cathedral town, to see and sit with Kitty; Eddie Helston's flowers had
+been almost a nuisance; Mrs. Alcot had shown herself quite soft and
+human.
+
+The effect, indeed, of this general sympathy on Lord Parham's relations
+to the chief member of his cabinet had been but small and passing. Ashe
+disliked and distrusted him more than ever; and whatever might have
+happened to the Premier's resentment of a particular offence, there
+could be no doubt that a visit from which Ashe had hoped much had ended
+in complete failure, that Parham was disposed to cross his powerful
+henchman where he could, and that intrigue was busy in the cabinet
+itself against the reforming party of which Ashe was the head Ashe,
+indeed, felt his own official position, outwardly so strong, by no means
+secure. But the game of politics was none the less exhilarating for
+that.
+
+As to Kitty's relation to himself--and life's most intimate and tender
+things--in these days, did he probe his own consciousness much
+concerning them? Probably not. Was he aware that, when all was said and
+done, in spite of her misdoings, in spite of his passion of anxiety
+during her illness, in spite of the pity and affection of his daily
+attitude, Kitty occupied, in truth, much less of his mind than she had
+ever yet occupied?--that a certain magic--primal, incommunicable--had
+ceased to clothe her image in his thoughts?
+
+Again--probably not. For these slow changes in a man's inmost
+personality are like the ebb and flow of summer tides over estuary
+sands. Silent, the main creeps in, or out; and while we dream, the great
+basin fills, and the fishing-boats come in--or the gentle, pitiless
+waters draw back into the bosom of ocean, and the sea-birds run over the
+wide, untenanted flats.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They landed at the Piazzetta as the lamps were being lit. The soft
+October darkness was falling fast, and on the ledges of St. Mark's and
+the Ducal Palace the pigeons had begun to roost. An animated crowd was
+walking up and down in the Piazza where a band was playing; and on the
+golden horses of St. Mark's there shone a pale and mystical light, the
+last reflection from the western sky. Under the colonnades the jewellers
+and glass-shops blazed and sparkled, and the warm sea-wind fluttered
+the Italian flags on the great flag-staffs that but so recently had
+borne the Austrian eagle.
+
+Ashe walked with his head thrown back, thinking absently, in this centre
+of Venice, of English politics, and of a phrase of Metternich's he had
+come across in a volume of memoirs he had been lately reading on the
+journey:
+
+"Le jour qui court n'a aucune valeur pour moi, excepté comme la veille
+du lendemain. C'est toujours avec le lendemain que mon esprit lutte."
+
+The phrase pleased him particularly.
+
+He, too, was wrestling with the morrow, though in another sense than
+Metternich's. His mind was alive with projects; an exultant
+consciousness both of capacity and opportunity possessed him.
+
+"Why, you've passed the club, William!" said Kitty.
+
+Ashe awoke with a start, smiled at her, and with a wave of the hand
+disappeared in a stairway to the right.
+
+Margaret French lingered in a bead-shop to make some purchases. Kitty
+walked home alone, and Margaret, whose watchful affection never failed,
+knew that she preferred it, and let her go her way.
+
+The Ashes had rooms on the first bend of the Grand Canal looking south.
+To reach them by land from the Piazza, Kitty had to pass through a
+series of narrow streets, or _calles_, broken by _campos_, or small
+squares, in which stood churches. As she passed one of these churches
+she was attracted by the sound of gay music and by the crowd about the
+entrance. Pushing aside the leathern curtain over the door, she found
+herself in a great rococo nave, which blazed with lights and
+decorations. Lines of huge wax candles were fixed in temporary holders
+along the floor. The pillars were swathed in rose-colored damask, and
+the choir was ablaze with flowers, and even more brilliantly lit, if
+possible, than the rest of the church.
+
+Kitty's Catholic training told her that an exposition of the Blessed
+Sacrament was going on. Mechanically she dipped her fingers into the
+holy water, she made her genuflection to the altar, and knelt down in
+one of the back rows.
+
+How rich and sparkling it was--the lights, the bright colors, the
+dancing music! "_Dolce Sacramento! Santo Sacramento!_" these words of an
+Italian hymn or litany recurred again and again, with endless iteration.
+Kitty's sensuous, excitable nature was stirred with delight. Then,
+suddenly, she remembered her child, and the little face she had seen for
+the last time in the coffin. She began to cry softly, hiding her face in
+her black veil. An unbearable longing possessed her. "I shall never have
+another child," she thought. "_That's_ all over."
+
+Then her thoughts wandered back to the party at Haggart, to the scene on
+the terrace, and to that rush of excitement which had mastered her, she
+scarcely knew how or why. She could still hear the Dean's voice--see the
+lamp wavering above her head. "What possessed me! I didn't care a straw
+whether the lamp set me on fire--whether I lived or died. I wanted to
+die."
+
+Was it because of that short conversation with William in the
+afternoon?--because of the calmness with which he had taken that word
+"separation," which she had thrown at him merely as a child boasts and
+threatens, never expecting for one moment to be taken at its word? She
+had proposed it to him before, after the night at Hamel Weir; she had
+been serious then, it had been an impulse of remorse, and he had laughed
+at her. But at Haggart it had been an impulse of temper, and he had
+taken it seriously. How the wound had rankled, all the afternoon, while
+she was chattering to the Royalties! And as she jumped on the pedestal,
+and saw his face of horror, there was the typical womanish triumph that
+she had made him _feel_--would make him feel yet more.
+
+How good, how tender he had been to her in her illness! And yet--yet?
+
+"He cares for politics, for his plans--not for me. He will never trust
+me again--as he did once. He'll never ask me to help him--he'll find
+ways not to--though he'll be very sweet to me all the time."
+
+And the thought of her nullity with him in the future, her
+insignificance in his life, tortured her.
+
+Why had she treated Lord Parham so? "I can be a lady when I choose," she
+said, mockingly, to herself. "I wasn't even a lady."
+
+Then suddenly there flashed on her memory a little picture of Lord
+Parham, standing spectacled and bewildered, peering into her slip of
+paper. She bent her head on her hands and laughed, a stifled, hysterical
+laugh, which scandalized the woman kneeling beside her.
+
+But the laugh was soon quenched again in restless pain. William's
+affection had been her only refuge in those weeks of moral and physical
+misery she had just passed through.
+
+"But it's only because he's so terribly sorry for me. It's all quite
+different. And I can't ever make him love me again in the old way.... It
+wasn't my fault. It's something born in me--that catches me by the
+throat."
+
+And she had the actual physical sense of some one strangled by a
+possessing force.
+
+"_Dolce Sacramento! Santo Sacramento!_"... The music swayed and echoed
+through the church. Kitty uncovered her eyes and felt a sudden
+exhilaration in the blaze of light. It reminded her of the bending
+Christ in the picture of San Giorgio. Awe and beauty flowed in upon her,
+in spite of the poor music and the tawdry church. What if she tried
+religion?--recalled what she had been taught in the convent?--gave
+herself up to a director?
+
+She shivered and recoiled. How would she ever maintain her faith against
+William--William, who knew so much more than she?
+
+Then, into the emptiness of her heart there stole the inevitable
+temptations of memory. Where was Geoffrey? She knew well that he was a
+violent and selfish man; but he understood much in her that William
+would never understand. With a morbid eagerness she recalled the play of
+feeling between them, before that mad evening at Hamel Weir. What
+perpetual excitement--no time to think--or regret!
+
+During her weeks of illness she had lost all count of his movements. Had
+he been still writing during the summer for the newspaper which had sent
+him out? Had there not been rumors of his being wounded--or attacked by
+fever? Her memory, still vague and weak, struggled painfully with
+memories it could not recapture.
+
+The Italian paper of that morning--she had spelled it out for herself at
+breakfast--had spoken of a defeat of the insurrectionary forces, and of
+their withdrawal into the highlands of Bosnia. There would be a lull in
+the fighting. Would he come home? And all this time had he been the mere
+spectator and reporter, or fighting, himself? Her pulses leaped as she
+thought of him leading down-trodden peasants against the Turk.
+
+But she knew nothing. Surely during the last few months he had purposely
+made a mystery of his doings and his whereabouts. The only sign of him
+which seemed to have reached England had been that volume of poems--with
+those hateful lines! Her lip quivered. She was like a weak child--unable
+to bear the thought of anything hostile and unkind.
+
+If he had already turned homeward? Perhaps he would come through Venice!
+Anyway, he was not far off. The day before she and Margaret had made
+their first visit to the Lido. And as Kitty stood fronting the Adriatic
+waves, she had dreamed that somewhere, beyond the farther coast, were
+those Bosnian mountains in which Geoffrey had passed the winter.
+
+Then she started at her own thoughts, rose--loathing herself--drew down
+her veil, and moved towards the door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As she reached the leathern curtain which hung over the doorway, a lady
+in front who was passing through held the curtain aside that Kitty might
+follow. Kitty stepped into the street and looked up to say a mechanical
+"Thank you."
+
+But the word died on her lips. She gave a stifled cry, which was echoed
+by the woman before her.
+
+Both stood motionless, staring at each other.
+
+Kitty recovered herself first.
+
+"It's not my fault that we've met," she said, panting a little. "Don't
+look at me so--so unkindly. I know you don't want to see me. Why--why
+should we speak at all? I'm going away." And she turned with a gesture
+of farewell.
+
+Alice Wensleydale laid a detaining hand on Kitty's arm.
+
+"No! stay a moment. You are in black. You look ill."
+
+Kitty turned towards her. They had moved on instinctively into the
+shelter of one of the narrow streets.
+
+"My boy died--two months ago," she said, holding herself proudly aloof.
+
+Lady Alice started.
+
+"I hadn't heard. I'm very sorry for you. How old was he?"
+
+"Three years old."
+
+"Poor baby!" The words were very low and soft. "My boy--was fourteen.
+But you have other children?"
+
+"No--and I don't want them. They might die, too."
+
+Lady Alice paused. She still held her half-sister by the arm, towering
+above her. She was quite as thin as Kitty, but much taller and more
+largely built; and, beside the elaborate elegance of Kitty's mourning,
+Alice's black veil and dress had a severe, conventual air. They were
+almost the dress of a religious.
+
+"How are you?" she said, gently. "I often think of you. Are you happy in
+your marriage?"
+
+Kitty laughed.
+
+"We're such a happy lot, aren't we? We understand it so well. Oh, don't
+trouble about me. You know you said you couldn't have anything to do
+with me. Are you staying in Venice?"
+
+"I came in from Treviso for a day or two, to see a friend--"
+
+"You had better not stay," said Kitty, hastily. "Maman is here. At
+least, if you don't want to run across her."
+
+Lady Alice let go her hold.
+
+"I shall go home to-morrow morning."
+
+They moved on a few steps in silence, then Alice paused. Kitty's
+delicate face and cloud of hair made a pale, luminous spot in the
+darkness of the _calle_. Alice looked at her with emotion.
+
+"I want to say something to you."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"If you are ever in trouble--if you ever want me, send for me. Address
+Treviso, and it will always find me."
+
+Kitty made no reply. They had reached a bridge over a side canal, and
+she stopped, leaning on the parapet.
+
+"Did you hear what I said?" asked her companion.
+
+"Yes. I'll remember. I suppose you think it your duty. What do you do
+with yourself?"
+
+"I have two orphan children I bring up. And there is my lace-school. It
+doesn't get on much; but it occupies me."
+
+"Are you a Catholic?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Wish I was!" said Kitty. She hung over the marble balustrade in
+silence, looking at the crescent moon that was just peering over the
+eastern palaces of the canal. "My husband is in politics, you know. He's
+Home Secretary."
+
+"Yes, I heard. Do you help him?"
+
+"No--just the other thing."
+
+Kitty lifted up a pebble and let it drop into the water.
+
+"I don't know what you mean by that," said Alice Wensleydale, coldly.
+"If you don't help him you'll be sorry--when it's too late to be sorry."
+
+"Oh, I know!" said Kitty. Then she moved restlessly. "I must go in.
+Good-night." She held out her hand.
+
+Lady Alice took it.
+
+"Good-night. And remember!"
+
+"I sha'n't want anybody," said Kitty. "_Addio!_" She waved her hand, and
+Alice Wensleydale, whose way lay towards the Piazza, saw her disappear,
+a small tripping shadow, between the high, close-piled houses.
+
+Kitty was in so much excitement after this conversation that when she
+reached the Campo San Maurizio, where she should have turned abruptly to
+the left, she wandered awhile up and down the campo, looking at the
+gondolas on the Traghetto between it and the Accademia, at the Church of
+San Maurizio, at the rising moon, and the bright lights in some of the
+shop windows of the small streets to the north. The sea-wind was still
+warm and gusty, and the waves in the Grand Canal beat against the marble
+feet of its palaces.
+
+At last she found her way through narrow passages, past hidden and
+historic buildings, to the back of the palace on the Grand Canal in
+which their rooms were. A door in a small court opened to her ring. She
+found herself in a dark ground-floor--empty except for the _felze_ or
+black top of a gondola--of which the farther doors opened on the canal.
+A cheerful Italian servant brought lights, and on the marble stairs was
+her maid waiting for her. In a few minutes she was on her sofa by a
+bright wood fire, while Blanche hovered round her with many small
+attentions.
+
+"Have you seen your letters, my lady?" and Blanche handed her a pile.
+Upon a parcel lying uppermost Kitty pounced at once with avidity. She
+tore it open--pausing once, with scarlet cheeks, to look round her at
+the door, as though she were afraid of being seen.
+
+A book--fresh and new--emerged. _Politics and the Country Houses_; so
+ran the title on the back. Kitty looked at it frowning. "He might have
+found a better name!" Then she opened it--looked at a page here and a
+page there--laughed, shivered--and at last bethought her to read the
+note from the publisher which accompanied it.
+
+"'Much pleasure--the first printed copy--three more to follow--sure to
+make a sensation'--hateful wretch!--'if your ladyship will let us
+know how many presentation copies--' Goodness!--not _one_!
+Oh--well!--Madeleine, perhaps--and, of course, Mr. Darrell."
+
+She opened a little despatch-box in which she kept her letters, and
+slipped the book in.
+
+"I won't show it to William to-night--not--not till next week." The book
+was to be out on the 20th, a week ahead--three months from the day when
+she had given the MS. into Darrell's hands. She had been spared all the
+trouble of correcting proofs, which had been done for her by the
+publisher's reader, on the plea of her illness. She had received and
+destroyed various letters from him--almost without reading them--during
+a short absence of William's in the north.
+
+Suddenly a start of terror ran through her. "No, no!" she said,
+wrestling with herself--"he'll scold me, perhaps--at first; of course I
+know he'll do that. And then, I'll make him laugh! He can't--he can't
+help laughing. I _know_ it'll amuse him. He'll see how I meant it, too.
+And nobody need ever find out."
+
+She heard his step outside, hastily locked her despatch-box, threw a
+shawl over it, and lay back languidly on her pillows, awaiting him.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+The following morning, early, a note was brought to Kitty from Madame
+d'Estrées:
+
+     "Darling Kitty,--Will you join us to-night in an expedition? You
+     know that Princess Margherita is staying on the Grand Canal?--in
+     one of the Mocenigo palaces. There is to be a serenata in her honor
+     to-night--not one of those vulgar affairs which the hotels get up,
+     but really good music and fine voices--money to be given to some
+     hospital or other. Do come with us. I suppose you have your own
+     gondola, as we have. The gondolas who wish to follow meet at the
+     Piazzetta, weather permitting, eight o'clock. I know, of course,
+     that you are not going out. But this is _only_ music!--and for a
+     charity. One just sits in one's gondola, and follows the music up
+     the canal. Send word by bearer. Your fond mother,
+
+     "Marguerite d'Estrées."
+
+Kitty tossed the note over to Ashe. "Aren't you dining out somewhere
+to-night?"
+
+Her voice was listless. And as Ashe lifted his head from the cabinet
+papers which had just reached him by special messenger, his attention
+was disagreeably recalled from high matters of state to the very evident
+delicacy of his wife. He replied that he had promised to dine with
+Prince S---- at Danieli's, in order to talk Italian politics. "But I can
+throw it over in a moment, if you want me. I came to Venice for _you_,
+darling," he said, as he rose and joined her on the balcony which
+commanded a fine stretch of the canal.
+
+"No, no! Go and dine with your prince. I'll go with maman--Margaret and
+I. At least, Margaret must, of course, please herself!"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, and then added, "Maman's probably in the
+pink of society here. Venice doesn't take its cue from people like Aunt
+Lina!"
+
+Ashe smiled uncomfortably. He was in truth by this time infinitely
+better acquainted with the incidents of Madame d'Estrées's past career
+than Kitty was. He had no mind whatever that Kitty should become less
+ignorant, but his knowledge sometimes made conversation difficult.
+
+Kitty was perfectly aware of his embarrassment.
+
+"You never tell me--" she said, abruptly. "Did she really do such
+dreadful things?"
+
+"My dear Kitty!--why talk about it?"
+
+Kitty flushed, then threw a flower into the water below with a defiant
+gesture.
+
+"What does it matter? It's all so long ago. I have nothing to do with
+what I did ten years ago--nothing!"
+
+"A convenient doctrine!" laughed Ashe. "But it cuts both ways. You get
+neither the good of your good nor the bad of your bad."
+
+"I have no good," said Kitty, bitterly.
+
+"What's the matter with you, miladi?" said Ashe, half scolding, half
+tender. "You growl over my remarks as though you were your own small dog
+with a bone. Come here and let me tell you the news."
+
+And drawing the sofa up to the open window which commanded the
+marvellous waterway outside, with its rows of palaces on either hand, he
+made her lie down while he read her extracts from his letters.
+
+Margaret French, who was writing at the farther side of the room,
+glanced at them furtively from time to time. She saw that Ashe was
+trying to charm away the languor of his companion by that talk of his,
+shrewd, humorous, vehement, well informed, which made him so welcome to
+the men of his own class and mode of life. And when he talked to a woman
+as he was accustomed to talk to men, that woman felt it a compliment.
+Under the stimulus of it, Kitty woke up, laughed, argued, teased, with
+something of her natural animation.
+
+Presently, indeed, the voices had sunk so much and the heads had drawn
+so close together that Margaret French slipped away, under the
+impression that they were discussing matters to which she was not meant
+to listen.
+
+She had hardly closed the door when Kitty drew herself away from Ashe,
+and holding his arm with both hands looked strangely into his eyes.
+
+"You're awfully good to me, William. But, you know--you don't tell me
+secrets!"
+
+"What do you mean, darling?"
+
+"You don't tell me the real secrets--what Lord Palmerston used to tell
+to Lady Palmerston!"
+
+"How do you know what he used to tell her?" said Ashe, with a laugh. But
+his forehead had reddened.
+
+"One hears--and one guesses--from the letters that have been published.
+Oh, I understand quite well! You can't trust me!"
+
+Ashe turned aside and began to gather up his papers.
+
+"Of course," said Kitty, a little hoarsely, "I know it's my own fault,
+because you used to tell me much more. I suppose it was the way I
+behaved to Lord Parham?"
+
+She looked at him rather tremulously. It was the first time since her
+illness began that she had referred to the incidents at Haggart.
+
+"Look here!" said Ashe, in a tone of decision; "I shall _really_ give up
+talking politics to you if it only reminds you of disagreeable things."
+
+She took no notice.
+
+"Is Lord Parham behaving well to you--now--William?"
+
+Ashe colored hotly. As a matter of fact, in his own opinion, Lord Parham
+was behaving vilely. A measure of first-rate importance for which he was
+responsible was already in danger of being practically shelved, simply,
+as it seemed to him, from a lack of elementary trustworthiness in Lord
+Parham. But as to this he had naturally kept his own counsel with Kitty.
+
+"He is not the most agreeable of customers," he said, gayly. "But I
+shall get through. Pegging away does it."
+
+"And then to see how our papers flatter him!" cried Kitty. "How little
+people know, who think they know! It would be amusing to show the world
+the real Lord Parham."
+
+She looked at her husband with an expression that struck him
+disagreeably. He threw away his cigarette, and his face changed.
+
+"What we have to do, my dear Kitty, is simply to hold our tongues."
+
+Kitty sat up in some excitement.
+
+"That man never hears the truth!"
+
+Ashe shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to him incredible that she should
+pursue this particular topic, after the incidents at Haggart.
+
+"That's not the purpose for which Prime Ministers exist. Anyway, _we_
+can't tell it him."
+
+Undaunted, however, by his tone, and with what seemed to him
+extraordinary excitability of manner, Kitty reminded him of an incident
+in the life of a bygone administration, when the near relative of an
+English statesman, staying at the time in the statesman's house, had
+sent a communication to one of the quarterlies attacking his policy and
+belittling his character, by means of information obtained in the
+intimacy of a country-house party.
+
+"One of the most treacherous things ever done!" said Ashe, indignantly.
+"Fair fight, if you like! But if that kind of thing were to spread, I
+for one should throw up politics to-morrow."
+
+"Every one said it did a vast deal of good," persisted Kitty.
+
+"A precious sort of good! Yes--I believe Parham in particular profited
+by it--more shame to him! If anybody ever tried to help me in that sort
+of way--anybody, that is, for whom I felt the smallest responsibility--I
+know what I should do."
+
+"What?" Kitty fell back on her cushions, but her eye still held him.
+
+"Send in my resignation by the next post--and damn the fellow that did
+it! Look here, Kitty!" He came to stand over her--a fine formidable
+figure, his hands in his pockets. "Don't you ever try that kind of
+thing--there's a darling."
+
+"Would you damn me?"
+
+She smiled at him--with a tremor of the lip.
+
+He caught up her hand and kissed it. "Blow out my own brains, more
+like," he said, laughing. Then he turned away. "What on earth have we
+got into this beastly conversation for? Let's get out of it. The Parhams
+are there--male and female--aren't they?--and we've got to put up with
+them. Well, I'm going to the Piazza. Any commissions? Oh,
+by-the-way"--he looked back at a letter in his hands--"mother says Polly
+Lyster will probably be here before we go--she seems to be touring
+around with her father."
+
+"Charming prospect!" said Kitty. "Does mother expect me to chaperon
+her?"
+
+Ashe laughed and went. As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang from the
+sofa, and walked up and down the room in a passionate preoccupation. A
+tremor of great fear was invading her; an agony of unavailing regret.
+
+"What can I do?" she said to herself, as her upper lip twisted and
+tortured the lower one.
+
+Presently she caught up her purse, went to her room, where she put on
+her walking things without summoning Blanche, and stealing down the
+stairs, so as to be unheard by Margaret, she made her way to the back
+gate of the Palazzo, and so to the streets leading to the Piazza.
+William had taken the gondola to the Piazzetta, so she felt herself
+safe.
+
+She entered the telegraphic office at the western end of the Piazza, and
+sent a telegram to England that nearly emptied her purse of francs. When
+she came out she was as pale as she had been flushed before--a little,
+terror-stricken figure, passing in a miserable abstraction through the
+intricate backways which took her home.
+
+"It won't be published for ten days. There's time. It's only a question
+of money," she said to herself, feverishly--"only a question of money!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the rest of the day, Kitty was at once so restless and so languid
+that to amuse her was difficult. Ashe was quite grateful to his amazing
+mother-in-law for the plan of the evening.
+
+As night fell, Kitty started at every sound in the old Palazzo. Once or
+twice she went half-way to the door--eagerly--with hand
+out-stretched--as though she expected a letter.
+
+"No other English post to-night, Kitty!" said Ashe, at last, raising his
+head from the finely printed _Poetæ Minores_ he had just purchased at
+Ongania's. "You don't mean to say you're not thankful!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening arrived--clear and mild, but moonless. Ashe went off to dine
+with his prince, in the ordinary gondola of commerce, hired at the
+Traghetto; while Margaret and Kitty followed a little later in one which
+had already drawn the attention of Venice, owing to the two handsome
+gondoliers, habited in black from head to foot, who were attached to it.
+They turned towards the Piazzetta, where they were to meet with Madame
+d'Estrées' party.
+
+Kitty, in her deep mourning, sank listlessly into the black cushions of
+the gondola. Yet almost as they started, as the first strokes carried
+them past the famous palace which is now the Prefecture, the spell of
+Venice began to work.
+
+City of rest!--as it seems to our modern senses--how is it possible that
+so busy, so pitiless, and covetous a life as history shows us should
+have gone to the making and the fashioning of Venice! The easy passage
+of the gondola through the soft, imprisoned wave; the silence of wheel
+and hoof, of all that hurries and clatters; the tide that comes and
+goes, noiseless, indispensable, bringing in the freshness of the sea,
+carrying away the defilements of the land; the narrow winding ways, now
+firm earth, now shifting sea, that bind the city into one social whole,
+where the industrial and the noble alike are housed in palaces, equal
+often in beauty as in decay; the marvellous quiet of the nights, save
+when the northeast wind, Hadria's stormy leader, drives the furious
+waves against the palace fronts in the darkness, with the clamor of an
+attacking host; the languor of the hot afternoons, when life is a dream
+of light and green water, when the play of mirage drowns the foundations
+of the _lidi_ in the lagoon, so that trees and buildings rise out of the
+sea as though some strong Amphion-music were but that moment calling
+them from the deep; and when day departs, that magic of the swiftly
+falling dusk, and that white foam and flower of St. Mark's upon the
+purple intensity of the sky!--through each phase of the hours and the
+seasons, _rest_ is still the message of Venice, rest enriched with
+endless images, impressions, sensations, that cost no trouble and breed
+no pain.
+
+It was this spell of rest that descended for a while on Kitty as they
+glided downward to the Piazzetta. The terror of the day relaxed. Her
+telegram would be in time; or, if not, she would throw herself into
+William's arms, and he _must_ forgive her!--because she was so foolish
+and weak, so tired and sad. She slipped her hand into Margaret's; they
+talked in low voices of the child, and Kitty was all appealing
+melancholy and charm.
+
+At the Piazzetta there was already a crowd of gondolas, and at their
+head the _barca_, which carried the musicians.
+
+"You are late, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées, waving to them. "Shall we
+draw out and come to you?--or will you just join on where you are?"
+
+For the Vercelli gondola was already wedged into a serried line of boats
+in the wake of the _barca_.
+
+"Never mind us," said Kitty. "We'll tack on somehow."
+
+And inwardly she was delighted to be thus separated from her mother and
+the chattering crowd by which Madame d'Estrées seemed to be surrounded.
+Kitty and Margaret bade their men fall in, and they presently found
+themselves on the Salute side of the floating audience, their prow
+pointing to the canal.
+
+The _barca_ began to move, and the mass of gondolas followed. Round
+them, and behind them, other boats were passing and repassing, each with
+its slim black body, its swanlike motion, its poised oarsman, and its
+twinkling light. The lagoon towards the Guidecca was alive with these
+lights; and a magnificent white steamer adorned with flags and
+lanterns--the yacht, indeed, of a German prince--shone in the
+mid-channel.
+
+On they floated. Here were the hotels, with other illuminated boats in
+front of their steps, whence spoiled voices shouted, "Santa Lucia," till
+even Venice and the Grand Canal became a vulgarity and a weariness.
+These were the "serenate publiche," common and commercial affairs, which
+the private serenata left behind in contempt, steering past their
+flaring lights for the dark waters of romance which lay beyond.
+
+Suddenly Kitty's sadness gave way; her starved senses clamored; she woke
+to poetry and pleasure. All round her, stretching almost across the
+canal, the noiseless flock of gondolas--dark, leaning figures impelling
+them from behind, and in front the high prows and glow-worm lights; in
+the boats, a multitude of dim, shrouded figures, with not a face
+visible; and in their midst the _barca_, temple of light and music,
+built up of flowers, and fluttering scarves, and many-colored lanterns,
+a sparkling fantasy of color, rose and gold and green, shining on the
+bosom of the night. To either side, the long, dark lines of
+thrice-historic palaces; scarcely a poor light here and there at their
+water-gates; and now and then the lamps of the Traghetti.... Otherwise,
+darkness, soundless motion, and, overhead, dim stars.
+
+"Margaret! Look!"
+
+Kitty caught her companion's arm in a mad delight.
+
+Some one for the amusement of the guests of Venice was experimenting on
+the top of the campanile of St. Mark's with those electric lights which
+were then the toys of science, and are now the eyes and tools of war. A
+search-light was playing on the basin of St. Mark's and on the mouth of
+the canal. Suddenly it caught the Church of the Salute--and the whole
+vast building, from the Queen of Heaven on its topmost dome down to the
+water's brim, the figures of saints and prophets and apostles which
+crowd its steps and ledges, the white whorls, like huge sea-shells, that
+make its buttresses, the curves and volutes of its cornices and
+doorways, rushed upon the eye in a white and blinding splendor, making
+the very darkness out of which the vision sprang alive and rich. Not a
+Christian church, surely, but a palace of Poseidon! The bewildered gazer
+saw naiads and bearded sea-gods in place of angels and saints, and must
+needs imagine the champing of Poseidon's horses at the marble steps,
+straining towards the sea.
+
+The vision wavered, faded, reappeared, and finally died upon the night.
+Then the wild beams began to play on the canal, following the serenata,
+lighting up now the palaces on either hand, now some single gondola,
+revealing every figure and gesture of the laughing English or Americans
+who filled it, in a hard white flash.
+
+"Oh! listen, Kitty!" said Margaret. "Some one is going to sing 'Ché
+faro.'"
+
+Miss French was very musical, and she turned in a trance of pleasure
+towards the _barca_ whence came the first bars of the accompaniment.
+
+She did not see meanwhile that Kitty had made a hurried movement, and
+was now leaning over the side of the gondola, peering with arrested
+breath into the scattered group of boats on their left hand. The
+search-light flashed here and there among them. A gondola at the very
+edge of the serenata contained one figure beside the gondolier, a man in
+a large cloak and slouch hat, sitting very still with folded arms. As
+Kitty looked, hearing the beating of her heart, their own boat was
+suddenly lit up. The light passed in a second, and while it lasted those
+in the flash could see nothing outside it. When it withdrew all was in
+darkness. The black mass of boats floated on, soundless again, save for
+an occasional plash of water or the hoarse cry of a gondolier--and in
+the distance the wail for Eurydice.
+
+Kitty fell back in her seat. An excitement, from which she shrank in a
+kind of terror, possessed her. Her thoughts were wholly absorbed by the
+gondola and the figure she could no longer distinguish--for which,
+whenever a group of lamps threw their reflections on the water, she
+searched the canal in vain. If what she madly dreamed were true, had she
+herself been seen--and recognized?
+
+The serenata in honor of Italy's beautiful princess duly made its way to
+the Grand Canal. The princess came to her balcony, while the "Jewel
+Song" in "Faust" was being sung below, and there was a demonstration
+which echoed from palace to palace and died away under the arch of the
+Rialto. Then the gondolas dispersed. That of Lady Kitty Ashe had some
+difficulty in making its way home against a force of wind and tide
+coming from the lagoon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kitty was apparently asleep when Ashe returned. He had sat late with his
+hosts--men prominent in the Risorgimento and in the politics of the new
+kingdom--discussing the latest intricacies of the Roman situation and
+the prospects of Italian finance. His mind was all alert and vigorous,
+ranging over great questions and delighting in its own strength. To come
+in contact with these able foreigners, not as the mere traveller but as
+an important member of an English government, beginning to be spoken of
+by the world as one of the two or three men of the future--this was a
+new experience and a most agreeable one. Doors hitherto closed had
+opened before him; information no casual Englishman could have commanded
+had been freely poured out for him; last, but not least, he had at
+length made himself talk French with some fluency, and he looked back on
+his performance of the evening with a boy's complacency.
+
+For the rest, Venice was a mere trial of his patience! As his gondola
+brought him home, struggling with wind and wave, Ashe had no eye
+whatever for the beauty of this Venice in storm. His mind was in
+England, in London, wrestling with a hundred difficulties and
+possibilities. The old literary and speculative habit was fast
+disappearing in the stress of action and success. His well-worn Plato or
+Horace still lay beside his bedside; but when he woke early, and lit a
+candle carefully shaded from Kitty, it was not to the poets and
+philosophers that he turned; it was to a heap of official documents and
+reports, to the letters of political friends, or an unfinished letter of
+his own, the phrases of which had perhaps been running through his
+dreams. The measures for which he was wrestling against the intrigues of
+Lord Parham and Lord Parham's clique filled all his mind with a lively
+ardor of battle. They were the children--the darlings--of his thoughts.
+
+Nevertheless, as he entered his wife's dim-lit room the eager arguments
+and considerations that were running through his head died away. He
+stood beside her, overwhelmed by a rush of feeling, alive through all
+his being to the appeal of her frail sweetness, the helplessness of her
+sleep, the dumb significance of the thin, blue-veined hand--eloquent at
+once of character and of physical weakness--which lay beside her. Her
+face was hidden, but the beautiful hair with its childish curls and
+ripples drew him to her--touched all the springs of tenderness.
+
+It was a loveliness so full, it seemed, of meaning and of promise. Hand,
+brow, mouth--they were the signs of no mere empty and insipid beauty.
+There was not a movement, not a feature, that did not speak of
+intelligence and mind.
+
+And yet, were he to wake her now and talk to her of the experience of
+his evening, how little joy would either get out of it.
+
+Was it because she had no intellectual disinterestedness? Well, what
+woman had! But other women, even if they saw everything in terms of
+personality, had the power of pursuing an aim, steadily, persistently,
+for the sake of a person. He thought of Lady Palmerston--of Princess
+Lieven fighting Guizot's battles--and sighed.
+
+By Jove! the women could do most things, if they chose. He recalled
+Kitty's triumph in the great party gathered to welcome Lord Parham,
+contrasting it with her wilful and absurd behavior to the man himself.
+There was something bewildering in such power--combined with such folly.
+In a sense, it was perfectly true that she had insulted her husband's
+chief, and jeopardized her husband's policy, because she could not put
+up with Lord Parham's white eyelashes.
+
+Well, let him make his account with it! How to love her, tend her, make
+her happy--and yet carry on himself the life of high office--there was
+the problem! Meanwhile he recognized, fully and humorously, that she had
+married a political sceptic--and that it was hard for her to know what
+to do with the enthusiast who had taken his place.
+
+Poor, pretty, incalculable darling! He would coax her to stay abroad
+part of the Parliamentary season--and then, perhaps, lure her into the
+country, with the rebuilding and refurnishing of Haggart. She must be
+managed and kept from harm--and afterwards indulged and spoiled and
+_fêted_ to her heart's content.
+
+If only the fates would give them another child!--a child brilliant and
+lovely like herself, then surely this melancholy which overshadowed her
+would disperse. That look--that tragic look--she had given him on the
+day of the _fête_, when she spoke of "separation"! The wild adventure
+with the lamp had been her revenge--her despair. He shuddered as he
+thought of it.
+
+He fell asleep, still pondering restlessly over her future and his own.
+Amid all his anxieties he never stooped to recollect the man who had
+endangered her name and peace. His optimism, his pride, the sanguine
+perfunctoriness of much of his character were all shown in the omission.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kitty, however, was not asleep while Ashe was beside her. And she slept
+but little through the hours that followed. Between three and four she
+was finally roused by the sounds of storm in the canal. It was as though
+a fleet of gigantic steamers--in days when Venice knew but the
+gondola--were passing outside, sending a mountainous "wash" against the
+walls of the old palace in which they lodged. In this languid autumnal
+Venice the sudden noise and crash were startling. Kitty sprang softly
+out of bed, flung on a dressing-gown and fur cloak, and slipped through
+the open window to the balcony.
+
+A strange sight! Beneath, livid waves, lashing the marble walls; above,
+a pale moonlight, obscured by scudding clouds. Not a sign of life on
+the water or in the dark palaces opposite. Venice looked precisely as
+she might have looked on some wild sixteenth-century night in the years
+of her glorious decay, when her palaces were still building and her
+state tottering. Opposite, at the Traghetto of the Accademia, there were
+lamps, and a few lights in the gondolas; and through the storm-noises
+one could hear the tossed boats grinding on their posts.
+
+The riot of the air was not cold; there was still a recollection of
+summer in the gusts that beat on Kitty's fair hair and wrestled with her
+cloak. As she clung to the balcony she pictured to herself the tumbling
+waves on the Lido; the piled storm-clouds parting like a curtain above a
+dead Venice; and behind, the gleaming eternal Alps, sending their
+challenge to the sea--the forces that make the land, to the forces that
+engulf it.
+
+Her wild fancy went out to meet the tumult of blast and wave. She felt
+herself, as it were, anchored a moment at sea, in the midst of a war of
+elements, physical and moral.
+
+Yes, yes!--it was Geoffrey. Once, under the skipping light, she had seen
+the face distinctly. Paler than of old--gaunt, unhappy, absent. It was
+the face of one who had suffered--in body and mind. But--she trembled
+through all her slight frame!--the old harsh power was there unchanged.
+
+Had he seen and recognized her--slipping away afterwards into the mouth
+of a side canal, or dropping behind in the darkness? Was he ashamed to
+face her--or angered by the reminder of her existence? No doubt it
+seemed to him now a monstrous absurdity that he should ever have said he
+loved her! He despised her--thought her a base and coward soul. Very
+likely he would make it up with Mary Lyster now, accept her nursing and
+her money.
+
+Her lip curled in scorn. No, _that_ she didn't believe! Well, then, what
+would be his future? His name had been but little in the newspapers
+during the preceding year; the big public seemed to have forgotten him.
+A cloud had hung for months over the struggle of races and of faiths now
+passing in the Balkans. Obscure fighting in obscure mountains; massacre
+here, revolt there; and for some months now hardly an accredited voice
+from Turk or Christian to tell the world what was going on.
+
+But Geoffrey had now emerged--and at a moment when Europe was beginning
+perforce to take notice of what she had so far wilfully ignored. _À lui
+la parole!_ No doubt he was preparing it, the bloody, exciting story
+which would bring him before the foot-lights again, and make him once
+more the lion of a day. More social flatteries, more doubtful
+love-affairs! Fools like herself would feel his spell, would cherish and
+caress him, only to be stung and scathed as she had been. The bitter
+lines of his "portrait" rung in her ears--blackening and discrowning her
+in her own eyes.
+
+She abhorred him!--but the thought that he was in Venice burned deep
+into senses and imagination. Should she tell William she had seen him?
+No, no! She would stand by herself, protect herself!
+
+So she stole back to bed, and lay there wakeful, starting guiltily at
+William's every movement. If he knew what had happened!--what she was
+thinking of! Why on earth should he? It would be monstrous to harass
+him on his holiday--with all these political affairs on his mind.
+
+Then suddenly--by an association of ideas--she sat up shivering, her
+hands pressed to her breast. The telegram--the book! Oh, but _of course_
+she had been in time!--_of course_! Why, she had offered the man two
+hundred pounds! She lay down laughing at herself--forcing herself to try
+and sleep.
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+"Does she see much of anybody?"
+
+"Because, you mean, of Tranmore's condition? What good can she be to him
+now? He knows nobody."
+
+"She doesn't seem to ask the question," said Mary, dryly.
+
+A queer, soft look came over Sir Richard's old face.
+
+"No, the women don't," he said, half to himself, and fell into a little
+reverie. He emerged from it with the remark--accompanied by a smile, a
+little sly but not unkind:
+
+"I always used to hope, Polly, that you and Ashe would have made it up!"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know why," said Mary, fastening up her envelopes. As
+she did so it crossed her father's mind that she was still very
+good-looking. Her dress of dark-blue cloth, the plain fashion of her
+brown hair, her oval face and well-marked features, her plump and pretty
+hands, were all pleasant to look upon. She had rather a hard way with
+her, though, at times. The servants were always giving warning. And,
+personally, he was much fonder of his younger daughter, whom Mary
+considered foolish and improvident. But he was well aware that Mary made
+his life easy.
+
+"Well, you were always on excellent terms," he said, in answer to her
+last remark. "I remember his saying to me once that you were very good
+company. The Bishop, too, used to notice how he liked to talk to you."
+
+When Mary and her father were together, "the Bishop" was Sir Richard's
+property. He only fell to Mary's share in the old man's absence.
+
+Mary colored slightly.
+
+"Oh yes, we got on," she said, counting her letters the while with a
+quick hand.
+
+"Well, I hope that young woman whom he _did_ marry is now behaving
+herself. It was that fellow Cliffe with whom the scandal was last year,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"There was a good deal of talk," said Mary.
+
+"A rum fellow, that Cliffe! A man at the club told me last week it is
+believed he has been fighting for these Bosnian rebels for months.
+Shocking bad form I call it. If the Turks catch him, they'll string him
+up. And quite right, too. What's he got to do with other people's
+quarrels?"
+
+"If the Turks will be such brutes--"
+
+"Nonsense, my dear! Don't you believe any of this radical stuff. The
+Turks are awfully fine fellows--fight like bull-dogs. And as for the
+'atrocities,' they make them up in London. Oh, of course, what Cliffe
+wants is notoriety--we all know that. Well, I'm going out to see if I
+can find another English paper. Beastly climate!"
+
+But as Sir Richard turned again to the window, he was met by a burst of
+sunshine, which hit him gayly in the face like a child's impertinence.
+He grumbled something unintelligible as Mary put him into his Inverness
+cape, took hat and stick, and departed.
+
+Mary sat still beside the writing-table, her hands crossed on her lap,
+her eyes absently bent upon them.
+
+She was thinking of the serenata. She had followed it with an
+acquaintance from the hotel, and she had seen not only Kitty and Madame
+d'Estrées, but also--the solitary man in the heavy cloak. She knew quite
+well that Cliffe was in Venice; though, true to her secretive temper,
+she had not mentioned the fact to her father.
+
+Of course he was in Venice on Kitty's account. It would be too absurd to
+suppose that he was here by mere coincidence. Mary believed that nothing
+but the intervention of Cliffe's mighty kinsman from the north had saved
+the situation the year before. Kitty would certainly have betrayed her
+husband but for the _force majeure_ arrayed against her. And now the
+magnate who had played Providence slumbered in the family vault. He had
+passed away in the spring, full of years and honors, leaving Cliffe some
+money. The path was clear. As for the escapade in the Balkans, Geoffrey
+was, of course, tired of it. A sensational book, hurried out to meet the
+public appetite for horrors--and the pursuance of his intrigue with Lady
+Kitty Ashe--Mary was calmly certain that these were now his objects. He
+was, no doubt, writing his book and meeting Kitty where he could. Ashe
+would soon have to go home. And then! As if that girl Margaret French
+could stop it!
+
+Well, William had only got his deserts! But as her thoughts passed from
+Kitty or Cliffe to William Ashe, their quality changed. Hatred and
+bitterness, scorn or wounded vanity, passed into something gentler. She
+fell into recollections of Ashe as he had appeared on that bygone
+afternoon in May when he came back triumphant from his election, with
+the world before him. If he had never seen Kitty Bristol!--
+
+"I should have made him a good wife," she said to herself. "_I_ should
+have known how to be proud of him."
+
+And there emerged also the tragic consciousness that if the fates had
+given him to her she might have been another woman--taught by happiness,
+by love, by motherhood.
+
+It was that little, heartless creature who had snatched them both from
+her--William and Geoffrey Cliffe--the higher and the lower--the man who
+might have ennobled her--and the man, half charlatan, half genius, whom
+she might have served and raised, by her fortune and her abilities. Her
+life might have been so full, so interesting! And it was Kitty that had
+made it flat, and cold, and futureless.
+
+Poor William! Had he really liked her, in those boy-and-girl days? She
+dreamed over their old cousinly relations--over the presents he had
+sometimes given her.
+
+Then a thought, like a burning arrow, pierced her. Her hands locked,
+straining one against the other. If this intrigue were indeed
+renewed--if Geoffrey succeeded in tempting Kitty from her husband--why
+then--then--
+
+She shivered before the images that were passing through her mind, and,
+rising, she put away her letters and rang for the waiter, to order
+dinner.
+
+"Where shall we go?" said Kitty, languidly, putting down the French
+novel she was reading.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mr. Ashe suggested San Lazzaro." Margaret looked up from her writing as
+Kitty moved towards her. "The rain seems to have all cleared off."
+
+"Well, I'm sure it doesn't matter where," said Kitty, and was turning
+away; but Margaret caught her hand and caressed it.
+
+"Naughty Kitty! why this sea air can't put some more color into your
+cheeks I don't understand."
+
+"I'm _not_ pale!" cried Kitty, pouting. "Margaret, you do croak about me
+so! If you say any more I'll go and rouge till you'll be ashamed to go
+out with me--there! Where's William?"
+
+William opened the door as she spoke, the _Gazetta di Venezia_ in one
+hand and a telegram in the other.
+
+"Something for you, darling," he said, holding it out to Kitty. "Shall I
+open it?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Kitty, hastily. "Give it me. It's from my Paris woman."
+
+"Ah--ha!" laughed Ashe. "Some extravagance you want to keep to yourself,
+I'll be bound. I've a good mind to see!"
+
+And he teasingly held it up above her head. But she gave a little jump,
+caught it, and ran off with it to her room.
+
+     "Much regret impossible stop publication. Fifty copies distributed
+     already. Writing."
+
+She dropped speechless on the edge of her bed, the crumpled telegram in
+her hand. The minutes passed.
+
+"When will you be ready?" said Ashe, tapping at the door.
+
+"Is the gondola there?"
+
+"Waiting at the steps."
+
+"Five minutes!" Ashe departed. She rose, tore the telegram into little
+bits, and began with deliberation to put on her mantle and hat.
+
+"You've got to go through with it," she said to the white face in the
+glass, and she straightened her small shoulders defiantly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were bound for the Armenian convent. It was a misty day, with
+shafts of light on the lagoon. The storm had passed, but the water was
+still rough, and the clouds seemed to be withdrawing their forces only
+to marshal them again with the darkness. A day of sudden bursts of
+watery light, of bands of purple distance struck into enchanting beauty
+by the red or orange of a sail, of a wild salt breath in air that seemed
+to be still suffused with spray. The Alps were hidden; but what sun
+there was played faintly on the Euganean hills.
+
+"I say, Margaret, at last she does us some credit!" said Ashe, pointing
+to his wife.
+
+Margaret started. Was it rouge?--or was it the strong air? Kitty's
+languor had entirely disappeared; she was more cheerful and more
+talkative than she had been at any time since their arrival. She
+chattered about the current scandals of Venice--the mysterious contessa
+who lived in the palace opposite their own, and only went out, in deep
+mourning, at night, because she had been the love of a Russian
+grand-duke, and the grand-duke was dead; of the Carlist pretender and
+his wife, who had been very popular in Venice until they took it into
+their heads to require royal honors, and Venice, taking time to think,
+had lazily decided the game was not worth the candle--so now the sulky
+pair went about alone in a fine gondola, turning glassy eyes on their
+former acquaintance; of the needy marchese who had sold a Titian to the
+Louvre, and had then found himself boycotted by all his kinsfolk in
+Venice who were not needy and had no Titians to sell--all these tales
+Kitty reeled out at length till the handsome gondoliers marvelled at the
+little lady's vivacity and the queer brightness of her eyes.
+
+"Gracious, Kitty, where do you get all these stories from?" cried Ashe,
+when the chatter paused for a moment.
+
+He looked at her with delight, rejoicing in her gayety, the slight
+touches of white which to-day for the first time relieved the sombreness
+of her dress, the return of her color. And Margaret wondered again how
+much of it was rouge.
+
+At the Armenian convent a handsome young monk took charge of them. As
+George Sand and Lamennais had done before them, they looked at the
+printing-press, the garden, the cloister, the church; they marvelled
+lazily at the cleanliness and brightness of the place; and finally they
+climbed to the library and museum, and the room close by where Byron
+played at grammar-making. In this room Ashe fell suddenly into a
+political talk with the young monk, who was an ardent and patriotic son
+of the most unfortunate of nations, and they passed out and down the
+stairs, followed by Margaret French, not noticing that Kitty had
+lingered behind.
+
+Kitty stood idly by the window of Byron's room, thinking restlessly of
+verses that were not Byron's, though there was in them, clothed in forms
+of the new age, the spirit of Byronic passion, and more than a touch of
+Byronic affectation--thinking also of the morning's telegram. Supposing
+Darrell's prophecy, which had seemed to her so absurd, came true, that
+the book did William harm, not good--that he ceased to love her--that he
+cast her off?...
+
+... A plash of water outside, and a voice giving directions. From the
+lagoon towards Malamocco a gondola approached. A gentleman and lady were
+seated in it. The lady--a very handsome Italian, with a loud laugh and
+brilliant eyes--carried a scarlet parasol. Kitty gave a stifled cry as
+she drew back. She fled out of the room and overtook the other two.
+
+"May we go back into the garden a little?" she said, hurriedly, to the
+monk who was talking to William. "I should like to see the view towards
+Venice."
+
+William held up a watch, to show that there was but just time to get
+back to the Piazza, for lunch. Kitty persisted, and the monk,
+understanding what the impetuous young lady wished, good-naturedly
+turned to obey her.
+
+"We must be _very_ quick!" said Kitty. "Take us please, to the edge,
+beyond the trees."
+
+And she herself hurried through the garden to its farther side, where it
+was bounded by the lagoon.
+
+The others followed her, rather puzzled by her caprice.
+
+"Not much to be seen, darling!" said Ashe, as they reached the
+water--"and I think this good man wants to get rid of us!"
+
+And, indeed, the monk was looking backward across the intervening trees
+at a party which had just entered the garden.
+
+"Ah, they have found another brother!" he said, politely, and he began
+to point out to Kitty the various landmarks visible, the arsenal, the
+two asylums, San Pietro di Castello.
+
+The new-comers just glanced at the garden apparently, as the Ashes had
+done on arrival, and promptly followed their guide back into the
+convent.
+
+Kitty asked a few more questions, then led the way in a hasty return to
+the garden door, the entrance-hall, and the steps where their gondola
+was waiting. Nothing was to be seen of the second party. They had passed
+on into the cloisters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Animation, oddity, inconsequence, all these things Margaret observed in
+Kitty during luncheon in a restaurant of the Merceria, and various
+incidents connected with it; animation above all. The Ashes fell in with
+acquaintance--a fashionable and harassed mother, on the fringe of the
+Archangels, accompanied by two daughters, one pretty and one plain, and
+sore pressed by their demands, real or supposed. The parents were not
+rich, but the girls had to be dressed, taken abroad, produced at
+country-houses, at Ascot, and the opera, like all other girls. The
+eldest girl, a considerable beauty, was an accomplished egotist at
+nineteen, and regarded her mother as a rather inefficient _dame de
+compagnie_. Kitty understood this young lady perfectly, and after
+luncheon, over her cigarette, her little, sharp, probing questions gave
+the beauty twenty minutes' annoyance. Then appeared a young man,
+ill-dressed, red-haired, and shy. Carelessly as he greeted the mother
+and daughters, his entrance, however, transformed them. The mother
+forgot fatigue; the beauty ceased to yawn; the younger girl, who had
+been making surreptitious notes of Kitty's costume in the last leaf of
+her guide-book, developed a charming gush. He was the owner of the
+Magellan estates and the historic Magellan Castle; a professed hater of
+"absurd womankind," and, in general, a hunted and self-conscious person.
+Kitty gave him one finger, looked him up and down, asked him whether he
+was yet engaged, and when he laughed an embarrassed "No," told him that
+he would certainly die in the arms of the Magellan housekeeper.
+
+This got a smile out of him. He sat down beside her, and the two laughed
+and talked with a freedom which presently drew the attention of the
+neighboring tables, and made Ashe uncomfortable. He rose, paid the bill,
+and succeeded in carrying the whole party off to the Piazza, in search
+of coffee. But here again Kitty's extravagances, the provocation of her
+light loveliness, as she sat toying with a fresh cigarette and
+"chaffing" Lord Magellan, drew a disagreeable amount of notice from the
+Italians passing by.
+
+"Mother, let's go!" said the angry beauty, imperiously, in her mother's
+ear. "I don't like to be seen with Lady Kitty! She's impossible!"
+
+And with cold farewells the three ladies departed. Then Kitty sprang up
+and threw away her cigarette.
+
+"How those girls bully their mother!" she said, with scorn. "However, it
+serves her right. I'm sure she bullied hers. Well, now we must go and do
+something. Ta-ta!"
+
+Lord Magellan, to whom she offered another casual finger, wanted to know
+why he was dismissed. If they were going sight-seeing, might he not come
+with them?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Kitty, calmly. "Sight--seeing with people you don't really
+know is too trying to the temper. Even with one's best friend it's
+risky."
+
+"Where are you? May I call?" said the young man.
+
+"We're always out," was Kitty's careless reply. "But--"
+
+She considered--
+
+"Would you like to see the Palazzo Vercelli?"
+
+"That magnificent place on the Grand Canal? Very much."
+
+"Meet me there to-morrow afternoon," said Kitty. "Four o'clock."
+
+"Delighted!" said Lord Magellan, making a note on his shirt-cuff. "And
+who lives there?"
+
+"My mother," said Kitty, abruptly, and walked away.
+
+Ashe followed her in discomfort. This young man was the son of a certain
+Lady Magellan, an intimate friend of Lady Tranmore's--one of the noblest
+women of her generation, pure, high-minded, spiritual, to whom neither
+an ugly word nor thought was possible. It annoyed him that either he or
+Kitty should be introducing _her_ son to Madame d'Estrées.
+
+It was really tiresome of Kitty! Rich young men with characters yet
+indeterminate were not to be lightly brought in contact with Madame
+d'Estrées. Kitty could not be ignorant of it--poor child! It had been
+one of her reckless strokes, and Ashe was conscious of a sharp
+annoyance.
+
+However, he said nothing. He followed his companions from church to
+church, till pictures became an abomination to him. Then he pleaded
+letters, and went to the club.
+
+"Will you call on maman to-morrow?" said Kitty, as he turned away,
+looking at him a little askance.
+
+She knew that he had disapproved of her invitation to Lord Magellan. Why
+had she given it? She didn't know. There seemed to be a kind of revived
+mischief and fever in the blood, driving her to these foolish and
+ill-considered things.
+
+Ashe met her question with a shake of the head and the remark, in a
+decided tone, that he should be too busy.
+
+Privately he thought it a piece of impertinence that Madame d'Estrées
+should expect either Kitty or himself to appear in her drawing-room at
+all. That this implied a complete transformation of his earlier attitude
+he was well aware; he accepted it with a curious philosophy. When he and
+Kitty first met he had never troubled his head about such things. If a
+woman amused or interested him in society, so long as his taste was
+satisfied she might have as much or as little character as she pleased.
+It stirred his mocking sense of English hypocrisy that the point should
+be even raised. But now--how can any individual, he asked himself, with
+political work to do, affect to despise the opinions and prejudices of
+society? A politician with great reforms to put through will make no
+friction round him that he can avoid--unless he is a fool. It weighed
+sorely, therefore, on his present mind that Madame d'Estrées was in
+Venice--that she was a person of blemished repute--that he must be and
+was ashamed of her. It would have been altogether out of consonance with
+his character to put any obstacle in the way of Kitty's seeing her
+mother. But he chafed as he had never yet chafed under the humiliation
+of his relationship to the notorious Margaret Fitzgerald of the forties,
+who had been old Blackwater's _chère amie_ before she married him, and,
+as Lady Blackwater, had sacrificed her innocent and defenceless
+step-daughter to one of her own lovers, in order to secure for him the
+step-daughter's fortune--black and dastardly deed!
+
+Was it all part of the general growth and concentration that any shrewd
+observer might have read in William Ashe?--the pressure--enormous,
+unseen--of the traditional English ideals, English standards, asserting
+itself at last in a brilliant and paradoxical nature? It had been
+so--conspicuously--in the case of one of his political predecessors.
+Lord Melbourne had begun his career as a person of idle habits and
+imprudent adventures, much given to coarse conversation, and unable to
+say the simplest thing without an oath. He ended it as the man of
+scrupulous dignity, tact, and delicacy, who moulded the innocent youth
+of a girl-queen, to his own lasting honor and England's gratitude. In
+ways less striking, the same influence of vast responsibilities was
+perhaps acting upon William Ashe. It had already made him a sterner,
+tougher, and--no doubt--a greater man.
+
+The defection of William only left Kitty, it seemed, still more greedy
+of things to see and do. Innumerable sacristans opened all possible
+doors and unveiled all possible pictures. Bellini succeeded Tintoret,
+and Carpaccio Bellini. The two sable gondoliers wore themselves out in
+Kitty's service, and Margaret's kind, round face grew more and more
+puzzled and distressed. And whence this strange impression that the
+whole experience was a _flight_ on Kitty's part?--or, rather, that
+throughout it she was always eagerly expecting, or eagerly escaping from
+some unknown, unseen pursuer? A glance behind her--a start--a sudden
+shivering gesture in the shadows of dark churches--these things
+suggested it, till Margaret herself was caught by the same suppressed
+excitement that seemed to be alive in Kitty. Did it all point merely to
+some mental state--to the nervous effects of her illness and her loss?
+
+When they reached home about five o'clock, Kitty was naturally tired
+out. Margaret put her on the sofa, gave her tea, and tended her, hoping
+that she might drop asleep before dinner. But just as tea was over, and
+Kitty was lying curled up, silent and white, with that brooding look
+which kept Margaret's anxiety about her constantly alive, there was a
+sudden sound of voices in the anteroom outside.
+
+"Margaret!" cried Kitty, starting up in dismay--"say I'm not at home."
+
+Too late! Their smiling Italian housemaid threw the door open, with the
+air of one bringing good-fortune. And behind her appeared a tall lady,
+and an old gentleman hat in hand.
+
+"May we come in, Kitty?" said Mary Lyster, advancing. "Cousin Elizabeth
+told us you were here."
+
+Kitty had sprung up. The disorder of her fair hair, her white cheeks,
+and the ghostly thinness of her small, black-robed form drew the curious
+eyes of Sir Richard. And the oddness of her manner as she greeted them
+only confirmed the old man's prejudice against her.
+
+However, greeted they were, in some sort of fashion; and Miss French
+gave them tea. She kept Sir Richard entertained, while Kitty and Mary
+conversed. They talked perfunctorily of ordinary topics--Venice, its
+sights, its hotels, and the people staying in them--of Lady Tranmore and
+various Ashe relations. Meanwhile the inmost thought of each was busy
+with the other.
+
+Kitty studied the lines of Mary's face and the fashion of her dress.
+
+"She looks much older. And she's not enjoying her life a bit. That's my
+fault. I spoiled all her chances with Geoffrey--and she knows it. She
+_hates_ me. Quite right, too."
+
+"Oh, you mean that nonsensical thing last night?" Sir Richard was saying
+to Margaret French. "Oh no, I didn't go. But Mary, of course, thought
+she must go. Somebody invited her."
+
+Kitty started.
+
+"You were at the serenata?" she said to Mary.
+
+"Yes, I went with a party from the hotel."
+
+Kitty looked at her. A sudden flush had touched her pale cheeks, and she
+could not conceal the trembling of her hands.
+
+"That was marvellous, that light on the Salute, wasn't it?"
+
+"Wonderful!--and on the water, too. I saw two or three people I
+knew--just caught their faces for a second."
+
+"Did you?" said Kitty. And thoughts ran fast through her head. "Did she
+see Geoffrey?--and does she mean me to understand that she did? How she
+detests me! If she did see him, of course she supposes that I know all
+about it, and that he's here for me. Why don't I ask her, straight out,
+whether she saw him, and make her understand that I don't care
+twopence?--that she's welcome to him--as far as I'm concerned?"
+
+But some hidden feeling tied her tongue. Mary continued to talk about
+the serenata, and Kitty was presently conscious that her every word and
+gesture in reply was closely watched. "Yes, yes, she saw him. Perhaps
+she'll tell William--or write home to mother?"
+
+And in her excitement she began to chatter fast and loudly, mostly to
+Sir Richard--repeating some of the Venice tales she had told in the
+gondola--with much inconsequence and extravagance. The old man listened,
+his hands on his stick, his eyes on the ground, the expression on his
+strong mouth hostile or sarcastic. It was a relief to everybody when
+Ashe's step was heard stumbling up the dark stairs, and the door opened
+on his friendly and courteous presence.
+
+"Why, Polly!--and Cousin Richard! I wondered where you had hidden
+yourselves."
+
+Mary's bright, involuntary smile transformed her. Ashe sat down beside
+her, and they were soon deep in all sorts of gossip--relations,
+acquaintance, politics, and what not. All Mary's stiffness disappeared.
+She became the elegant, agreeable woman, of whom dinner-parties were
+glad. Ashe plunged into the pleasant malice of her talk, which ranged
+through the good and evil fortunes--mostly the latter--of half his
+acquaintance; discussed the debts, the love-affairs, and the follies of
+his political colleagues or Parliamentary foes; how the Foreign
+Secretary had been getting on at Balmoral--how so-and-so had been ruined
+at the Derby and restored to sanity and solvency by the Oaks--how Lady
+Parham, at Hatfield, had been made to know her place by the French
+Ambassador--and the like; passing thereby a charming half-hour.
+
+Meanwhile Kitty, Margaret French, and Sir Richard kept up intermittent
+remarks, pausing at every other phrase to gather the crumbs that fell
+from the table of the other two.
+
+Kitty was very weary, and a dead weight had fallen on her spirits. If
+Sir Richard had thought her bad form ten minutes before, his unspoken
+mind now declared her stupid. Meanwhile Kitty was saying to herself, as
+she watched her husband and Mary:
+
+"I used to amuse William just as well--last year!"
+
+When the door closed on them, Kitty fell back on her cushions with an
+"ouf!" of relief. William came back in a few minutes from showing the
+visitors the back way to their hotel, and stood beside his wife with an
+anxious face.
+
+"They were too much for you, darling. They stayed too long."
+
+"How you and Mary chattered!" said Kitty, with a little pout. But at the
+same moment she slipped an appealing hand into his.
+
+Ashe clasped the hand, and laughed.
+
+"I always told you she was an excellent gossip."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Richard and Mary pursued their way through the narrow _calles_ that
+led to the Piazza. Sir Richard was expatiating on Ashe's folly in
+marrying such a wife.
+
+"She looks like an actress!--and as to her conversation, she began by
+telling me outrageous stories and ended by not having a word to say
+about anything. The bad blood of the Bristols, it seems to me, without
+their brains."
+
+"Oh no, papa! Kitty is very clever. You haven't heard her recite. She
+was tired to-night."
+
+"Well, I don't want to flatter you, my dear!" said the old man,
+testily, "but I thought it was pathetic--the way in which Ashe enjoyed
+your conversation. It showed he didn't get much of it at home."
+
+Mary smiled uncertainly. Her whole nature was still aglow from that
+contact with Ashe's delightful personality. After months of depression
+and humiliation, her success with him had somehow restored those
+illusions on which cheerfulness depends.
+
+How ill Kitty looked--and how conscious! Mary was impetuously certain
+that Kitty had betrayed her knowledge of Cliffe's presence in Venice;
+and equally certain that William knew nothing. Poor William!
+
+Well, what can you expect of such a temperament--such a race? Mary's
+thoughts travelled confusedly towards--and through--some big and
+dreadful catastrophe.
+
+And then? After it?
+
+It seemed to her that she was once more in the Park Lane drawing-room;
+the familiar Morris papers and Burne-Jones drawings surrounded her; and
+she and Elizabeth Tranmore sat, hand in hand, talking of William--a
+William once more free, after much folly and suffering, to reconstruct
+his life....
+
+"Here we are," said Sir Richard Lyster, moving down a dark passage
+towards the brightly lit doorway of their hotel.
+
+With a start--as of one taken red-handed--Mary awoke from her dream.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Madame d'Estrées and her friend, Donna Laura, occupied the _mezzanin_ of
+the vast Vercelli palace. The palace itself belonged to the head of the
+Vercelli family. It was a magnificent erection of the late seventeenth
+century, at this moment half furnished, dilapidated, and forsaken. But
+the _entresol_ on the eastern side of the _cortile_ was in good
+condition, and comfortably fitted up for the occasional use of the
+Principe. As he was wintering in Paris, he had let his rooms at an
+ordinary commercial rent to his kinswoman, Donna Laura. She, a soured
+and melancholy woman, unmarried in a Latin society which has small use
+or kindness for spinsters, had seized on Marguerite d'Estrées--whose
+acquaintance she had made in a Mont d'Or hotel--and was now keeping her
+like a caged canary that sings for its food.
+
+Madame d'Estrées was quite willing. So long as she had a sofa on which
+to sit enthroned, a sufficiency of new gowns, a maid, cigarettes,
+breakfast in bed, and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most
+harmless and engaging of mortals. Her youth had been cruel, disorderly,
+and vicious. It had lasted long; but now, when middle age stood at last
+confessed, she was lapsing, it seemed, into amiability and good
+behavior. She was, indeed, fast forgetting her own history, and soon the
+recital of it would surprise no one so much as herself.
+
+It was five o'clock. Madame d'Estrées had just established herself in
+the silk-panelled drawing-room of Donna Laura's apartment, expectant of
+visitors, and, in particular, of her daughter.
+
+In begging Kitty to come on this particular afternoon, she had not
+thought fit to mention that it would be Donna Laura's "day." Had she
+done so, Kitty, in consideration of her mourning, would perhaps have
+cried off. Whereas, really--poor, dear child!--what she wanted was
+distraction and amusement.
+
+And what Madame d'Estrées wanted was the presence beside her, in public,
+of Lady Kitty Ashe. Kitty had already visited her mother privately, and
+had explored the antiquities of the Vercelli palace. But Madame
+d'Estrées was now intent on something more and different.
+
+For in the four years which had now elapsed since the Ashe's marriage
+this lively lady had known adversity. She had been forced to leave
+London, as we have seen, by the pressure of certain facts in her past
+history so ancient and far removed when their true punishment began that
+she no doubt felt it highly unjust that she should be punished for them
+at all. Her London debts had swallowed up what then remained to her of
+fortune; and, afterwards, the allowance from the Ashes was all she had
+to depend on. Banished to Paris, she fell into a lower stratum of life,
+at a moment when her faithful and mysterious friend, Markham Warington,
+was held in Scotland by the first painful symptoms of his sister's last
+illness, and could do but little for her. She had, in fact, known the
+sordid shifts and straits of poverty, though the smallest moral effort
+would have saved her from them. She had kept disreputable company, she
+had been miserable, and base; and although shame is not easy to persons
+of her temperament, it may perhaps be said that she was ashamed of this
+period of her existence. Appeals to the Ashes yielded less and less, and
+Warington seemed to have forsaken her. She awoke at last to a
+panic-stricken fear of darker possibilities and more real suffering than
+any she had yet known, and under the stress of this fear she collapsed
+physically, writing both to Warington and to the Ashes in a tone of
+mingled reproach and despair.
+
+The Ashes sent money, and, though Kitty was at the moment not fit to
+travel, prepared to come. Warington, who had just closed the eyes of his
+sister, went at once. He was now the last of his family, without any
+ties that he could not lawfully break. Within two days of his arrival in
+Paris, Madame d'Estrées had promised to marry him in three months, to
+break off all her Paris associations, and to give her life henceforward
+into his somewhat stern hands. The visit to Venice was part of the price
+that he had had to pay for her decision. Marguerite pleaded, with a
+shudder, that she must have a little amusement before she went to live
+in Dumfriesshire; and he had been obliged to acquiesce in her
+arrangement with Donna Laura--stipulating only that he should be their
+escort and guardian.
+
+What had moved him to such an act? His reasons can only be guessed at.
+Warington was a man of religion, a Calvinist by education and
+inheritance, and of a silent and dreamy temperament. He had been
+intimate with very few women in his life. His sister had been a second
+mother to him, and both of them had been the guardians of their younger
+brother. When this adored brother fell shot through the lungs in the
+hopeless defence of Lady Blackwater's reputation, it would have been
+natural enough that Markham should hate the woman who had been the
+occasion of such a calamity. The sister, a pious and devoted Christian,
+had indeed hated her, properly and duly, thenceforward. Markham, on the
+contrary, accepted his brother's last commission without reluctance. In
+this matter at least Lady Blackwater had not been directly to blame; his
+mind acquitted her; and her soft, distressed beauty touched his heart.
+Before he knew where he was she had made an impression upon him that was
+to be life-long.
+
+Then gradually he awoke to a full knowledge of her character. He
+suffered, but otherwise it made no difference. Finding it was then
+impossible to persuade her to marry him, he watched over her as best he
+could for some years, passing through phases of alternate hope and
+disgust. His sister's affection for him was clouded by his strange
+relation to the Jezebel who in her opinion had destroyed their brother.
+He could not help it; he could only do his best to meet both claims upon
+him. During her lingering passage to the grave, his sister had nearly
+severed him from Marguerite d'Estrées. She died, however, just in time,
+and now here he was in Venice, passing through what seemed to him one of
+the ante-rooms of life, leading to no very radiant beyond. But, radiant
+or no, his path lay thither. And at the same time he saw that although
+Marguerite felt him to be her only refuge from poverty and disgrace, she
+was painfully afraid of him, and afraid of the life into which he was
+leading her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first guest of the afternoon proved to be Louis Harman, the painter
+and dilettante, who had been in former days one of the _habitués_ of the
+house in St. James's Place. This perfectly correct yet tolerant
+gentleman was wintering in Venice in order to copy the Carpaccios in San
+Giorgio dei Schiavoni. His copies were not good, but they were all
+promised to artistic fair ladies, and the days which the painter spent
+upon them were happy and harmless.
+
+He came in gayly, delighted to see Madame d'Estrées in flourishing
+circumstances again, delivered apparently from the abyss into which he
+had found her sliding on the occasion of various chance visits of his
+own to Paris. Warington's doing, apparently--queer fellow!
+
+"Well!--I saw Lady Kitty in the Piazza this afternoon," he said, as he
+sat down beside his hostess. Donna Laura had not yet appeared. "Very
+thin and fragile! But, by Jove! how these English beauties hold their
+own."
+
+"Irish, if you please," said Madame d'Estrées, smiling.
+
+Harman bowed to her correction, admiring at the same time both the
+toilette and the good looks of his companion. Dropping his voice, he
+asked, with a gingerly and sympathetic air, whether all was now well
+with the Ashe ménage. He had been sorry to hear certain gossip of the
+year before.
+
+Madame d'Estrées laughed. Yes, she understood that Kitty had behaved
+like a little goose with that _poseur_ Cliffe. But that was all
+over--long ago.
+
+"Why, the silly child has everything she wants! William is devoted to
+her--and it can't be long before he succeeds."
+
+"No need to go trifling with poets," said Harman, smiling. "By-the-way,
+do you know that Geoffrey Cliffe is in Venice?"
+
+Madame d'Estrées opened her eyes. "Est-il possible? Oh! but Kitty has
+forgotten all about him."
+
+"Of course," said Harman. "I am told he has been seen with the Ricci."
+
+Madame d'Estrées raised her shoulders this time in addition to her eyes.
+Then her face clouded.
+
+"I believe," she said, slowly, "that woman may come here this
+afternoon."
+
+"Is she a friend of yours?" Harman's tone expressed his surprise.
+
+"I knew her in Paris," said Madame d'Estrées, with some hesitation,
+"when she was a student at the Conservatoire. She and I had some common
+acquaintance. And now--frankly, I daren't offend her. She has the most
+appalling temper!--and she sticks at nothing."
+
+Harman wondered what the exact truth of this might be, but did not
+inquire. And as guests--including Colonel Warington--began to arrive,
+and Donna Laura appeared and began to dispense tea, the _tête-à-tête_
+was interrupted.
+
+Donna Laura's _salon_ was soon well filled, and Harman watched the
+gathering with curiosity. As far as it concerned Madame d'Estrées--and
+she was clearly the main attraction which had brought it together--it
+represented, he saw, a phase of social recovery. A few prominent
+Englishmen, passing through Venice, came in without their wives, making
+perfunctory excuse for the absence of these ladies. But the
+cosmopolitans of all kinds, who crowded in--Anglo-Italians, foreign
+diplomats, travellers of many sorts, and a few restless Venetians,
+bearing the great names of old, to whom their own Venice was little more
+than a place of occasional sojourn--made satisfactory amends for these
+persons of too long memories. In all these travellers' towns, Venice,
+Rome, and Florence, there is indeed a society, and a very agreeable
+society, which is wholly irresponsible, and asks few or no questions.
+The elements of it meet as strangers, and as strangers they mostly part.
+But between the meeting and the parting there lies a moment, all the
+gayer, perhaps, because of its social uncertainty and freedom.
+
+Madame d'Estrées was profiting by it to the full. She was in excellent
+spirits and talk; bright-rose carnations shone in the bosom of her
+dress; one white arm, bared to the elbow, lay stretched carelessly on
+the fine cut-velvet which covered the gilt sofa--part of a suite of
+Venetian Louis Quinze, clumsily gorgeous--on which she sat; the other
+hand pulled the ears of a toy spaniel. On the ceiling above her, Tiepolo
+had painted a headlong group of sensuous forms, alive with vulgar
+movement and passion; the _putti_ and the goddesses, peering through
+aërial balustrades, looked down complacently on Madame d'Estrées.
+
+Meanwhile there stood behind her--a silent, distinguished figure--the
+man of whom Harman saw that she was always nervously and sometimes
+timidly conscious. Harman had been reading Molière's _Don Juan_. The
+sentinel figure of Warington mingled in his imagination with the statue
+of the Commander.
+
+Or, again, he was tickled by a vision of Madame d'Estrées grown old,
+living in a Scotch house, turreted and severe, tended by servants of the
+"Auld Licht," or shivering under a faithful minister on Sundays. Had she
+any idea of the sort of fold towards which Warington--at once Covenanter
+and man of the world--was carrying his lost sheep?
+
+The sheep, however, was still gambolling at large. Occasionally a guest
+appeared who proved it. For instance, at a certain tumultuous entrance,
+billowing skirts, vast hat, and high-pitched voice all combining in the
+effect, Madame d'Estrées flushed violently, and Warington's stiffness
+redoubled. On the threshold stood the young actress, Mademoiselle Ricci,
+a Marseillaise, half French, half Italian, who was at the moment the
+talk of Venice. Why, would take too long to tell. It was by no means
+mostly due to her talent, which, however, was displayed at the Apollo
+theatre two or three times a week, and was no doubt considerable. She
+was a flamboyant lady, with astonishing black eyes, a too transparent
+white dress, over which was slung a small black mantilla, a scarlet hat
+and parasol, and a startling fan of the same color. Both before and
+after her greeting of Madame d'Estrées--whom she called her "chérie" and
+her "belle Marguerite"--she created a whirlwind in the _salon_. She was
+noisy, rude, and false; it could only be said on the other side that she
+was handsome--for those who admired the kind of thing; and famous--more
+or less. The intimacy of the party was broken up by her, for wherever
+she was she brought uproar, and it was impossible to forget her. And
+this uneasy attention which she compelled was at its height when the
+door was once more thrown open for the entrance of Lady Kitty Ashe.
+
+"Ah, my darling Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées, rising in a soft
+enthusiasm.
+
+Kitty came in slowly, holding herself very erect, a delicate and
+distinguished figure, in her deep mourning. She frowned as she saw the
+crowd in the room.
+
+"I'll come another time!" she said, hastily, to her mother, beginning to
+retreat.
+
+"Oh, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées, in distress, holding her fast.
+
+At that moment Harman, who was watching them both with keenness, saw
+that Kitty had perceived Mademoiselle Ricci. The actress had paused in
+her chatter to stare at the new-comer. She sat fronting the entrance,
+her head insolently thrown back, knees crossed, a cigarette poised in
+the plump and dimpled hand.
+
+A start ran through Kitty's small person. She allowed her mother to lead
+her in and introduce her to Donna Laura.
+
+"Ah-ha, my lady!" said Harman, to himself. "Are you, perhaps, interested
+in the Ricci? Is it possible even that you have seen her before?"
+
+Kitty, however, betrayed herself to no one else. To other people it was
+only evident that she did not mean to be introduced to the actress. She
+pointedly and sharply avoided it. This was interpreted as aristocratic
+_hauteur_, and did her no harm. On the contrary, she was soon chattering
+French with a group of diplomats, and the centre of the most animated
+group in the room. All the new-comers who could attached themselves to
+it, and the actress found herself presently almost deserted. She put up
+her eye-glass, studied Kitty impertinently, and asked a man sitting near
+her for the name of the strange lady.
+
+"Isn't she lovely, my little Kitty!" said Madame d'Estrées, in the ears
+of a Bavarian baron, who was also much occupied in staring at the small
+beauty in black. "I may say it, though I am her mother. And my
+son-in-law, too. Have you seen him? Such a handsome fellow!--and _such_
+a dear!--so kind to me. They _say_, you know, that he will be Prime
+Minister."
+
+The baron bowed, ironically, and inquired who the gentleman might be. He
+had not caught Kitty's name, and Madame d'Estrées had been for some time
+labelled in his mind as something very near to an adventuress.
+
+Madame d'Estrées eagerly explained, and he bowed again, with a
+difference. He was a man of great intelligence, acquainted with English
+politics. So that was _really_ the wife of the man to whose personality
+and future the London correspondent of the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ had
+within the preceding week devoted a particularly interesting article,
+which he had read with attention. His estimate of Madame d'Estrées'
+place in the world altered at once. Yet it was strange that she--or,
+rather, Donna Laura--should admit such a person as Mademoiselle Ricci to
+their _salon_.
+
+The mother, indeed, that afternoon had much reason to be socially
+grateful to the daughter. Curious contrast with the days when Kitty had
+been the mere troublesome appendage of her mother's life! It was clear
+to Marguerite d'Estrées now that if she was to accept restraint and
+virtuous living, if she was to submit to this marriage she dreaded, yet
+saw no way to escape, her best link with the gay world in the future
+might well be through the Ashes. Kitty could do a great deal for her;
+let her cultivate Kitty; and begin, perhaps, by convincing William Ashe
+on this present occasion that for once she was not going to ask him for
+money.
+
+In the height of the party, Lord Magellan appeared. Madame d'Estrées at
+first looked at him with bewilderment, till Kitty, shaking herself free,
+came hastily forward to introduce him. At the name the mother's face
+flashed into smiles. The ramifications of two or three aristocracies
+represented the only subject she might be said to know. Dear Kitty!
+
+Lord Magellan, after Madame d'Estrées had talked to him about his family
+in a few light and skilful phrases, which suggested knowledge, while
+avoiding flattery, was introduced to the Bavarian baron and a French
+naval officer. But he was not interesting to them, nor they to him;
+Kitty was surrounded and unapproachable; and a flood of new arrivals
+distracted Madame d'Estrées' attention. The Ricci, who had noticed the
+restrained _empressement_ of his reception, pounced on the young man,
+taming her ways and gestures to what she supposed to be his English
+prudery, and produced an immediate effect upon him. Lord Magellan, who
+was only dumb with English marriageable girls, allowed himself to be
+amused, and threw himself into a low chair by the actress--a capture
+apparently for the afternoon.
+
+Louis Harman was sitting behind Kitty, a little to her right. He saw her
+watching the actress and her companion; noticed a compression of the
+lip, a flash in the eye. She sprang up, said she must go home, and
+practically dissolved the party.
+
+Mademoiselle Ricci, who had also risen, proposed to Lord Magellan that
+she should take him in her gondola to the shop of a famous dealer on the
+Canal.
+
+"Thank you very much," said Lord Magellan, irresolute, and he looked at
+Kitty. The look apparently decided him, for he immediately added that he
+had unfortunately an engagement in the opposite direction. The actress
+angrily drew herself up, and proposed a later appointment. Then Kitty
+carelessly intervened.
+
+"Do you remember that you promised to see me home?" she said to the
+young man. "Don't if it bores you!"
+
+Lord Magellan eagerly protested. Kitty moved away, and he followed her.
+
+"Chère madame, will you present me to your daughter?" said the Ricci, in
+an unnecessarily loud voice.
+
+Madame d'Estrées, with a flurried gesture, touched Kitty on the arm.
+
+"Kitty, Mademoiselle Ricci."
+
+Kitty took no notice. Madame d'Estrées said, quickly, in a low,
+imploring voice:
+
+"Please, dear Kitty. I'll explain."
+
+Kitty turned abruptly, looked at her mother, and at the woman to whom
+she was to be introduced.
+
+"Ah! comme elle est charmante!" cried the actress, with an inflection of
+irony in her strident voice. "Miladi, il faut absolument que nous nous
+connaissions. Je connais votre chère mère depuis si longtemps! À Paris,
+l'hiver passé c'était une amitié des plus tendres!"
+
+The nasal drag she gave to the words was partly natural, partly
+insolent. Madame d'Estrées bit her lip.
+
+"Oui?" said Kitty, indifferently. "Je n'en avais jamais entendu parler."
+
+Her brilliant eyes studied the woman before her. "She has some hold on
+maman," she said to herself, in disgust. "She knows of something shady
+that maman has done." Then another thought stung her; and with the most
+indifferent bow, triumphing in the evident offence that she was giving,
+she turned to Lord Magellan.
+
+"You'd like to see the Palazzo?"
+
+Warington at once offered himself as a guide.
+
+But Kitty declared she knew the way, would just show Lord Magellan the
+_piano nobile_, dismiss him at the grand staircase, and return. Lord
+Magellan made his farewells.
+
+As Kitty passed through the door of the _salon_, while the young man
+held back the velvet _portière_ which hung over it, she was aware that
+Mademoiselle Ricci was watching her. The Marseillaise was leaning
+heavily on a _fauteuil_, supported by a hand behind her. A slow,
+disdainful smile played about her lips, some evil threatening thought
+expressed itself through every feature of her rounded, coarsened beauty.
+Kitty's sharp look met hers, and the curtain dropped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Don't, please, let that woman take you anywhere--to see anything!" said
+Kitty, with energy, to her companion, as they walked through the rooms
+of the _mezzanino_.
+
+Lord Magellan laughed. "What's the matter with her?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!" said Kitty, impatiently, "except that she's wicked--and
+common--and a snake--and your mother would have a fit if she knew you
+had anything to do with her."
+
+The red-haired youth looked grave.
+
+"Thank you, Lady Kitty," he said, quietly. "I'll take your advice."
+
+"Oh, I say, what a nice boy you are!" cried Kitty, impulsively, laying a
+hand a moment on his shoulder. And then, as though his filial instinct
+had awakened hers, she added, with hasty falsehood: "Maman, of course,
+knows nothing about her. That was just bluff what she said. But Donna
+Laura oughtn't to ask such people. There--that's the way."
+
+And she pointed to a small staircase in the wall, whereof the trap-door
+at the top was open. They climbed it, and found themselves at once in
+one of the great rooms of the _piano nobile_, to which this quick and
+easy access from the inhabited _entresol_ had been but recently
+contrived.
+
+"What a marvellous place!" cried Lord Magellan, looking round him.
+
+They were in the principal apartment of the famous Vercelli palace, a
+legacy from one of those classical architects whose work may be seen in
+the late seventeenth-century buildings of Venice. The rooms, enormously
+high, panelled here and there in tattered velvets and brocades, or
+frescoed in fast-fading scenes of old Venetian life, stretched in
+bewildering succession on either side of a central passage or broad
+corridor, all of them leading at last on the northern side to a vast
+hall painted in architectural perspective by the pupils of Tiepolo, and
+overarched by a ceiling in which the master himself had massed a
+multitude of forms equal to Rubens in variety and facility of design,
+expressed in a thin trenchancy of style. Figures recalling the ancient
+triumphs and possessions of Venice, in days when she sat dishonored and
+despoiled, crowded the coved roof, the painted cornices and pediments.
+Gayly colored birds hovered in blue skies; philosophers and poets in
+grisaille made a strange background for large-limbed beauties couched on
+roses, or young warriors amid trophies of shining arms; and while all
+this garrulous commonplace lived and breathed above, the walls below,
+cold in color and academic in treatment, maintained as best they could
+the dignity of the vast place, thus given up to one of the greatest of
+artists and emptiest of minds.
+
+On the floor of this magnificent hall stood a few old and broken chairs.
+But the candelabra of glass and ormolu, hanging from the ceiling, were
+very nearly of the date of the palace, and superb. Meanwhile, through a
+faded taffeta of a golden-brown shade, the afternoon light from the high
+windows to the southwest poured into the stately room.
+
+"How it dwarfs us!" said Lord Magellan, looking at his companion. "One
+feels the merest pygmy! From the age of decadence indeed!" He glanced at
+the guide-book in his hand. "Good Heavens!--if this was their decay,
+what was their bloom?"
+
+"Yes--it's big--and jolly. I like it," said Kitty, absently. Then she
+recollected herself. "This is your way out. Federigo!" she called to an
+old man, the _custode_ of the palace, who appeared at the magnificent
+door leading to the grand staircase.
+
+"Commanda, eccellenza!" The old man, bent and feeble, approached. He
+carried a watering-pot wherewith he was about to minister to some
+straggling flowers in the windows fronting the Grand Canal. A thin cat
+rubbed itself against his legs. As he stood in his shabbiness under the
+high, carved door, the only permanent denizen of the building, he seemed
+an embodiment of the old shrunken Venetian life, still haunting a city
+it was no longer strong enough to use.
+
+"Will you show this signor the way out?" said Kitty, in tourists'
+Italian. "Are you soon shutting up?"
+
+For the main palazzo, which during the day was often shown to
+sightseers, was locked at half-past five, only the two _entresols_--one
+tenanted by Donna Laura, the other by the _custode_--remaining
+accessible.
+
+The old man murmured something which Kitty did not understand, pointing
+at the same time to a door leading to the interior of the _piano
+nobile_. Kitty thought that he asked her to be quick, if she wished
+still to go round the palace. She tried to explain that he might lock up
+if he pleased; her way of retreat to the _mezzanino_, down the small
+staircase, was always open. Federigo looked puzzled, again said
+something in unintelligible Venetian, and led the way to the grand
+staircase followed by Lord Magellan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A heavy door clanged below. Kitty was alone. She looked round her, at
+the stretches of marble floor, and the streaks of pale sunshine that lay
+upon its black and white, at the lofty walls painted with a dim superb
+architecture, at the crowded ceiling, the gorgeous candelabra. With its
+costly decoration, the great room suggested a rich and festal life;
+thronging groups below answering to the Tiepolo groups above; beauties
+patched and masked; gallants in brocaded coats; splendid senators, robed
+like William at the fancy ball.
+
+Suddenly she caught sight of herself in one of the high and narrow
+mirrors that filled the spaces between the windows. In her mourning
+dress, with the light behind her, she made a tiny spectre in the immense
+hall. The image of her present self--frail, black-robed--recalled the
+two figures in the glass of her Hill Street room--the sparkling white of
+her goddess dress, and William's smiling face above hers, his arm round
+her waist.
+
+How happy she had been that night! Even her wild fury with Mary Lyster
+seemed to her now a kind of happiness. How gladly would she have
+exchanged for it either of the two terrors that now possessed her!
+
+With a shiver she crossed the hall, and pushed her way into the suite of
+rooms on the northern side. She felt herself in absolute possession of
+the palace. Federigo no doubt had locked up; her mother and a few guests
+were still talking in the _salon_ of the _mezzanine_, expecting her to
+return. She would return--soon; but the solitariness and wildness of
+this deserted place drew her on.
+
+Room after room opened before her--bare, save for a few worm-eaten
+chairs, a fragment of tapestry on the wall, or some tattered portraits
+in the Longhi manner, indifferent to begin with, and long since ruined
+by neglect. Yet here and there a young face looked out, roses in the
+hair and at the breast; or a Doge's cap--and beneath it phantom features
+still breathing even in the last decay of canvas and paint the violence
+and intrigue of the living man--the ghost of character held there by
+the ghost of art. Or a lad in slashed brocade, for whom even in this
+silent palace, and in spite of the gaping crack across his face, life
+was still young; a cardinal; a nun; a man of letters in clerical dress,
+the Abbé Prévost of his day....
+
+Presently she found herself in a wide corridor, before a high, closed
+door. She tried it, and saw a staircase mounting and descending. A
+passion of curiosity that was half romance, half restlessness, drove her
+on. She began to ascend the marble steps, hearing only the echo of her
+own movements, a little afraid of the cold spaces of the vast house, and
+yet delighting in the fancies that crowded upon her. At the top of the
+flight she found, of course, another apartment, on the same plan as the
+one below, but smaller and less stately. The central hall entered from a
+door supported by marble caryatids, was flagged in yellow marble, and
+frescoed freely with faded eighteenth-century scenes--cardinals walking
+in stiff gardens, a pope alighting from his coach, surrounded by
+peasants on their knees, and behind him fountains and obelisk and the
+towering façade of St. Peter's. At the moment, thanks to a last glow of
+light coming in through a west window at the farther end, it was a place
+beautiful though forlorn. But the rooms into which she looked on either
+side were wreck and desolation itself, crowded with broken furniture,
+many of them shuttered and dark.
+
+As she closed the last door, her attention was caught by a strange bust
+placed on a pedestal above the entrance. What was wrong with it? An
+accident? An injury? She went nearer, straining her eyes to see.
+No!--there was no injury. The face indeed was gone. Or, rather, where
+the face should have been there now descended a marble veil from brow to
+breast, of the most singular and sinister effect. Otherwise the bust was
+that of a young and beautiful woman. A pleasing horror seized on Kitty
+as she looked. Her fancy hunted for the clew. A faithless wife, blotted
+from her place?--made infamous forever by the veil which hid from human
+eye the beauty she had dishonored? Or a beloved mistress, on whom the
+mourning lover could no longer bear to look--the veil an emblem of
+undying and irremediable grief?
+
+Kitty stood enthralled, striving to pierce the ghastly meaning of the
+bust, when a sound--a distant sound--a shock through her. She heard a
+step overhead, in the topmost apartment, or _mansarde_ of the palace, a
+step that presently traversed the whole length of the floor immediately
+above her head and began to descend the stair.
+
+Strange! Federigo must have shut the great gates by this time--as she
+had bade him? He himself inhabited the smaller _entresol_ on the farther
+side of the palace, far away. Other inhabitants there were none; so
+Donna Laura had assured her.
+
+The step approached, resonant in the silence. Kitty, seized with nervous
+fright, turned and ran down the broad staircase by which she had come,
+through the series of deserted rooms in the _piano nobile_, till she
+reached the great hall.
+
+There she paused, panting, curiosity and daring once more getting the
+upperhand. The door she had just passed through, which gave access to
+the staircase, opened again and shut. The stranger who had entered came
+leisurely towards the hall, lingering apparently now and then to look at
+objects on the way. Presently a voice--an exclamation.
+
+Kitty retreated, caught at the arm of a chair for support, clung to it
+trembling. A man entered, holding his hat in one hand and a small white
+glove in the other.
+
+At sight of the lady in black, standing on the other side of the hall,
+he started violently--and stopped. Then, just as Kitty, who had so far
+made neither sound nor movement, took the first hurried step towards the
+staircase by which she had entered, Geoffrey Cliffe came forward.
+
+"How do you do, Lady Kitty? Do not, I beg of you, let me disturb you. I
+had half an hour to spare, and I gave the old man down-stairs a franc or
+two, that he might let me wander over this magnificent old place by
+myself for a bit. I have always had a fancy for deserted houses. You, I
+gather, have it, too. I will not interfere with you for a moment. Before
+I go, however, let me return what I believe to be your property."
+
+He came nearer, with a studied, deliberate air, and held out the white
+glove. She saw it was her own and accepted it.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+She bowed with all the haughtiness she could muster, though her limbs
+shook under her. Then as she walked quickly towards the door of exit,
+Cliffe, who was nearer to it than she, also moved towards it, and threw
+it open for her. As she approached him he said, quietly:
+
+"This is not the first time we have met in Venice, Lady Kitty."
+
+She wavered, could not avoid looking at him, and stood arrested. That
+almost white head!--that furrowed brow!--those haggard eyes! A slight,
+involuntary cry broke from her lips.
+
+Cliffe smiled. Then he straightened his tall figure.
+
+"You see, perhaps, that I have not grown younger. You are quite right. I
+have left my youth--what remained of it--among those splendid fellows
+whom the Turks have been harrying and torturing. Well!--they were worth
+it. I would give it them again."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+The eyes of each perused the other's face. Kitty began some words, and
+left them unfinished. Cliffe resumed--in another tone--while the door he
+held swung gently backward, his hand following it.
+
+"I spent last winter, as perhaps you know, with the Bosnian insurgents
+in the mountains. It was a tough business--hardships I should never have
+had the pluck to face if I had known what was before me. Then, in July,
+I got fever. I had to come away, to find a doctor, and I was a long time
+at Cattaro pulling round. And, meanwhile, the Turks--God blast
+them!--have been at their fiends' work. Half my particular friends, with
+whom I spent the winter, have been hacked to pieces since I left them."
+
+She wavered, held by his look, by the coercion of that mingled passion
+and indifference with which he spoke. There was in his manner no
+suggestion whatever of things behind, no reference to herself or to the
+past between them. His passion, it seemed, was for his comrades; his
+indifference for her. What had he to do with her any more? He had been
+among the realities of battle and death, while she had been mincing and
+ambling along the usual feminine path. That was the utterance, it
+seemed, of the man's whole manner and personality, and nothing could
+have more effectually recalled Kitty's wild nature to the lure.
+
+"Are you going back?" She had turned from him and was pulling at the
+fingers of the glove he had picked up.
+
+"Of course! I am only kicking my heels here till I can collect the money
+and stores--ay, and the _men_--I want. I give my orders in London, and I
+must be here to see to the transshipment of stores and the embarkation
+of my small force! Not meant for the newspapers, you see, Lady
+Kitty--these little details!"
+
+He drew himself up smiling, his worn aspect expressing just that
+mingling of dare-devil adventure with subtler and more self-conscious
+things which gave edge and power to his personality.
+
+"I heard you were wounded," said Kitty, abruptly.
+
+"So I was--badly. We were defending a _polje_--one of their high
+mountain valleys, against a Beg and his troops. My left arm"--he pointed
+to the black sling in which it was still held--"was nearly cut to
+pieces. However, it is practically well."
+
+He took it out of the sling and showed that he could use it. Then his
+expression changed. He stepped back to the door, and opened it
+ceremoniously.
+
+"Don't, however, let me delay you, Lady Kitty--by my chatter."
+
+Kitty's cheeks were crimson. Her momentary yielding vanished in a
+passion of scorn. What!--he knew that she had seen him before, seen him
+with that woman--and he dared to play the mere shattered hero, kept in
+Venice by these crusader's reasons!
+
+"Have you another volume on the way?" she asked him, as she advanced. "I
+read your last."
+
+Her smile was the smile of an enemy. He eyed her strangely.
+
+"Did you? That was waste of time."
+
+"I think you intended I should read it."
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"Lady Kitty, those things are very far away. I can't defend myself--for
+they seem wiped out." He had crossed his arms, and was leaning back
+against the open door, a fine, rugged figure, by no means repentant.
+
+Kitty laughed.
+
+"You overstate the difference!"
+
+"Between the past and the present? What does that mean?"
+
+She dropped her eyes a moment, then raised them.
+
+"Do you often go to San Lazzaro?"
+
+He bowed.
+
+"I had a suspicion that the vision at the window--though it was there
+only an instant--was you! So you saw Mademoiselle Ricci?"
+
+His tone was assurance itself. Kitty disdained to answer. Her slight
+gesture bade him let her pass through; but he ignored it.
+
+"I find her kind, Lady Kitty. She listens to me--I get sympathy from
+her."
+
+"And you want sympathy?"
+
+Her tone stung him. "As a hungry man wants food --as an artist wants
+beauty. But I know where I shall _not_ get it."
+
+"That is always a gain!" said Kitty, throwing back her little head. "Mr.
+Cliffe, pray let me bid you good-bye."
+
+He suddenly made a step forward. "Lady Kitty!"--his deep-set, imperious
+eyes searched her face--"I can't restrain myself. Your look--your
+expression--go to my heart. Laugh at me if you like. It's true. What
+have you been doing with yourself?"
+
+He bent towards her, scrutinizing every delicate feature, and, as it
+seemed, shaken with agitation. She breathed fast.
+
+"Mr. Cliffe, you must know that any sympathy from you to me--is an
+insult! Kindly let me pass."
+
+He, too, flushed deeply.
+
+"Insult is a hard word, Lady Kitty. I regret that poem."
+
+She swept forward in silence, but he still stood in the way.
+
+"I wrote it--almost in delirium. Ah, well"--he shook his head
+impatiently--"if you don't believe me, let it be. I am not the man I
+was. The perspective of things is altered for me." His voice fell.
+"Women and children in their blood--heroic trust--and brute hate--the
+stars for candles--the high peaks for friends--those things have come
+between me and the past. But you are right; we had better not talk any
+more. I hear old Federigo coming up the stairs. Good-night, Lady
+Kitty--good-night!"
+
+He opened the door. She passed him, and, to her own intense annoyance, a
+bunch of pale roses she carried at her belt brushed against the
+doorway, so that one broke and fell. She turned to pick it up, but it
+was already in Cliffe's hand. She held out hers, threateningly.
+
+"I think not." He put it in his pocket. "Here is Federigo. Good-night."
+
+It was quite dark when Kitty reached home. She groped her way up-stairs
+and opened the door of the _salon_. So weary was she that she dropped
+into the first chair, not seeing at first that any one was in the room.
+Then she caught sight of a brown-paper parcel, apparently just
+unfastened, on the table, and within it three books, of similar shape
+and size. A movement startled her.
+
+"William!"
+
+Ashe rose slowly from the deep chair in which he had been sitting. His
+aspect seemed to her terrified eyes utterly and wholly changed. In his
+hand he held a book like those on the table, and a paper-cutter. His
+face expressed the remote abstraction of a man who has been wrestling
+his way through some hard contest of the mind.
+
+She ran to him. She wound her arms round him.
+
+"William, William! I didn't mean any harm! I didn't! Oh, I have been so
+miserable! I tried to stop it--I did all I could. I have hardly slept at
+all--since we talked--you remember? Oh, William, look at me! Don't be
+angry with me!"
+
+Ashe disengaged himself.
+
+"I have asked Blanche to pack for me to-night, Kitty. I go home by the
+early train to-morrow."
+
+"Home!"
+
+She stood petrified; then a light flashed into her face.
+
+"You'll buy it all up? You'll stop it, William?"
+
+Ashe drew himself together.
+
+"I am going home," he said, with slow decision, "to place my resignation
+in the hands of Lord Parham."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Kitty fell back in silence, staring at William. She loosened her mantle
+and threw it off, then she sat down in a chair near the wood fire, and
+bent over it, shivering.
+
+"Of course you didn't mean that, William?" she said, at last.
+
+Ashe turned.
+
+"I should not have said it unless I had meant every word of it. It is,
+of course, the only thing to be done."
+
+Kitty looked at him miserably. "But you _can't_ mean that--that you'll
+resign because of that book?"
+
+She pulled it towards her and turned over the pages with a hand that
+trembled. "That would be too foolish!"
+
+Ashe made no reply. He was standing before the fire, with his hands in
+his pockets, and a face half absent, half ironical, as though his mind
+followed the sequences of a far distant future.
+
+"William!" She caught the sleeve of his coat with a little cry. "I wrote
+that book because I thought it would help you."
+
+His attention came back to her.
+
+"Yes, Kitty, I believe you did."
+
+She gulped down a sob. His tone was so odd, so remote.
+
+"Many people have done such things. I know they have. Why--why, it was
+only meant--as a skit--to make people laugh! There's _no_ harm in it,
+William."
+
+Ashe, without speaking, took up the book and looked back at certain
+pages, which he seemed to have marked. Kitty's feeling as she watched
+him was the feeling of the condemned culprit, held dumb and strangled in
+the grip of his own sense of justice, and yet passionately conscious how
+much more he could say for himself than anybody is ever likely to say
+for him.
+
+"When did you have the first idea of this book, Kitty?"
+
+"About a year ago," she said, in a low voice.
+
+"In October? At Haggart?"
+
+Kitty nodded.
+
+Ashe thought. Her admission took him back to the autumn weeks at
+Haggart, after the Cliffe crisis and the rearrangement of the ministry
+in the July of that year. He well remembered that those weeks had been
+weeks of special happiness for both of them. Afterwards, the winter had
+brought many renewed qualms and vexations. But in that period, between
+the storms of the session and Kitty's escapades in the hunting-field,
+memory recalled a tender, melting time--a time rich in hidden and
+exquisite hours, when with Kitty on his breast, lip to lip and heart to
+heart, he had reaped, as it seemed to him, the fruits of that indulgence
+which, as he knew, his mother scorned. And at that very moment, behind
+his back, out of his sight, she had begun this atrocious thing.
+
+He looked at her again--the bitterness almost at his lips, almost beyond
+his control.
+
+"I wish I knew what could have been your possible object in writing
+it?"
+
+She sat up and confronted him. The color flamed back again into her pale
+cheeks.
+
+"You know I told you--when we had that talk in London--that I wanted to
+write. I thought it would be good for me--would take my thoughts
+off--well, what had happened. And I began to write this--and it amused
+me to find I could do it--and I suppose I got carried away. I loved
+describing you, and glorifying you--and I loved making caricatures of
+Lady Parham--and all the people I hated. I used to work at it whenever
+you were away--or I was dull and there was nothing to do.
+
+"Did it never occur to you," said Ashe, interrupting, "that it might get
+you--get us both--into trouble, and that you ought to tell me?"
+
+She wavered.
+
+"No!" she said, at last. "I never did mean to tell you, while I was
+writing it. You know I don't tell lies, William! The real fact is, I was
+afraid you'd stop it."
+
+"Good God!" He threw up his hands with a sound of amazement, then thrust
+them again into his pockets and began to pace up and down.
+
+"But then"--she resumed--"I thought you'd soon get over it, and that it
+was funny--and everybody would laugh--and you'd laugh--and there would
+be an end of it."
+
+He turned and stared at her. "Frankly, Kitty--I don't understand what
+you can be made of! You imagined that that sketch of Lord Parham"--he
+struck the open page--"a sketch written by _my wife_, describing my
+official chief--when he was my guest--under my own roof--with all sorts
+of details of the most intimate and offensive kind--mocking his
+speech--his manners--his little personal ways--charging him with being
+the corrupt tool of Lady Parham, disloyal to his colleagues, a man not
+to be trusted--and justifying all this by a sort of evidence that you
+could only have got as my wife and Lord Parham's hostess--you actually
+supposed that you could write and publish _that!_--without in the first
+place its being plain to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that you had written
+it--and in the next, without making it impossible for your husband to
+remain a colleague of the man you had treated in such a way? Kitty!--you
+are not a stupid woman! Do you really mean to say that you could write
+and publish this book without _knowing_ that you were doing a wrong
+action--which, so far from serving me, could only damage my career
+irreparably? Did nothing--did no one warn you--if you were determined to
+keep such a secret from your husband, whom it most concerned?"
+
+He had come to stand beside her, both hands on the back of a
+chair--stooping forward to emphasize his words--the lines of his fine
+face and noble brow contracted by anger and pain.
+
+"Mr. Darrell warned me," said Kitty, in a low voice, as though those
+imperious eyes compelled the truth from her--"but of course I didn't
+believe him."
+
+"Darrell!" cried Ashe, in amazement--"Darrell! You confided in him?"
+
+"I told him all about it. It was he who took it to a publisher."
+
+"Hound!" said Ashe, between his teeth. "So that was his revenge."
+
+"Oh, you needn't blame him too much," said Kitty, proudly, not
+understanding the remark. "He wrote to me not long ago to say it was
+horribly unwise--and that he washed his hands of it."
+
+"Ay--when he'd done the deed! When did you show it him?" said Ashe,
+impetuously.
+
+"At Haggart--in August."
+
+"_Et tu, Brute!_" said Ashe, turning away. "Well, that's done with. Now
+the only thing to do is to face the music. I go home. Whatever can be
+done to withdraw the book from circulation I shall, of course, do; but I
+gather from this precious letter"--he held up the note which had been
+enclosed in the parcel--"that some thousands of copies have already been
+ordered by the booksellers, and a few distributed to 'persons in high
+places.'"
+
+"William," she said, in despair, catching his arm again--"listen! I
+offered the man two hundred pounds only yesterday to stop it."
+
+Ashe laughed.
+
+"What did he reply?"
+
+"He said it was impossible. Fifty copies had been already issued."
+
+"The review copies, no doubt. By next week there will be, I should say,
+five thousand in the shops. Your man understands his business, Kitty.
+This is the kind of puff preliminary he has been scattering about."
+
+And with sparkling eyes he handed to her a printed slip containing an
+outline of the book for the information of the booksellers.
+
+It drew attention to the extraordinary interest of the production as a
+painting of the upper class by the hand of one belonging to its inmost
+circle. "People of the highest social and political importance will be
+recognized at once; the writer handles cabinet ministers and their wives
+with equal freedom, and with a touch betraying the closest and most
+intimate knowledge. Details hitherto quite unknown to the public of
+ministerial combinations and intrigues--especially of the feminine
+influences involved--will be found here in their lightest and most
+amusing form. A certain famous fancy ball will be identified without
+difficulty. Scathing as some of the portraits are, the writer is by no
+means merely cynical. The central figure of the book is a young and
+rising statesman, whose aim and hopes are touched with a loving
+hand--the charm of the portrait being only equalled by the venom with
+which the writer assails those who have thwarted or injured his hero.
+But our advice is simply--'Buy and Read!' Conjecture will run wild about
+the writer. All we can say is that the most romantic or interesting
+surmise that can possibly be formed will fall far short of the reality."
+
+"The beast is a shrewd beast!" said Ashe, as he raised himself from the
+stooping position in which he had been following the sentences over
+Kitty's shoulder. "He knows that the public will rush for his wares! How
+much money did he offer you, Kitty?"
+
+He turned sharply on his heel to wait for her reply.
+
+"A hundred pounds," said Kitty, almost inaudibly--"and a hundred more if
+five thousand sold." She had returned again to her crouching attitude
+over the fire.
+
+"Generous!--upon my word!" said Ashe, scornfully turning over the two
+thick-leaved, loosely printed Mudie volumes. "A guinea to the public, I
+suppose--fifteen shillings to the trade. Darrell didn't exactly advise
+you to advantage, Kitty."
+
+Kitty kept silence. The sarcastic violence of his tone fell on her like
+a blow. She seemed to shrink together; while Ashe resumed his walk to
+and fro.
+
+Presently, however, she looked up, to ask, in a voice that tried for
+steadiness:
+
+"What do you mean to do--exactly--William?"
+
+"I shall, of course, buy up all I can; I shall employ some lawyer
+fellow, and appeal to the good feelings of the newspapers. There will be
+no trouble with the respectable ones. But some copies will get out, and
+some of the Opposition newspapers will make capital out of them.
+Naturally!--they'd be precious fools if they didn't."
+
+A momentary hope sprang up in Kitty.
+
+"But if you buy it up--and stop all the papers that matter," she
+faltered--"why should you resign, William? There won't be--such great
+harm done."
+
+For answer he opened the book, and without speaking pointed to two
+passages--the first, an account full of point and malice of the
+negotiations between himself and Lord Parham at the time when he entered
+the cabinet, the conditions he himself had made, and the confidential
+comments of the Premier on the men and affairs of the moment.
+
+"Do you remember the night when I told you those things, Kitty?"
+
+Yes, Kitty remembered well. It was a night of intimate talk between man
+and wife, a night when she had shown him her sweetest, tenderest mood,
+and he--incorrigible optimist!--had persuaded himself that she was
+growing as wise as she was lovely.
+
+Her lip trembled. Then he pointed to the second--to the pitiless picture
+of Lord Parham at Haggart.
+
+"You wrote that--when he was under our roof--there by our pressing
+invitation! You couldn't have written it--unless he had so put himself
+in your power. A wandering Arab, Kitty, will do no harm to the man who
+has eaten and drunk in his tent!"
+
+She looked up, and as she read his face she understood at last how what
+she had done had outraged in him all the natural and all the inherited
+instincts of a generous and fastidious nature. The "great gentleman," so
+strong in him as in all the best of English statesmen, whether they
+spring from the classes or the masses, was up in arms.
+
+She sprang to her feet with a cry. "William, you can't give up politics!
+It would make you miserable."
+
+"That can't be helped. And I couldn't go on like this, Kitty--even if
+this affair of the book could be patched up. The strain's too great."
+
+They were but a yard apart, and yet she seemed to be looking at him
+across a gulf.
+
+"You have been so happy in your work!" This time the sob escaped her.
+
+"Oh, don't let's talk about that," he said, abruptly, as he walked away.
+"There'll be a certain relief in giving up the impossible. I'll go back
+to my books. We can travel, I suppose, and put politics out of our
+heads."
+
+"But--you won't resign your seat?"
+
+"No," he said, after a pause--"no. As far as I can see at present, I
+sha'n't resign my seat, though my constituents, of course, will be very
+sick. But I doubt whether I shall stand again."
+
+Every phrase fell as though with a thud on Kitty's ear. It was the wreck
+of a man's life, and she had done it.
+
+"Shall you--shall you go and see Lord Parham?" she asked, after a pause.
+
+"I shall write to him first. I imagine"--he pointed to the letter lying
+on the table--"that creature has already sent him the book. Then later I
+daresay I shall see him."
+
+She looked up.
+
+"If I wrote and told him it was all my doing, William?--if I grovelled
+to him?"
+
+"The responsibility is mine," he said, sternly. "I had no business to
+tell even you the things printed there. I told them at my own risk. If
+anything I say has any weight with you, Kitty, you will write nothing."
+
+She spread out her hands to the fire again, and he heard her say, as
+though to herself:
+
+"The thing is--the awful thing is, that I'm mad--I must be mad. I never
+thought of all this when I was writing it. I wrote it in a kind of
+dream. In the first place, I wanted to glorify you--"
+
+He broke into an exclamation.
+
+"Your _taste_, Kitty!--where was your taste? That a wife should praise a
+husband in public! You could only make us both laughing-stocks."
+
+His handsome features quivered a little. He felt this part of it the
+most galling, the most humiliating of all; and she understood. In his
+eyes she had shown herself not only reckless and treacherous, but
+indelicate, vulgar, capable of besmirching the most sacred and intimate
+of relations.
+
+She rose from her seat.
+
+"I must go and take my things off," she said, in "a vague voice," and as
+she moved she tottered a little. He turned to look at her. Amid his own
+crushing sense of defeat and catastrophe, his natural and righteous
+indignation, he remembered that she had been ill--he remembered their
+child. But whether from the excitement, first of the meeting in the
+Vercelli palace, and now of this scene--or merely from the heat of the
+fire over which she had been hanging, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes
+blazed. Her beauty had never been more evident; but it made little
+appeal to him; it was the wild, ungovernable beauty from which he had
+suffered. He saw that she was excited, but there was an air also of
+returning physical vigor; and the nascent feeling which might have been
+strengthened by pallor and prostration died away.
+
+Kitty moved as though to pass him and go to her room, which opened out
+of the _salon_. But as she neared him she suddenly caught him by the
+arm.
+
+"William!--William! don't do it!--don't resign! Let me apologize!"
+
+He was angered by her persistence, and merely said, coldly:
+
+"I have given you my reasons, Kitty, why such a course is impossible."
+
+"And--and you start to-morrow morning?"
+
+"By the early train. Please let me go, Kitty. There are many things to
+arrange. I must order the gondola, and see if the people here can cash
+me a check."
+
+"You mean--to leave me alone?" The words had a curious emphasis.
+
+"I had a few words with Miss French before you came in. The packet
+arrived by the evening post, and seeing that it was books--for you--I
+opened it. After about an hour"--he turned and walked away again--"I saw
+my bearings. Then I called Miss French, told her I should have to go
+to-morrow, and asked her how long she could stay with you."
+
+"William!" cried Kitty again, leaning heavily on the table beside
+her--"don't go!--don't leave me!"
+
+His face darkened.
+
+"So you would prevent me from taking the only honorable, the only decent
+way out of this thing that remains to me?"
+
+She made no immediate reply. She stood--wrapped apparently in painful
+abstraction--a creature lovely and distraught. The masses of her fair
+hair loosened by the breeze on the canal had fallen about her cheeks and
+shoulders; her black hat framed the white brow and large, feverish eyes;
+and the sable cape she had worn in the gondola had slipped down over the
+thin, sloping shoulders, revealing the young figure and the slender
+waist. She might have been a child of seventeen, grieving over the death
+of her goldfinch.
+
+Ashe gathered together his official letters and papers, found his
+check-book, and began to write. While he wrote he explained that Miss
+French could keep her company at least another fortnight, that he could
+leave with them four or five circular notes for immediate expenses, and
+would send more from home directly he arrived.
+
+In the middle of his directions Kitty once more appealed to him in a
+passionate, muffled voice not to go. This time he lost his temper, and
+without answering her he hastily left the room to arrange his packing
+with his valet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When he returned to the _salon_ Kitty was not there. He and Miss
+French--who knew only that something tragic had happened in which Kitty
+was concerned--kept up a fragmentary conversation till dinner was
+announced and Kitty entered. She had evidently been weeping, but with
+powder and rouge she had tried to conceal the traces of her tears; and
+at dinner she sat silent, hardly answering when Margaret French spoke to
+her.
+
+After dinner Ashe went out with his cigar towards the Piazza. He was in
+a smarting, dazed state, beginning, however, to realize the blow more
+than he had done at first. He believed that Parham himself would not be
+at all sorry to be rid of him. He and his friends formed a powerful
+group both in the cabinet and out of it. But they were forcing the pace,
+and the elements of resistance and reaction were strong. He pictured the
+dismay of his friends, the possible breakdown of the reforming party. Of
+course they might so stand by him--and the suppression of the book might
+be so complete--
+
+At this moment he caught sight of a newspaper contents bill displayed at
+the door of the only shop in the Piazza which sold English newspapers.
+One of the lines ran, "Anonymous attack on the Premier." He started,
+went in and bought the paper. There, in the "London Topics" column, was
+the following paragraph:
+
+"A string of extracts from a forthcoming book, accompanied by a somewhat
+startling publisher's statement, has lately been sent round to the
+press. We are asked not to print them before the day of publication, but
+they have already roused much attention, if not excitement. They
+certainly contain a very gross attack on the Prime Minister, based
+apparently on first-hand information, and involving indiscretions
+personal and political of an unusually serious character. The wife of a
+cabinet minister is freely named as the writer, and even if no violation
+of cabinet secrecy is concerned, it is clear that the book outrages the
+confidential relations which ought to subsist between a Premier and his
+colleagues, if government on our English system is to be satisfactorily
+carried on. The statements it makes with every appearance of authority
+both as to the relations between Lord Parham and some of the most
+important members of his cabinet, and as to the Premier's intentions
+with regard to one or two of the most vital questions now before the
+country, are calculated seriously to embarrass the government. We fear
+the book will have a veritable _succès de scandale_."
+
+"That fellow at least has done his best to kick the ball, damn him!"
+thought Ashe, with contempt, as he thrust the paper into his pocket.
+
+It was no more than he expected; but it put an end to all thoughts of a
+more hopeful kind. He walked up and down the _Piazza_ smoking, till
+midnight, counting the hours till he could reach London, and revolving
+the phrases of a telegram to be sent to his solicitor before starting.
+
+Kitty made no sign or sound when he entered her room. Her fair head was
+turned away from him, and all was dark. He could hardly believe that she
+was asleep; but it was a relief to him to accept her pretence of it, and
+to escape all further conversation. He himself slept but little. The
+mere profundity of the Venetian silence teased him; it reminded him how
+far he was from home.
+
+Two images pursued him--of Kitty writing the book, while he was away
+electioneering or toiling at his new office--and then, of his returns to
+Haggart--tired or triumphant--on many a winter evening, of her glad rush
+into his arms, her sparkling face on his breast.
+
+Or again, he conjured up the scene when the MS. had been shown to
+Darrell--his pretence of disapproval, his sham warnings, and the smile
+on his sallow face as he walked off with it. Ashe looked back to the
+early days of his friendship with Darrell, when he, Ashe, was one of the
+leaders at Eton, popular with the masters in spite of his incorrigible
+idleness, and popular with the boys because of his bodily prowess, and
+Darrell had been a small, sickly, bullied colleger. Scene after scene
+recurred to him, from their later relations at Oxford also. There was a
+kind of deliberation in the way in which he forced his thoughts into
+this channel; it made an outlet for a fierce bitterness of spirit, which
+some imperious instinct forbade him to spend on Kitty.
+
+He dozed in the later hours of the night, and was roused by something
+touching his hand, which lay outside the bedclothes. Again the little
+head!--and the soft curls. Kitty was there--crouched beside
+him--weeping. There flashed into his mind an image of the night in
+London when she had come to him thus; and unwelcome as the whole
+remembrance was, he was conscious of a sudden swelling wave of pity and
+passion. What if he sprang up, caught her in his arms, forgave her, and
+bade the world go hang!
+
+No! The impulse passed, and in his turn he feigned sleep. The thought of
+her long deceit, of the selfish wilfulness wherewith she had requited
+deep love and easy trust, was too much; it seared his heart. And there
+was another and a subtler influence. To have forgiven so easily would
+have seemed treachery to those high ambitions and ideals from which--as
+he thought, only too certainly--she had now cut him off. It was part of
+his surviving youth that the catastrophe seemed to him so absolute. Any
+thought of the fresh efforts which would be necessary for the
+reconquering of his position was no less sickening to him than that of
+the immediate discomforts and humiliations to be undergone. He would go
+back to books and amusement; and in the idling of the future there would
+be plenty of time for love-making.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning, when all preparations were made, the gondoliers waiting
+below, Ashe's telegram sent, and the circular notes handed over to
+Margaret French, who had discreetly left the room, William approached
+his wife.
+
+"Good-bye!" said Kitty, and gave him her hand, with a strange look and
+smile.
+
+Ashe, however, drew her to him and kissed her--against her will. "I'll
+do my best, Kitty," he said, in a would-be cheery voice--"to pull us
+through. Perhaps--I don't know!--things may turn out better than I
+think. Good-bye. Take care of yourself. I'll write, of course. Don't
+hurry home. You'll want a fortnight or three weeks yet."
+
+Kitty said not a word, and in another minute he was gone. The Italian
+servants congregated below at the water-gate sent laughing "A
+rivederlas" after the handsome, good-tempered Englishman, whom they
+liked and regretted; the gondola moved off; Kitty heard the plash of the
+water. But she held back from the window.
+
+Half-way to the bend of the canal beyond the Accademia, Ashe turned and
+gave a long look at the balcony. No one was there. But just as the
+gondola was passing out of sight, Kitty slipped onto the balcony. She
+could see only the figure of Piero, the gondolier, and in another second
+the boat was gone. She stayed there for many minutes, clinging to the
+balustrade and staring, as it seemed, at the sparkle of autumnal sun
+which danced on the green water and on the red palace to her right.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the morning Kitty on her sofa pretended to write letters. Margaret
+French, working or reading behind her, knew that she scarcely got
+through a single note, that her pen lay idle on the paper, while her
+eyes absently watched the palace windows on the other side of the canal.
+Miss French was quite certain that some tragic cause of difference
+between the husband and wife had arisen. Kitty, the indiscreet, had for
+once kept her own counsel about the book, and Ashe had with his own
+hands packed away the volumes which had arrived the night before; so
+that she could only guess, and from that delicacy of feeling restrained
+her as much as possible.
+
+Once or twice Kitty seemed on the point of unburdening herself. Then
+overmastering tears would threaten; she would break off and begin to
+write. At luncheon her look alarmed Miss French, so white was the little
+face, so large and restless the eyes. Ought Mr. Ashe to have left her,
+and left her apparently in anger? No doubt he thought her much better.
+But Margaret remembered the worst days of her illness, the anxious looks
+of the doctors, and the anguish that Kitty had suffered in the first
+weeks after her child's death. She seemed now, indeed, to have forgotten
+little Harry, so far as outward expression went; but who could tell what
+was passing in her strange, unstable mind? And it often seemed to
+Margaret that the signs of the past summer were stamped on her
+indelibly, for those who had eyes to see.
+
+Was it the perception of this pity beside her that drove Kitty to
+solitude and flight? At any rate, she said after luncheon that she would
+go to Madame d'Estrées, and did not ask Miss French to accompany her.
+
+She set out accordingly with the two gondoliers. But she had hardly
+passed the Accademia before she bid her men take a cross-cut to the
+Giudecca. On these wide waters, with their fresher air and fuller
+sunshine, a certain physical comfort seemed to breathe upon her.
+
+"Piero, it is not rough! Can we go to the Lido?" she asked the gondolier
+behind her.
+
+Piero, who was all smiles and complaisance, as well he might be with a
+lady who scattered _lire_ as freely as Kitty did, turned the boat at
+once for that channel "Del Orfano" where the bones of the vanquished
+dead lie deep amid the ooze.
+
+They passed San Giorgio, and were soon among the piles and sand-banks of
+the lagoon. Kitty sat in a dream which blotted the sunshine from the
+water. It seemed to her that she was a dead creature, floating in a dead
+world. William had ceased to love her. She had wrecked his career and
+destroyed her own happiness. Her child had been taken from her. Lady
+Tranmore's affection had been long since alienated. Her own mother was
+nothing to her; and her friends in society, like Madeleine Alcot, would
+only laugh and gloat over the scandal of the book.
+
+No--everything was finished! As her fingers hanging over the side of the
+gondola felt the touch of the water, her morbid fancy, incredibly quick
+and keen, fancied herself drowned, or poisoned--lying somehow white and
+cold on a bed where William might see and forgive her.
+
+Then with a start of memory which brought the blood rushing to her face,
+she thought of Cliffe standing beside the door of the great hall in the
+Vercelli palace--she seemed to be looking again into those deep,
+expressive eyes, held by the irony and the passion with which they were
+infused. Had the passion any reference to her?--or was it merely part of
+the man's nature, as inseparable from it as flame from the volcano? If
+William had cast her off, was there still one man--wild and bad, indeed,
+like herself, but poet and hero nevertheless--who loved her?
+
+She did not much believe it; but still the possibility of it lured her,
+like some dark gulf that promised her oblivion from this pain--pain
+which tortured one so impatient of distress, so hungry for pleasure and
+praise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In those days the Lido was still a noble and solitary shore, without the
+degradations of to-day.
+
+Kitty walked fast and furiously across the sandy road, and over the
+shingles, turning, when she reached the firm sand, southward towards
+Malamocco. It was between four and five, and the autumn afternoon was
+fast declining. A fresh breeze was on the sea, and the short waves,
+intensely blue under a wide, clear heaven, broke in dazzling foam on the
+red-brown sand.
+
+She seemed to be alone between sea and sky, save for two figures
+approaching from the south--a fisher-boy with a shrimping-net and a man
+walking bareheaded. She noticed them idly. A mirage of sun was between
+her and them, and the agony of remorse and despair which held her
+blunted all perceptions.
+
+Thus it was that not till she was close upon him did her dazzled sight
+recognize Geoffrey Cliffe.
+
+He saw her first, and stopped in motionless astonishment on the edge of
+the sand. She almost ran against him, when his voice arrested her.
+
+"Lady Kitty!"
+
+She put her hand to her breast, wavered, and came to a stand-still. He
+saw a little figure in black between him and those "gorgeous towers and
+cloud-capped palaces" of Alpine snow, which dimly closed in the north;
+and beneath the drooping hat a face even more changed and tragic than
+that which had haunted him since their meeting of the day before.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE THOUGHT OF CLIFFE STANDING BESIDE THE DOOR OF THE
+GREAT HALL."]
+
+"How do you do?" she said, mechanically, and would have passed him.
+But he stood in her path. As he stared at her an impulse of rage ran
+through him, resenting the wreck of anything so beautiful--rage against
+Ashe, who must surely be somehow responsible.
+
+"Aren't you wandering too far, Lady Kitty?" His voice shook under the
+restraint he put upon it. "You seem tired--very tired--and you are
+perhaps farther from your gondola than you think."
+
+"I am not tired."
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"Might I walk with you a little, or do you forbid me?"
+
+She said nothing, but walked on. He turned and accompanied her. One or
+two questions that he put to her--Had she companions?--Where had she
+left her gondola?--remained unanswered. He studied her face, and at last
+he laid a strong hand upon her arm.
+
+"Sit down. You are not fit for any more walking."
+
+He drew her towards some logs of driftwood on the upper sand, and she
+sank down upon them. He found a place beside her.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" he said, abruptly, with a harsh
+authority. "You are in trouble."
+
+A tremor shook her--as of the prisoner who feels on his limbs the first
+touch of the fetter.
+
+"No, no!" she said, trying to rise; "it is nothing. I--I didn't know it
+was so far. I must go home."
+
+His hand held her.
+
+"Kitty!"
+
+"Yes." Her voice was scarcely audible.
+
+"Tell me what hurts you! Tell me why you are here, alone, with a face
+like that! Don't be afraid of me! Could I lift a finger to harm a
+mother that has lost her child? Give me your hands." He gathered both
+hers into the warm shelter of his own. "Look at me--trust me! My heart
+has grown, Kitty, since you knew me last. It has taken into itself so
+many griefs--so many deaths. Tell me your griefs, poor child!--tell me!"
+
+He stooped and kissed her hands--most tenderly, most gravely.
+
+Tears rushed into her eyes. The wild emotions that were her being were
+roused beyond control. Bending towards him she began to pour out, first
+brokenly, then in a torrent, the wretched, incoherent story, of which
+the mere telling, in such an ear, meant new treachery to William and new
+ruin for herself.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+On a certain cloudy afternoon, some ten days later, a fishing-boat, with
+a patched orange sail, might have been seen scudding under a light
+northwesterly breeze through the channels which connect the island of
+San Francesco with the more easterly stretches of the Venetian lagoon.
+The boat presently neared the shore of one of the cultivated
+_lidi_--islands formed out of the silt of many rivers by the travail of
+centuries, some of them still mere sand or mud banks, others covered by
+vineyards and fruit orchards--which, with the _murazzi_ or sea-walls of
+Venice, stand sentinel between the city and the sea. On the _lido_ along
+which the boat was coasting, the vintage was long since over and the
+fruit gathered; the last yellow and purple leaves in the orchards, "a
+pestilent-stricken multitude," were to-day falling fast to earth, under
+the sighing, importunate wind. The air was warm; November was at its
+mildest. But all color and light were drowned in floating mists, and
+darkness lay over the distant city. It was one of those drear and
+ghostly days which may well have breathed into the soul of Shelley that
+superb vision of the dead generations of Venice, rising, a phantom host
+from the bosom of the sunset, and sweeping in "a rapid mask of death"
+over the shadowed waters that saw the birth and may yet furnish the tomb
+of so vast a fame.
+
+Two persons were in the boat--Kitty, wrapped in sables, her straying
+hair held close by a cap of the same fur--and Geoffrey Cliffe. They had
+been wandering in the lagoons all day, in order to escape from Venice
+and observers--first at Torcello, then at San Francesco, and now they
+were ostensibly coming home in a wide sweep along the northern _lidi_
+and _murazzi_, that Cliffe might show his companion, from near by, the
+Porto del Lido, that exit from the lagoons where the salt lakes grow
+into the sea.
+
+A certain wildness and exaltation, drawn from the solitudes around them
+and from their _tête-à-tête_, could be read in both the man and the
+woman. Cliffe watched his companion incessantly. As he lay against the
+side of the boat at her feet, he saw her framed in the curving sides of
+the stern, and could read her changing expressions. Not a happy
+face!--that he knew! A face haunted by shadows from an underworld of
+thought--pursuing furies of remorse and fear. Not the less did he
+triumph that he had it _there_, in his power; nor had the flashes of
+terror and wavering will which he discerned in any way diminished its
+beauty.
+
+"How long have you known--that woman?" Kitty asked him, suddenly, after
+a pause broken only by the playing of the wind with the sail.
+
+Cliffe laughed.
+
+"The Ricci? Why do you want to know, madame?"
+
+She made a contemptuous lip.
+
+"I knew her first," said Cliffe, "some years ago in Milan. She was then
+at La Scala--walking on--paid for her good looks. Then somebody sent her
+to Paris to the Conservatoire, which she only left this spring. This is
+her first Italian engagement. Her people are shopkeepers here--in the
+Merceria--which helped her. She is as vain as a peacock and as dangerous
+as a pet panther."
+
+"Dangerous!" Kitty's scorn had passed into her voice.
+
+"Well, Italy is still the country of the knife," said Cliffe,
+lightly--"and I could still hire a bravo or two--in Venice--if I wanted
+them."
+
+"Does the Ricci hire them?"
+
+Cliffe shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"She'd do it without winking, if it suited her." Then, after a
+pause--"Do you still wonder why I should have chosen her society?"
+
+"Oh no," said Kitty, hastily. "You told me."
+
+"As much as a _friend_ cares to know?"
+
+She nodded, flushing, and dropped the subject.
+
+Cliffe's mouth still smiled, but his eyes studied her with a veiled and
+sinister intensity.
+
+"I have not seen the lady for a week," he resumed. "She pesters me with
+notes. I promised to go and see her in a new play to-morrow night,
+but--"
+
+"Oh, go!" said Kitty--"by all means go!"
+
+"'Ruy Blas' in Italian? I think not. Ah! did you see that gleam on the
+Campanile?--marvellous!... Miladi, I have a question to ask you."
+
+"_Dites!_" said Kitty.
+
+"Did you put me into your book?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"What kind of things did you say?"
+
+"The worst I could!"
+
+"Ah! How shall I get a copy?" said Cliffe, musing.
+
+She made no answer, but she was conscious of a sudden movement--was it
+of terror? At the bottom of her soul was she, indeed, afraid of the man
+beside her?
+
+"By-the-way," he resumed, "you promised to tell me your news of this
+morning. But you haven't told me a word!"
+
+She turned away. She had gathered her furs around her, and her face was
+almost hidden by them.
+
+"Nothing is settled," she said, in a cold, reluctant voice.
+
+"Which means that you won't tell me anything more?"
+
+She was silent. Her lip had a proud line which piqued him.
+
+"You think I am not worthy to know?"
+
+Her eye gleamed.
+
+"What does it matter to you?"
+
+"Oh, nothing! I should have been glad to hear that all was well, and
+Ashe's mind at rest about his prospects."
+
+"His prospects!" she repeated, with a scorn which stung. "How _dare_ we
+mention his name here at all?"
+
+Cliffe reddened.
+
+"I dare," he said, calmly.
+
+Kitty looked at him--a quivering defiance in face and frame; then bent
+forward.
+
+"Would you like to know--who is the best--the noblest--the
+handsomest--the most generous--the most delightful man I have ever met?"
+
+Each word came out winged and charged with a strange intensity of
+passion.
+
+"Do I?" said Cliffe, raising his eyebrows--"do I want to know?"
+
+Her look held him.
+
+"My husband, William Ashe!"
+
+And she fell back, flushed and breathless, like one who throws out a
+rebel and challenging flag.
+
+Cliffe was silent a moment, observing her.
+
+"Strange!" he said, at last. "It is only when you are miserable you are
+kind. I could wish you miserable again, _chérie_."
+
+Tone and look broke into a sombre wildness before which she shrank. Her
+own violence passed away. She leaned over the side of the boat,
+struggling with tears.
+
+"Then you have your wish," was her muffled answer.
+
+The three bronzed Venetians, a father and two sons, who were working the
+_bragozzo_ glanced curiously at the pair. They were persuaded that these
+charterers of their boat were lovers flying from observation, and the
+unknown tongue did but stimulate guessing.
+
+Cliffe raised himself impatiently.
+
+They were nearing a point where the line of _murazzi_ they had been
+following--low breakwaters of great strength--swept away from them
+outward and eastward towards a distant opening. On the other side of the
+channel was a low line of shore, broadening into the Lido proper, with
+its scattered houses and churches, and soon lost in the mist as it
+stretched towards the south.
+
+"Ecco!--il Porto del Lido!" said the older boatman, pointing far away to
+a line of deeper color beneath a dark and lowering sky.
+
+Kitty bent over the side of the boat staring towards the dim spot he
+showed her--where was the mouth of the sea.
+
+"Kitty!" said Cliffe's voice beside her, hoarse and hurried--"one word,
+and I tell these fellows to set their helm for Trieste. This boat will
+carry us well--and the wind is with us."
+
+She turned and looked him in the face.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then? We'll think it out together, Kitty--together!" He bent his lips
+to her hand, bending so as to conceal the action from the sailors. But
+she drew her hand away.
+
+"You and I," she said, fiercely--"would tire of each other in a week!"
+
+"Have the courage to try! No!--you should not tire of me in a week! I
+would find ways to keep you mine, Kitty--cradled, and comforted, and
+happy."
+
+"Happy!" Her slight laugh was the forlornest thing. "Take me out to
+sea--and drop me there--with a stone round my neck. That might be worth
+doing--perhaps."
+
+He surveyed her unmoved.
+
+"Listen, Kitty! This kind of thing can't go on forever."
+
+"What are you waiting for?" she said, tauntingly. "You ought to have
+gone last week."
+
+"I am not going," he said, raising himself by a sudden movement--"till
+you come with me!"
+
+Kitty started, her eyes riveted to his.
+
+"And yet go I will! Not even you shall stop me, Kitty. I'll take the
+help I've gathered back to those poor devils--if I die for it. But
+you'll come with me--you'll come!"
+
+She drew back--trembling under an impression she strove to conceal.
+
+"If you will talk such madness, I can't help it," she said, with
+shortened breath.
+
+"Yes--you'll come!" he said, nodding. "What have you to do with Ashe,
+Kitty, any longer? You and he are already divided. You have tried life
+together and what have you made of it? You're not fit for this mincing,
+tripping London life--nor am I? And as for morals--- I'll tell you a
+strange thing, Kitty." He bent forward and grasped her hands with a
+force which hurt--from which she could not release herself. "I
+believe--yes, by God, I believe!--that I am a better man than I was
+before I started on this adventure. It's been like drinking at last at
+the very source of life--living, not talking about it. One bitter night
+last February, for instance, I helped a man--one of the insurgents--who
+had taken to the mountains with his wife and children--to carry his
+wife, a dying woman, over a mountain-pass to the only place where she
+could possibly get help and shelter. We carried her on a litter, six men
+taking turns. The cold and the fatigue were such that I shudder now when
+I think of it. Yet at the end I seemed to myself a man reborn. I was
+happier than I had ever been in my life. Some mystic virtue had flowed
+into me. Among those men and women, instead of being the selfish beast
+I've been all these years, I can forget myself. Death seems
+nothing--brotherhood--liberty!--everything! And yet--"
+
+His face relaxed, became ironical, reflective. But he held the hands
+close, his grasp of them hidden by the folds of fur which hung about
+her.
+
+"And _yet_--I can say to you without a qualm--put this marriage which
+has already come to naught behind you--and come with me! Ashe cramps
+you. He blames you--you blame yourself. What _reality_ has all that? It
+makes you miserable--it wastes life. _I_ accept your nature--I don't ask
+you to be anything else than yourself--your wild, vain, adorable self!
+Ashe asks you to put restraint on yourself--to make painful efforts--to
+be good for his sake--the sake of something outside. _I_ say--come and
+look at the elemental things--death and battle--hatred, solitude, love.
+_They'll_ sweep us out of ourselves!--no need to strive and cry for
+it--into the great current of the world's being--bring us close to the
+forces at the root of things--the forces which create--and destroy. Dip
+your heart in that stream, Kitty, and feel it grow in your breast. Take
+a nurse's dress--put your hand in mine--and come! I can't promise you
+luxuries or ease. You've had enough of those. Come and open another door
+in the House of Life! Take starving women and hunted children into your
+arms--- feel with them--weep with them--look with them into the face of
+death! Make friends with nature--with rocks, forests, torrents--with
+night and dawn, which you've never seen, Kitty! They'll love
+you--they'll support you--the rough people--and the dark forests.
+They'll draw nature's glamour round you--they'll pour her balm into your
+soul. And I shall be with you--beside you!--your guardian--your
+lover--your _lover_, Kitty--till death do us part."
+
+He looked at her with the smile which was his only but sufficient
+beauty; the violent, exciting words flowed in her ear, amid the sound of
+rising waves and the distant talk of the fishermen. His hand crushed
+hers; his mad, imploring eyes repelled and constrained her. The wild
+hungers and curiosities of her being rushed to meet him; she heard the
+echo of her own words to Ashe: "More life--more _life_!--even though it
+lead to pain--and agony--and tears!"
+
+Then she wrenched herself away--suddenly, contemptuously.
+
+"Of course, that's all nonsense--romantic nonsense. You've perhaps
+forgotten that I am one of the women who don't stir without their maid."
+
+Cliffe's expression changed. He thrust his hands into his pockets.
+
+"Oh, well, if you must have a maid," he said, dryly, "that settles it. A
+maid would be the deuce. And yet--I think I could find you a Bosnian
+girl--strong and faithful--"
+
+Their eyes met--his already full of a kind of ownership, tender,
+confident, humorous even--hers alive with passionate anger and
+resistance.
+
+"_Without a qualm_!" she repeated, in a low voice--"without a qualm! Mon
+Dieu!"
+
+She turned and looked towards the Adriatic.
+
+"Where are we?" she said, imperiously.
+
+For a gesture of command on Cliffe's part, unseen by her, had sent the
+boat eastward, spinning before the wind. The lagoon was no longer
+tranquil. It was covered with small waves; and the roar of the outer
+sea, though still far off, was already in their ears. The mist lifting
+showed white, distant crests of foam on a tumbling field of water, and
+to the north, clothed in tempestuous purple, the dim shapes of
+mountains.
+
+Kitty raised herself, and beckoned towards the captain of the
+_bragozzo_.
+
+"Giuseppe!"
+
+"Commanda, Eccellenza!"
+
+The man came forward.
+
+With a voice sharp and clear, she gave the order to return at once to
+Venice. Cliffe watched her, the veins on his forehead swelling. She knew
+that he debated with himself whether he should give a counter-order or
+no.
+
+"A Venezia!" said Kitty, waving her hand towards the sailors, her eyes
+shining under the tangle of her hair.
+
+The helm was put round, and beneath a tacking sail the boat swept
+southward.
+
+With an awkward laugh Cliffe fell back into his seat, stretching his
+long limbs across the boat. He had spoken under a strong and genuine
+impulse. His passion for her had made enormous strides in these few wild
+days beside her. And yet the fantastic poet's sense responded at a touch
+to the new impression. He shook off the heroic mood as he had doffed his
+Bosnian cloak. In a few minutes, though the heightened color remained,
+he was chatting and laughing as though nothing had happened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She, exhausted physically and morally by her conflict with him, hardly
+spoke on the way home. He entertained her, watching her all the time--a
+hundred speculations about her passing through his brain. He understood
+perfectly how the insight which she had allowed him into her grief and
+her remorse had broken down the barriers between them. Her incapacity
+for silence, and reticence, had undone her. Was he a villain to have
+taken advantage of it?
+
+Why? With a strange, half-cynical clearness he saw her, as the obstacle
+that she was, in Ashe's life and career. For Ashe--supposing he, Cliffe,
+persuaded her--there would be no doubt a first shock of wrath and
+pain--then a sense of deliverance. For her, too, deliverance! It excited
+his artist's sense to think of all the further developments through
+which he might carry that eager, plastic nature. There would be a new
+Kitty, with new capacities and powers. Wasn't that justification enough?
+He felt himself a sculptor in the very substance of life, moulding a
+living creature afresh, disengaging it from harsh and hindering
+conditions. What was there vile in that?
+
+The argument pursued itself.
+
+"The modern judges for himself--makes his own laws, as a god, knowing
+good and evil. No doubt in time a new social law will emerge--with new
+sanctions. Meanwhile, here we are, in a moment of transition,
+manufacturing new types, exploring new combinations--by which let those
+who come after profit!"
+
+Little delicate, distinguished thing!--every aspect of her, angry or
+sweet, sad or wilful, delighted his taste and sense. Moreover, she was
+_his_ deliverance, too--from an ugly and vulgar entanglement of which he
+was ashamed. He shrank impatiently from memories which every now and
+then pursued him of the Ricci's coarse beauty and exacting ways. Kitty
+had just appeared in time! He felt himself rehabilitated in his own
+eyes. Love may trifle as it pleases with what people call "law"; but
+there are certain æsthetic limits not to be transgressed.
+
+The Ricci, of course, was wild and thirsting for revenge. Let her!
+Anxieties far more pressing disturbed him. What if he tempted Kitty to
+this escapade--and the rough life killed her? He saw clearly how frail
+she was.
+
+But it was the artificiality of her life, the innumerable burdens of
+civilization, which had brought her to this! Women were not the
+weaklings they seemed, or believed themselves to be. For many of them,
+probably for Kitty, a rude and simple life would mean not only fresh
+mental but fresh physical strength. He had seen what women could endure,
+for love's or patriotism's sake! Make but appeal to the spirit--the
+proud and tameless spirit--and how the flesh answered! He knew that his
+power with Kitty came largely from a certain stoicism, a certain
+hardness, mingled, as he would prove to her, with a boundless devotion.
+Let him carry it through--without fears--and so enlarge her being and
+his own! And as to responsibilities beyond, as to their later lives--let
+time take care of its own births. For the modern determinist of Cliffe's
+type there _is_ no responsibility. He waits on life, following where it
+leads, rejoicing in each new feeling, each fresh reaction of
+consciousness on experience, and so links his fatalist belief to that
+Nietzsche doctrine of self-development at all costs, and the coming man,
+in which Cliffe's thought anticipated the years.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kitty meanwhile listened to his intermittent talk of Venice, or Bosnia,
+with all its suggestions of new worlds and far horizons, and scarcely
+said a word.
+
+But through the background of the brain there floated with her, as with
+him, a procession of unspoken thoughts. She had received three letters
+from William. Immediately on his arrival he had tendered his
+resignation. Lord Parham had asked him to suspend the matter for ten
+days. Only the pressure of his friends, it seemed, and the consternation
+of his party had wrung from Ashe a reluctant consent. Meanwhile, all
+copies of the book had been bought up; the important newspapers had
+readily lent themselves to the suppression of the affair; private wraths
+had been dealt with by conciliatory lawyers; and in general a far more
+complete hushing-up had been attained than Ashe had ever imagined
+possible. There was no doubt infinite gossip in the country-houses. But
+sympathy for Kitty in her grief, for Ashe himself, and Lady Tranmore,
+had done much to keep it within bounds. The little Dean especially,
+beloved of all the world, had been incessantly active on behalf of peace
+and oblivion.
+
+All this Kitty read or guessed from William's letters. After all, then,
+the harm had not been so great! Why such a panic!--such a hurry to leave
+her!--when she was ill--and sorry? And now how curtly, how measuredly he
+wrote! Behind the hopefulness of his tone she read the humiliation and
+soreness of his mind--and said to herself, with a more headlong
+conviction than ever, that he would never forgive her.
+
+No, _never!_--and especially now that she had added a thousandfold to
+the original offence. She had never written to him since his departure.
+Margaret French, too, was angry with her--had almost broken with her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They left their boat on the Riva, and walked to the _Piazza_, through
+the now starry dusk. As they passed the great door of St. Mark's, two
+persons came out of the church. Kitty recognized Mary Lyster and Sir
+Richard. She bowed slightly; Sir Richard put his hand to his hat in a
+flurried way; but Mary, looking them both in the face, passed without
+the smallest sign, unless the scorn in face and bearing might pass for
+recognition.
+
+Kitty gasped.
+
+"She cut me!" she said, in a shaking voice.
+
+"Oh no!" said Cliffe. "She didn't see you in the dark."
+
+Kitty made no reply. She hurried along the northern side of the Piazza,
+avoiding the groups which were gathered in the sunset light round the
+flocks of feeding pigeons, brushing past the tables in front of the
+cafe's, still well filled on this mild evening.
+
+"Take care!" said Cliffe, suddenly, in a low, imperative voice.
+
+Kitty looked up. In her abstraction she saw that she had nearly come
+into collision with a woman sitting at a café table and surrounded by a
+noisy group of men.
+
+With a painful start Kitty perceived the mocking eyes of Mademoiselle
+Ricci. The Ricci said something in Italian, staring the while at the
+English lady; and the men near her laughed, some furtively, some loudly.
+
+Cliffe's face set. "Walk quickly!" he said in her ear, hurrying her
+past.
+
+When they had reached one of the narrow streets behind the Piazza, Kitty
+looked at him--white and haughtily tremulous. "What did that mean?"
+
+"Why should you deign to ask?" was Cliffe's impatient reply. "I have
+ceased to go and see her. I suppose she guesses why."
+
+"I will have no rivalry with Mademoiselle Ricci!" cried Kitty.
+
+"You can't help it," said Cliffe, calmly. "The powers of light are
+always in rivalry with the powers of darkness."
+
+And without further pleading or excuse he stalked on, his gaunt form and
+striking head towering above the crowded pavement. Kitty followed him
+with difficulty, conscious of a magnetism and a force against which she
+struggled in vain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About a week afterwards Kitty shut herself up one evening in her room to
+write to Ashe. She had just passed through an agitating conversation
+with Margaret French, who had announced her intention of returning to
+England at once, alone, if Kitty would not accompany her. Kitty's hands
+were trembling as she began to write.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I am glad--oh! so glad, William--that you _have_ withdrawn your
+resignation--that people have come forward so splendidly, and _made_ you
+withdraw it--that Lord Parham is behaving decently--and that you have
+been able to get hold of all those copies of the book. I always hoped it
+would not be quite so bad as you thought. But I know you must have gone
+through an awful time--and I'm _sorry_.
+
+"William, I want to tell you something--for I can't go on lying to
+you--or even just hiding the truth. I met Geoffrey Cliffe here--before
+you left--and I never told you. I saw him first in a gondola the night
+of the serenata--and then at the Armenian convent. Do you remember my
+hurrying you and Margaret into the garden? That was to escape meeting
+him. And that same afternoon when I was in the unused rooms of the
+Palazzo Vercelli--the rooms they show to tourists--he suddenly
+appeared--and somehow I spoke to him, though I had never meant to do so
+again.
+
+"Then when you left me I met him again--that afternoon--and he found out
+I was very miserable and made me tell him everything. I know I had no
+right to do so--they were your secrets as well as mine. But you know how
+little I can control myself--it's wretched, but it's true.
+
+"William, I don't know what will happen. I can't make out from Margaret
+whether she has written to you or not--she won't tell me. If she has,
+this letter will not be much news to you. But, mind, I write it of my
+own free will, and not because Margaret may have forced my hand. I
+should have written it anyway. Poor old darling!--she thinks me mad and
+bad, and to-night she tells me she can't take the responsibility of
+looking after me any longer. Women like her can never understand
+creatures like me--and I don't want her to. She's a dear saint, and as
+true as steel--not like your Mary Lysters! I could go on my knees to
+her. But she can't control or save me. Not even you could, William.
+You've tried your best, and in spite of you I'm going to perdition, and
+I can't stop myself.
+
+"For, William, there's something broken forever between you and me. I
+know it was I who did the wrong, and that you had no choice but to leave
+me when you did. But yet you _did_ leave me, though I implored you not.
+And I know very well that you don't love me as you used to--why should
+you?--and that you never can love me in the same way again. Every letter
+you write tells me that. And though I have deserved it all, I can't
+bear it. When I think of coming home to England, and how you would try
+to be nice to me--how good and dear and magnanimous you would be, and
+what a beast I should feel--I want to drown myself and have done.
+
+"It all seems to me so hopeless. It is my own nature--- the stuff out of
+which I am cut--that's all wrong. I may promise my breath away that I
+will be discreet and gentle and well behaved, that I'll behave properly
+to people like Lady Parham, that I'll keep secrets, and not make absurd
+friendships with absurd people, that I'll try and keep out of debt, and
+so on. But what's the use? It's the _will_ in me--the something that
+drives, or ought to drive--that won't work. And nobody ever taught me or
+showed me, that I can remember, till I met you. In Paris at the Place
+Vendôme, half the time I used to live with maman and papa, be hideously
+spoiled, dressed absurdly, eat off silver plate, and make myself sick
+with rich things--and then for days together maman would go out or away,
+forget all about me, and I used to storm the kitchen for food. She
+either neglected me or made a show of me; she was my worst enemy, and I
+hated and fought her--till I went to the convent at ten. When I was
+fourteen maman asked a doctor about me. He said I should probably go
+mad--and at the convent they thought the same. Maman used to throw this
+at me when she was cross with me.
+
+"Well, I don't repeat this to make you excuse me and think better of
+me--- it's all too late for that--but because I am such a puzzle to
+myself, and I try to explain things. I _did_ love you, William--I
+believe I do still--but when I think of our living together again, my
+arms drop by my side and I feel like a dead creature. Your life is too
+great a thing for me. Why should I spoil or hamper it? If you loved me,
+as you did once--if you still thought _everything_ worth while, then, if
+I had a spark of decency left, I might kill myself to free you, but I
+should never do--what I may do now. But, William, you'll forget me soon.
+You'll pass great laws, and make great speeches, and the years when I
+tormented you--and all my wretched ways--will seem such a small, small
+thing.
+
+"Geoffrey says he loves me. And I think he does, though how long it will
+last, or may be worth, no one can tell. As for me, I don't know whether
+I love him. I have no illusion about him. But there are moments when he
+absolutely holds me--when my will is like wax in his hands. It is
+because, I think, of a certain grandness--_grandeur_ seems too
+strong--in his character. It was always there; because no one could
+write such poems as his without it. But now it's more marked, though I
+don't know that it makes him a better man. He thinks it does; but we all
+deceive ourselves. At any rate, he is often superb, and I feel that I
+could die, if not for him, at least with him. And he is not unlikely to
+die in some heroic way. He went out as you know simply as correspondent
+and to distribute relief, but lately he has been fighting for these
+people--of course he has!--and when he goes back he is to be one of
+their regular leaders. When he talks of it he is noble, transformed. It
+reminds me of Byron--his wicked life here--and then his death at
+Missolonghi. Geoffrey can do such base, cruel things--and yet--
+
+"But I haven't yet told you. He asks me to go with him, back to the
+fighting-lines in upper Bosnia. There seems to be a great deal that
+women can do. I shall wear a nurse's uniform, and probably nurse at a
+little hospital he founded--high up in one of the mountain valleys. I
+know this will almost make you laugh. You will think of me, not knowing
+how to put on a button without Blanche--and wanting to be waited on
+every moment. But you'll see; there'll be nothing of that sort. I wonder
+whether it's hardship I've been thirsting for all my life--even when I
+seemed such a selfish, luxurious little ape?
+
+"At the same time, I think it will kill me--and that would be the best
+end of all. To have some great, heroic experience, and then--'cease upon
+the midnight with no pain!...'
+
+"Oh, if I thought you'd care very, _very_ much, I should have
+pain--horrible pain. But I know you won't. Politics have taken my place.
+Think of me sometimes, as I was when we were first married--and of
+Harry--my little, little fellow!
+
+"--Maman and I have had a ghastly scene. She came to scold me for my
+behavior--to say I was the talk of Venice. _She!_ Of course I know what
+she means. She thinks if I am divorced she will lose her allowance--and
+she can't bear the thought of that, though Markham Warington is quite
+rich. My heart just _boiled_ within me. I told her it is the poison of
+her life that works in me, and that whatever I do, _she_ has no right to
+reproach me. Then she cried--and I was like ice--and at last she went.
+Warington, good fellow, has written to me, and asked to see me. But what
+is the use?
+
+"I know you'll leave me the £500 a year that was settled on me. It'll be
+so good for me to be poor--and dressed in serge--and trying to do
+something else with these useless hands than writing books that break
+your heart. I am giving away all my smart clothes. Blanche is going
+home. Oh, William, William! I'm going to shut this, and it's like the
+good-bye of death--a mean and ugly--_death_.
+
+"... Later. They have just brought me a note from Danieli's. So Margaret
+did write to you, and your mother has come. Why did you send her,
+William? She doesn't love me--and I shall only stab and hurt her. Though
+I'll try not--for your sake."
+
+Two days later Ashe received almost by the same post which brought him
+the letter from Kitty, just quoted, the following letter from his
+mother:
+
+     "My DEAREST WILLIAM,--I have seen Kitty. With some difficulty she
+     consented to let me go and see her yesterday evening about nine
+     o'clock.
+
+     "I arrived between six and seven, having travelled straight through
+     without a break, except for an hour or two at Milan, and
+     immediately on arriving I sent a note to Margaret French. She came
+     in great distress, having just had a fresh scene with Kitty. Oh, my
+     dear William, her report could not well be worse. Since she wrote
+     to us Kitty seems to have thrown over all precautions. They used to
+     meet in churches or galleries, and go out for long days in the
+     gondola or a fishing-boat together, and Kitty would come home alone
+     and lie on the sofa through the evening, almost without speaking
+     or moving. But lately he comes in with her, and stays hours,
+     reading to her, or holding her hand, or talking to her in a low
+     voice, and Margaret cannot stop it.
+
+     "Yet she has done her best, poor girl! Knowing what we all knew
+     last year, it filled her with terror when she first discovered that
+     he was in Venice and that they had met. But it was not till it had
+     gone on about a week, with the strangest results on Kitty's spirits
+     and nerves, that she felt she must interfere. She not only spoke to
+     Kitty, but she spoke and wrote to him in a very firm, dignified
+     way. Kitty took no notice--only became very silent and secretive.
+     And he treated poor Margaret with a kind of courteous irony which
+     made her blood boil, and against which she could do nothing. She
+     says that Kitty seems to her sometimes like a person moving in
+     sleep--only half conscious of what she is doing; and at others she
+     is wildly excitable, irritable with everybody, and only calming
+     down and becoming reasonable when this man appears.
+
+     "There is much talk in Venice. They seem to have been seen together
+     by various London friends who knew--about the difficulties last
+     year. And then, of course, everybody is aware that you are not
+     here--and the whole story of the book goes from mouth to mouth--and
+     people say that a separation has been arranged--and so on. These
+     are the kind of rumors that Margaret hears, especially from Mary
+     Lyster, who is staying in this hotel with her father, and seems to
+     have a good many friends here.
+
+     "Dearest William--I have been lingering on these things because it
+     is so hard to have to tell you what passed between me and Kitty.
+     Oh! my dear, dear son, take courage. Even now everything is not
+     lost. Her conscience may awaken at the last moment; this bad man
+     may abandon his pursuit of her; I may still succeed in bringing her
+     back to you. But I am in terrible fear--and I must tell you the
+     whole truth.
+
+     "Kitty received me alone. The room was very dark--only one lamp
+     that gave a bad light--so that I saw her very indistinctly. She was
+     in black, and, as far as I could see, extremely pale and weary. And
+     what struck me painfully was her haggard, careless look. All the
+     little details of her dress and hair seemed so neglected. Blanche
+     says she is far too irritable and impatient in the mornings to let
+     her hair be done as usual. She just rolls it into one big knot
+     herself and puts a comb in it. She wears the simplest clothes, and
+     changes as little as possible. She says she is soon going to have
+     done with all that kind of thing, and she must get used to it. My
+     own impression is that she is going through great agony of
+     mind--above all, that she is ill--ill in body and soul.
+
+     "She told me quite calmly, however, that she had made up her mind
+     to leave you; she said that she had written to you to tell you so.
+     I asked her if it was because she had ceased to love you. After a
+     pause she said 'No.' Was it because some one else had come between
+     you? She threw up her head proudly, and said it was best to be
+     quite plain and frank. She had met Geoffrey Cliffe again, and she
+     meant henceforward to share his life. Then she went into the
+     wildest dreams about going back with him to the Balkans, and
+     nursing in a hospital, and dying--she hopes!--of hard work and
+     privations. And all this in a torrent of words--and her eyes
+     blazing, with that look in them as though she saw nothing but the
+     scenes of her own imagination. She talked of devotion--and of
+     forgetting herself in other people. I could only tell her, of
+     course, that all this sounded to me the most grotesque sophistry
+     and perversion. She was forgetting her first duty, breaking her
+     marriage vow, and tearing your life asunder. She shook her head,
+     and said you would soon forget her. 'If he had loved me he would
+     never have left me!' she said, again and again, with a passion I
+     shall never forget.
+
+     "Of course that made me very angry, and I described what the
+     situation had been when you reached London--Lord Parham's state of
+     mind--and the consternation caused everywhere by the wretched book.
+     I tried to make her understand what there was at stake--the hopes
+     of all who follow you in the House and the country--the great
+     reforms of which you are the life and soul--your personal and
+     political honor. I impressed on her the endless trouble and
+     correspondence in which you had been involved--and how meanwhile
+     all your Home Office and cabinet work had to be carried on as
+     usual, till it was decided whether your resignation should be
+     withdrawn or no. She listened with her head on her hands. I think
+     with regard to the book she is most genuinely ashamed and
+     miserable. And yet all the time there is this unreasonable, this
+     monstrous feeling that you should not have left her!
+
+     "As to the scandalous references to private persons, she said that
+     Madeleine Alcot had written to her about the country-house gossip.
+     That wretched being, Mr. Darrell, seems also to have written to
+     her, trying to save himself through her. And the only time I saw
+     her laugh was when she spoke of having had a furious letter from
+     Lady Grosville about the references to Grosville Park. It was like
+     the laugh of a mischievous, unhappy child.
+
+     "Then we came back to the main matter, and I implored her to let me
+     take her home. First I gave her your letter. She read it, flushed
+     up, and threw it away from her. 'He commands me!' she said,
+     fiercely. 'But I am no one's chattel.' I replied that you had only
+     summoned her back to her duty and her home, and I asked her if she
+     could really mean to repay your unfailing love by bringing anguish
+     and dishonor upon you? She sat dumb, and her stubbornness moved me
+     so that I fear I lost my self-control and said more, much more--in
+     denunciation of her conduct--than I had meant to do. She heard me
+     out, and then she got up and looked at me very bitterly and
+     strangely. I had never loved her, she said, and so I could not
+     judge her. Always from the beginning I had thought her unfit to be
+     your wife, and she had known it, and my dislike of her, especially
+     during the past year, had made her hard and reckless. It had seemed
+     no use trying. I just wanted her dead, that you might marry a wife
+     who would be a help and not a stumbling-block. Well, I should have
+     my wish, for she would soon be as good as dead, both to you and to
+     me.
+
+     "All this hurt me deeply, and I could not restrain myself from
+     crying. I felt so helpless, and so doubtful whether I had not done
+     more harm than good. Then she softened a little, and asked me to
+     let her go to bed--she would think it all over and write to me in
+     the morning....
+
+     "So, my dear William, I can only pray and wait. I am afraid there
+     is but little hope, but God is merciful and strong. He may yet save
+     us all.
+
+     "But whatever happens, remember that you have nothing to reproach
+     yourself with--that you have done all that man could do. I should
+     telegraph to you in the morning to say, 'Come, at all hazards,' but
+     that I feel sure all will be settled to-morrow one way or the
+     other. Either Kitty will start with me--or she will go with
+     Geoffrey Cliffe. You could do nothing--absolutely nothing. God help
+     us! She seems to have some money, and she told me that she counted
+     on retaining her jointure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the night following her interview with Lady Tranmore, Kitty went from
+one restless, tormented dream into another, but towards morning she fell
+into one of a different kind. She dreamed she was in a country of great
+mountains. The peaks were snow-crowned, vast glaciers filled the chasms
+on their flanks, forests of pines clothed the lower sides of the hills,
+and the fields below were full of spring flowers. She saw a little
+Alpine village, and a church with an old and slender campanile. A plain
+stone building stood by--it seemed to be an inn of the old-fashioned
+sort--and she entered it. The dinner-table was ready in the low-roofed
+_salle-à-manger_, and as she sat down to eat she saw that two other
+guests were at the same table. She glanced at them, and perceived that
+one was William and the other her child, Harry, grown older--and
+transfigured. Instead of the dull and clouded look which had wrung her
+heart in the old days, against which she had striven, patiently and
+impatiently, in vain, the blue eyes were alive with mind and affection.
+It was as if the child beheld his mother for the first time and she him.
+As he recognized her he gave a cry of joy, waving one hand towards her
+while with the other he touched his father on the arm. William raised
+his head. But when he saw his wife his face changed. He rose from his
+seat, and drawing the little boy into his arms he walked away. Kitty saw
+them disappear into a long passage, indeterminate and dark. The child's
+face over his father's shoulder was turned in longing towards his
+mother, and as he was carried away he stretched out his little hands to
+her in lamentation.
+
+Kitty woke up bathed in tears. She sprang out of bed and threw the
+window nearest to her open to the night. The winter night was mild, and
+a full moon sailed the southern sky. Not a sound on the water, not a
+light in the palaces; a city of ebony and silver, Venice slept in the
+moonlight. Kitty gathered a cloak and some shawls round her, and sank
+into a low chair, still crying and half conscious. At his inn, some few
+hundred yards away, between her and the Piazzetta, was Geoffrey Cliffe
+waking too?--making his last preparations? She knew that all his stores
+were ready, and that he proposed to ship them and the twenty young
+fellows, Italians and Dalmatians, who were going with him to join the
+insurgents, that morning, by a boat leaving for Cattaro. He himself was
+to follow twenty-four hours later, and it was his firm and confident
+expectation that Kitty would go with him--passing as his wife. And,
+indeed, Kitty's own arrangements were almost complete, her money in her
+purse, the clothes she meant to take with her packed in one small trunk,
+some of the Tranmore jewels which she had been recently wearing ready
+to be returned on the morrow to Lady Tranmore's keeping, other jewels,
+which she regarded as her own, together with the remainder of her
+clothes, put aside, in order to be left in the custody of the landlord
+of the apartment till Kitty should claim them again.
+
+One more day--which would probably see the departure of Margaret
+French--one more wrestle with Lady Tranmore, and all the links with the
+old life would be torn away. A bare, stripped soul, dependent henceforth
+on Geoffrey Cliffe for every crumb of happiness, treading in unknown
+paths, suffering unknown things, probing unknown passions and
+excitements--it was so she saw herself; not without that corroding
+double consciousness of the modern, that it was all very interesting,
+and as such to be forgiven and admired.
+
+Notwithstanding what she had said to Ashe, she did believe--with a
+clinging and desperate faith--that Cliffe loved her. Had she really
+doubted it, her conduct would have been inexplicable, even to herself,
+and he must have seemed a madman. What else could have induced him to
+burden himself with a woman on such an errand and at such a time? She
+had promised, indeed, to be his lieutenant and comrade--and to return to
+Venice if her health should be unequal to the common task. But in spite
+of the sternness with which he put that task first--a sternness which
+was one of his chief attractions for Kitty--she knew well that her
+coming threw a glamour round it which it had never yet possessed, that
+the passion she had aroused in him, and the triumph of binding her to
+his fate, possessed him--for the moment at any rate--heart and soul. He
+had the poet's resources, too, and a mind wherewith to organize and
+govern. She shrank from him still, but she already envisaged the time
+when her being would sink into and fuse with his, and like two colliding
+stars they would flame together to one fiery death.
+
+Thoughts like these ran in her mind. Yet all the time she saw the high
+mountains of her dream, the old inn, the receding face of her child on
+William's shoulder; and the tears ran down her cheeks. The letter from
+William that Lady Tranmore had given her lay on a table near. She took
+it up, and lit a candle to read it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Kitty--I bid you come home. I should have started for Venice an hour
+ago, after reading Miss French's letter, but that honor and public duty
+keep me here. But mother is going, and I implore and command you, as
+your husband, to return with her. Oh, Kitty, have I ever failed
+you?--have I ever been hard with you?--that you should betray our love
+like this? Was I hard when we parted--a month ago? If I was, forgive me,
+I was sore pressed. Come home, you poor child, and you shall hear no
+reproaches from me. I think I have nearly succeeded in undoing your rash
+work. But what good will that be to me if you are to use my absence for
+that purpose to bring us both to ruin? Kitty, the grass is not yet green
+on our child's grave. I was at Haggart last Sunday, and I went over in
+the dusk to put some flowers upon it. I thought of you without a
+moment's bitterness, and prayed for us both, if such as I may pray. Then
+next morning came Miss French's letter. Kitty, have you no heart--and no
+conscience? Will you bring disgrace on that little grave? Will you dig
+between us the gulf which is irreparable, across which your hand and
+mine can never touch each other any more? I cannot and I will not
+believe it. Come back to me--come back!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She reread it with a melting heart--with deep, shaking sobs. When she
+first glanced through it the word "command" had burned into her proud
+sense; the rest passed almost unnoticed. Now the very strangeness in it
+as coming from William--the strangeness of its grave and deep
+emotion--held and grappled with her.
+
+Suddenly--some tension of the whole being seemed to give way. Her head
+sank back on the chair, she felt herself weak and trembling, yet happy
+as a soul new-born into a world of light. Waking dreams passed through
+her brain in a feverish succession, reversing the dream of the
+night--images of peace and goodness and reunion.
+
+Minutes--hours--passed. With the first light she got up feebly, found
+ink and paper, and began to write.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_From Lady Tranmore to William Ashe_:
+
+
+"Oh! my dearest William--at last a gleam of hope.
+
+"No letter this morning. I was in despair. Margaret reported that Kitty
+refused to see any one--had locked her door, and was writing. Yet no
+letter came. I made an attempt to see Geoffrey Cliffe, who is staying at
+the 'Germania,' but he refused. He wrote me the most audacious letter to
+say that an interview could only be very painful, that he and Kitty must
+decide for themselves, that he was waiting every hour for a final word
+from Kitty. It rested with her, and with her only. Coercion in these
+matters was no longer possible, and he did not suppose that either you
+or I would attempt it.
+
+"And now comes this blessed note--a respite at least! '_I am going to
+Verona to-night with Blanche. Please let no one attempt to follow me. I
+wish to have two days alone--absolutely alone. Wait here. I will write.
+K_.'
+
+"... Margaret French, too, has just been here. She was almost hysterical
+with relief and joy--and you know what a calm, self-controlled person
+she is. But her dear, round face has grown white, and her eyes behind
+her spectacles look as though she had not slept for nights. She says
+that Kitty will not see her. She sent her a note by Blanche to ask her
+to settle all the accounts, and told her that she should not say
+good-bye--it would be too agitating for them both. In two days she
+should hear. Meanwhile the maid Blanche is certainly going with Kitty;
+and the gondola is ordered for the Milan train this evening.
+
+"Two P.M. There is one thing that troubles me, and I must confess it. I
+did not see that across Kitty's letter in the corner was written 'Tell
+_nobody_ about this letter.' And Polly Lyster happened to be with me
+when it came. She has been _au courant_ of the whole affair for the last
+fortnight--that is, as an on-looker. She and Kitty have only met once or
+twice since Mary reached Venice; but in one way or another she has been
+extraordinarily well informed. And, as I told you, she came to see me
+directly I arrived and told me all she knew. You know her old friendship
+for us, William? She has many weaknesses, and of late I have thought her
+much changed, grown very hard and bitter. But she is always _very_
+loyal to you and me--and I could not help betraying my feeling when
+Kitty's note reached me. Mary came and put her arms round me, and I said
+to her, 'Oh, Mary, thank God!--she's broken with him! She's going to
+Verona to-night on the way home!' And she kissed me and seemed so glad.
+And I was very grateful to her for her sympathy, for I am beginning to
+feel my age, and this has been rather a strain. But I oughtn't to have
+told her!--or anybody! I see, of course, what Kitty meant. It is
+incredible that Mary should breathe a word--or if she did that it should
+reach that man. But I have just sent her a note to Danieli's to warn her
+in the strongest way.
+
+"Beloved son--if, indeed, we save her--we will be very good to her, you
+and I. We will remember her bringing up and her inheritance. I will be
+more loving--more like Christ. I hope He will forgive me for my
+harshness in the past.... My William!--I love you so! God be merciful to
+you and to your poor Kitty!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Will the signora have her dinner outside or in the _salle-à-manger?"_
+
+The question was addressed to Kitty by a little Italian waiter belonging
+to the Albergo San Zeno at Verona, who stood bent before her, his white
+napkin under his arm.
+
+"Out here, please--and for my maid also."
+
+The speaker moved wearily towards the low wall which bounded the foaming
+Adige, and looked across the river. Far away the Alps that look down on
+Garda glistened under the stars; the citadel on its hill, the houses
+across the river were alive with lights; to the left the great mediæval
+bridge rose, a dark, ponderous mass, above the torrents of the Adige.
+Overhead, the little outside restaurant was roofed with twining
+vine-stems from which the leaves had fallen; colored lights twinkled
+among them and on the white tables underneath. The night was mild and
+still, and a veiled moon was just rising over the town of Juliet.
+
+"Blanche!"
+
+"Yes, my lady?"
+
+"Bring a chair, Blanchie, and come and sit by me."
+
+The little maid did as she was told, and Kitty slipped her hand into
+hers with a long sigh.
+
+"Are you very tired, my lady?"
+
+"Yes--but don't talk!"
+
+The two sat silent, clinging to each other.
+
+A step on the cobble-stones disturbed them. Blanche looked up, and saw a
+gentleman issuing from a lane which connected the narrow quay whereon
+stood the old Albergo San Zeno with one of the main streets of Verona.
+
+There was a cry from Kitty. The stranger paused--looked--advanced. The
+little maid rose, half fierce, half frightened.
+
+"Go, Blanche, go!" said Kitty, panting; "go back into the hotel."
+
+"Not unless your ladyship wishes me to leave you," said the girl,
+firmly.
+
+"Go at once!" Kitty repeated, with a peremptory gesture. She herself
+rose from her seat, and with one hand resting on the table awaited the
+new-comer. Blanche looked at her--hesitated--and went.
+
+Geoffrey Cliffe came to Kitty's side. As he approached her his eyes
+fastened on the loveliness of her attitude, her fair head. In his own
+expression there was a visionary, fantastic joy; it was the look of the
+dreamer who, for once, finds in circumstance and the real, poetry
+adequate and overflowing.
+
+"Kitty!--why did you do this?" he said to her, passionately, as he
+caught her hand.
+
+Kitty snatched it away, trembling under his look. She began the answer
+she had devised while he was crossing the flagged quay towards her. But
+Cliffe paid no heed. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she sank back
+powerless into her chair as he bent over her.
+
+"Cruel--cruel child, to play with me so! Did you mean to put me to a
+last test?--or did your hard little heart misgive you at the last
+moment? I cross-examined your landlady--I bribed the servants--the
+gondoliers. Not a word! They were loyal--or you had paid them better. I
+went back to my hotel in black despair. Oh, you artist!--you plotter!
+Kitty--you shall pay me this some day! And there--there on my table--all
+the time--lay your little crumpled note!"
+
+"What note?" she gasped--"what note?"
+
+"Actress!" he said, with an amused laugh.
+
+And cautiously, playfully, lest she should snatch it from him, he
+unfolded it before her.
+
+Without signature and without date, the soiled half-sheet contained this
+message, written in Italian and in a disguised handwriting:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Too many spectators. Come to Verona to-night.
+                                       "K."
+
+Kitty looked at it, and then at the face beside her--infused with a
+triumphant power and passion. She seemed to shrink upon herself, and her
+head fell back against one of the supports of the _pergola_. One of the
+blue lights from above fell with ghastly effect upon the delicate tilted
+face and closed eyes. Cliffe bent over her in a sharp alarm, and saw
+that she had fainted away.
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+REQUIESCAT
+
+
+     "Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens,
+     Dusk the hall with yew!"
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+"How strange!" thought the Dean, as he once more stepped back into the
+street to look at the front of the Home Secretary's house in Hill
+Street. "He is certainly in town."
+
+For, according to the _Times_, William Ashe the night before had been
+hotly engaged in the House of Commons fighting an important bill, of
+which he was in charge, through committee. Yet the blinds of the house
+in Hill Street were all drawn, and the Dean had not yet succeeded in
+getting any one to answer the bell.
+
+He returned to the attack, and this time a charwoman appeared. At sight
+of the Dean's legs and apron, she dropped a courtesy, or something like
+one, informing him that they had workmen in the house and Mr. Ashe was
+"staying with her ladyship."
+
+The Dean took the Tranmores' number in Park Lane and departed thither,
+not without a sad glance at the desolate hall behind the charwoman and
+at the darkened windows of the drawing-room overhead. He thought of that
+May day two years before when he had dropped in to lunch with Lady
+Kitty; his memory, equally effective whether it summoned the detail of
+an English chronicle or the features of a face once seen, placed firm
+and clear before him the long-chinned fellow at Lady Kitty's left, to
+whose villany that empty and forsaken house bore cruel witness. And the
+little lady herself--what a radiant and ethereal beauty! Ah me! ah me!
+
+He walked on in meditation, his hands behind his back. Even in this May
+London the little Dean was capable of an abstracted spirit, and he had
+still much to think over. He had his appointment with Ashe. But Ashe had
+written--evidently in a press of business--from the House, and had
+omitted to mention his temporary change of address. The Dean regretted
+it. He would rather have done his errand with Lady Kitty's injured
+husband on some neutral ground, and not in Lady Tranmore's house.
+
+At Park Lane, however, he was immediately admitted.
+
+"Mr. Ashe will be down directly, sir," said the butler, as he ushered
+the visitor into the commodious library on the ground-floor, which had
+witnessed for so long the death-in-life of Lord Tranmore. But now Lord
+Tranmore was bedridden up-stairs, with two nurses to look after him, and
+to judge from the aspect of the tables piled with letters and books, and
+from the armful of papers which a private secretary carried off with him
+as he disappeared before the Dean, Ashe was now fully at home in the
+room which had been his father's.
+
+There was still a fire in the grate, and the small Dean, who was a
+chilly mortal, stood on the rug looking nervously about him. Lord
+Tranmore had been in office himself, and the room, with its bookshelves
+filled with volumes in worn calf bindings, its solid writing-tables and
+leather sofas, its candlesticks and inkstands of old silver, slender and
+simple in pattern, its well-worn Turkey carpet, and its political
+portraits--"the Duke," Johnny Russell, Lord Althorp, Peel,
+Melbourne--seemed, to the observer on the rug, steeped in the typical
+habit and reminiscence of English public life.
+
+Well, if the father, poor fellow, had been distinguished in his day, the
+son had gone far beyond him. The Dean ruminated on a conversation
+wherewith he had just beguiled his cup of tea at the Athenæum--a
+conversation with one of the shrewdest members of Lord Parham's cabinet,
+a "new man," and an enthusiastic follower of Ashe.
+
+"Ashe is magnificent! At last our side has found its leader. Oh! Parham
+will disappear with the next appeal to the country. He is getting too
+infirm! Above all, his eyes are nearly gone; his oculist, I hear, gives
+him no more than six months' sight, unless he throws up. Then Ashe will
+take his proper place, and if he doesn't make his mark on English
+history, I'm a Dutchman. Oh! of course that affair last year was an
+awful business--the two affairs! When Parliament opened in February
+there were some of us who thought that Ashe would never get through the
+session. A man so changed, so struck down, I have seldom seen. You
+remember what a handsome boy he was, up to last year even! Now he's a
+middle-aged man. All the same, he held on, and the House gave him that
+quiet sympathy and support that it can give when it likes a fellow. And
+gradually you could see the life come back into him--and the ambition.
+By George! he did well in that trade-union business before Easter; and
+the bill that's on now--it's masterly, the way in which he's piloting it
+through! The House positively likes to be managed by him; it's a sight
+worthy of our best political traditions. Oh yes, Ashe will go far; and,
+thank God, that wretched little woman--what has become of her,
+by-the-way?--has neither crushed his energy nor robbed England of his
+services. But it was touch and go."
+
+To all of which the Dean had replied little or nothing. But his heart
+had sunk within him; and the doubtfulness of a certain enterprise in
+which he was engaged had appeared to him in even more startling colors
+than before.
+
+However, here he was. And suddenly, as he stood before the fire, he
+bowed his white head, and said to himself a couple of verses from one of
+the Psalms for the day:
+
+     "Who will lead me into the strong city: who will bring me into Edom?
+     Oh, be thou our help in trouble: for vain is the help of man."
+
+The door opened, and the Dean straightened himself impetuously, every
+nerve tightening to its work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How do you do, my dear Dean?" said Ashe, enclosing the frail, ascetic
+hand in both his own. "I trust I have not kept you waiting. My mother
+was with me. Sit there, please; you will have the light behind you."
+
+"Thank you. I prefer standing a little, if you don't mind--and I like
+the fire."
+
+Ashe threw himself into a chair and shaded his eyes with his hand. The
+Dean noticed the strains of gray in his curly hair, and that aspect, as
+of something withered and wayworn, which had invaded the man's whole
+personality, balanced, indeed, by an intellectual dignity and
+distinction which had never been so commanding. It was as though the
+stern and constant wrestle of the mind had burned away all lesser
+things--the old, easy grace, the old, careless pleasure in life.
+
+"I think you know," began the Dean, clearing his throat, "why I asked
+you to see me?"
+
+"You wished, I think, to speak to me--about my wife," said Ashe, with
+difficulty.
+
+Under his sheltering hand, his eyes looked straight before him into the
+fire.
+
+The Dean fidgeted a moment, lifted a small Greek vase on the
+mantel-piece, and set it down--then turned round.
+
+"I heard from her ten days ago--the most piteous letter. As you know, I
+had always a great regard for her. The news of last year was a sharp
+sorrow to me--as though she had been a daughter. I felt I must see her.
+So I put myself into the train and went to Venice."
+
+Ashe started a little, but said nothing.
+
+"Or, rather, to Treviso, for, as I think you know, she is there with
+Lady Alice."
+
+"Yes, that I had heard."
+
+The Dean paused again, then moved a little nearer to Ashe, looking down
+upon him.
+
+"May I ask--stop me if I seem impertinent--how much you know of the
+history of the winter?"
+
+"Very little!" said Ashe, in a low voice. "My mother got some
+information from the English consul at Trieste, who is a friend of
+hers--to whom, it seems, Lady Kitty applied; but it did not amount to
+much."
+
+The Dean drew a small note-book from a breast-pocket and looked at some
+entries in it.
+
+"They seem to have reached Marinitza in November If I understood aright,
+Lady Kitty had no maid with her?"
+
+"No. The maid Blanche was sent home from Verona."
+
+"How Lady Kitty ever got through the journey!--or the winter!" said the
+Dean, throwing up his hands. "Her health, of course, is irreparably
+injured. But that she did not die a dozen times over, of hardship and
+misery, is the most astonishing thing! They were in a wretched village,
+nearly four thousand feet up, a village of wooden huts, with a wooden
+hospital. All the winter nearly they were deep in snow, and Lady Kitty
+worked as a nurse. Cliffe seems to have been away fighting, very often,
+and at other times came back to rest and see to supplies."
+
+"I understand she passed as his wife?" said Ashe.
+
+The Dean made a sign of reluctant assent.
+
+"They lived in a little house near the hospital. She tells me that after
+the first two months she began to loathe him, and she moved into the
+hospital to escape him. He tried at first to melt and propitiate her;
+but when he found that it was no use, and that she was practically lost
+to him, he changed his temper, and he might have behaved to her like the
+tyrant he is but that her hold over the people among whom they were
+living, both on the fighting-men and the women, had become by this time
+greater than his own. They adored her, and Cliffe dared not ill-treat
+her. And so it went on through the winter. Sometimes they were on more
+friendly terms than at others. I gather that when he showed his
+dare-devil, heroic side she would relent to him, and talk as though she
+loved him. But she would never go back--to live with him; and that after
+a time alienated him completely. He was away more and more; and at last
+she tells me there was a handsome Bosnian girl, and--well, you can
+imagine the rest. Lady Kitty was so ill in March that they thought her
+dying, but she managed to write to this consul you spoke of at Trieste,
+and he sent up a doctor and a nurse. But this you probably know?"
+
+"Yes," said Ashe, hoarsely. "I heard that she was apparently very ill
+when she reached Treviso, but that she had rallied under Alice's
+nursing. Lady Alice wrote to my mother."
+
+"Did she tell Lady Tranmore anything of Lady Kitty's state of mind?"
+said the Dean, after a pause.
+
+Ashe also was slow in answering. At last he said:
+
+"I understand there has been great regret for the past."
+
+"Regret!" cried the Dean. "If ever there was a terrible case of the
+dealings of God with a human soul--"
+
+He began to walk up and down impetuously, wrestling with emotion.
+
+"Did she give you any explanation," said Ashe, presently, in a voice
+scarcely audible--"of their meeting at Verona? You know my mother
+believed--that she had broken with him--that all was saved. Then came a
+letter from the maid, written at Kitty's direction, to say that she had
+left her mistress--and they had started for Bosnia."
+
+"No; I tried. But she seemed to shrink with horror from everything to do
+with Verona. I have always supposed that fellow in some way got the
+information he wanted--bought it no doubt--and pursued her. But that
+she honestly meant to break with him I have no doubt at all."
+
+Ashe said nothing.
+
+"Think," said the Dean, "of the effect of that man's sudden
+appearance--of his romantic and powerful personality--your wife alone,
+miserable--doubting your love for her--"
+
+Ashe raised his hand with a gesture of passion.
+
+"If she had had the smallest love left for me she could have protected
+herself! I had written to her--she knew--"
+
+His voice broke. The Dean's face quivered.
+
+"My dear fellow--God knows--" He broke off. When he recovered composure
+he said:
+
+"Let us go back to Lady Kitty. Regret is no word to express what I saw.
+She is consumed by remorse night and day. She is also still--as far as
+my eyes can judge--desperately ill. There is probably lung trouble
+caused by the privations of the winter. And the whole nervous system is
+shattered."
+
+Ashe looked up. His aspect showed the effect of the words.
+
+"Every provision shall be made for her," he said, in a voice muffled and
+difficult. "Lady Alice has been told already to spare no expense--to do
+everything that can be done."
+
+"There is only one thing that can be done for her," said the Dean.
+
+Ashe did not speak.
+
+"There is only one thing that you or any one else could do for her," the
+Dean repeated, slowly, "and that is to love--and forgive her!" His
+voice trembled.
+
+"Was it her wish that you should come to me?" said Ashe, after a moment.
+
+"Yes. I found her at first very despairing--and extremely difficult to
+manage. She regretted she had written to me, and neither Lady Alice nor
+I could get her to talk. But one day"--the old man turned away, looking
+into the fire, with his back to Ashe, and with difficulty pursued his
+story--"one day, whether it was, the sight of a paralyzed child that
+used to come to Lady Alice's lace-class, or some impression from the
+service of the mass to which she often goes in the early mornings with
+her sister, I don't know, but she sent for me--and--and broke down
+entirely. She implored me to see you, and to ask you if she might live
+at Haggart, near the child's grave. She told me that according to every
+doctor she has seen she is doomed, physically. But I don't think she
+wants to work upon your pity. She herself declares that she has much
+more vitality than people think, and that the doctors may be all wrong.
+So that you are not to take that into account. But if you will so far
+forgive her as to let her live at Haggart, and occasionally to go and
+see her, that would be the only happiness to which she could now look
+forward, and she promises that she will follow your wishes in every
+respect, and will not hinder or persecute you in any way."
+
+Ashe threw up his hands in a melancholy gesture. The Dean understood it
+to mean a disbelief in the ability of the person promising to keep such
+an engagement. His face flushed--he looked uncertainly at Ashe.
+
+"For my part," he said, quickly, "I am not going to advise you for a
+moment to trust to any such promise."
+
+Rising from his seat, Ashe began to pace the room. The Dean followed him
+with his eyes, which kindled more and more.
+
+"But," he resumed, "I none the less urge and implore you to grant Lady
+Kitty's prayer."
+
+Ashe slightly shook his head. The little Dean drew himself together.
+
+"May I speak to you--with a full frankness? I have known and loved you
+from a boy. And"--he stopped a moment, then said, simply--"I am a
+Christian minister."
+
+Ashe, with a sad and charming courtesy, laid his hand on the old man's
+arm.
+
+"I can only be grateful to you," he said, and stood waiting.
+
+"At least you will understand me," said the Dean. "You are not one of
+the small souls. Well--here it is! Lady Kitty has been an unfaithful
+wife. She does not attempt to deny or cover it. But in my belief she
+loves you still, and has always loved you. And when you married her, you
+must, I think, have realized that you were running no ordinary risks.
+The position and antecedents of her mother--the bringing up of the poor
+child herself--the wildness of her temperament, and the absence of
+anything like self-discipline and self-control, must surely have made
+you anxious? I certainly remember that Lady Tranmore was full of fears."
+
+He looked for a reply.
+
+"Yes," said Ashe, "I was anxious. Or, rather, I saw the risks clearly.
+But I was in love, and I thought that love could do everything."
+
+The Dean looked at him curiously--hesitated--and at last said:
+
+"Forgive me. Did you take your task seriously enough?--did you give Lady
+Kitty all the help you might?"
+
+The blue eyes scanned Ashe's face. Ashe turned away, as though the words
+had touched a sore.
+
+"I know very well," he said, unsteadily, "that I seemed to you and
+others a weak and self-indulgent fool. All I can say is, it was not in
+me to play the tutor and master to my wife."
+
+"She was so young, so undisciplined," said the Dean, earnestly. "Did you
+guard her as you might?"
+
+A touch of impatience appeared in Ashe.
+
+"Do you really think, my dear Dean," he said, as he resumed his walk up
+and down, "that one human being has, ultimately, any decisive power over
+another? If so, I am more of a believer in--fate--or liberty--I am not
+sure which--than you."
+
+The Dean sighed.
+
+"That you were infinitely good and loving to her we all know."
+
+"'Good'--'loving'?" said Ashe, under his breath, with a note of scorn.
+"I--"
+
+He restrained himself, hiding his face as he hung over the fire.
+
+There was a silence, till the Dean once more placed himself in Ashe's
+path. "My dear friend--you saw the risks, and yet you took them! You
+made the vow 'for better, for worse.' My friend, you have, so to speak,
+lost your venture! But let me urge on you that the obligation remains!"
+
+"What obligation?"
+
+"The obligation to the life you took into your own hands--to the soul
+you vowed to cherish," said the Dean, with an apostolic and passionate
+earnestness.
+
+Ashe stood before him, pale, and charged with resolution.
+
+"That obligation--has been cancelled--by the laws of your own Christian
+faith, no less than by the ordinary laws of society."
+
+"I do not so read it!" cried the Dean, with vivacity. "Men say so, 'for
+the hardness of their hearts.' But the divine pity which transformed
+men's idea of marriage could never have meant to lay it down that in
+marriage alone there was to be no forgiveness."
+
+"You forget your text," said Ashe, steadily. "Saving for the cause--'"
+His voice failed him.
+
+"Permissive!" was the Dean's eager reply--"permissive only. There are
+cases, I grant you--cases of impenitent wickedness--where the higher law
+is suspended, finds no chance to act--where relief from the bond is
+itself mercy and justice. But the higher law is always there. You know
+the formula--'It was said by them of old time. But _I_ say unto you--'
+And then follows the new law of a new society. And so in marriage. If
+love has the smallest room to work--if forgiveness can find the
+narrowest foothold--love and forgiveness are imposed on--demanded
+of--the Christian!--here as everywhere else. Love and forgiveness--_not_
+penalty and hate!"
+
+"There is no question of hate--and--I doubt whether I am a Christian,"
+said Ashe, quietly, turning away.
+
+The Dean looked at him a little askance--breathing fast.
+
+"But you are a _heart_, William!" he said, using the privilege, of his
+white hairs, speaking as he might have spoken to the Eton boy of twenty
+years before--"ay, and one of the noblest. You gathered that poor thing
+into your arms--knowing what were the temptations of her nature, and she
+became the mother of your child. Now--alas! those temptations have
+conquered her. But she still turns to you--she still clings to you--and
+she has no one else. And if you reject her she will go down unforgiven
+and despairing to the grave."
+
+For the first time Ashe's lips trembled. But his speech was very quiet
+and collected.
+
+"I must try and explain myself," he said. "Why should we talk of
+forgiveness? It is not a word that I much understand, or that means much
+to men of my type and generation. I see what has happened in this way.
+Kitty's conduct last year hit me desperately hard. It destroyed my
+private happiness, and but for the generosity of the best friends ever
+man had it would have driven me out of public life. I warned her that
+the consequences of the Cliffe matter would be irreparable, and she
+still carried it through. She left me for that man--and at a time when
+by her own action it was impossible for me to defend either her or
+myself. What course of action remained to me? I _did_ remember her
+temperament, her antecedents, and the certainty that this man, whatever
+might be his moments of heroism, was a selfish and incorrigible brute in
+his dealings with women. So I wrote to her, through this same consul at
+Trieste. I let her know that if she wished it, and if there were any
+chance of his marrying her, I would begin divorce proceedings at once.
+She had only to say the word. If she did not wish it, I would spare her
+and myself the shame and scandal of publicity. And if she left him, I
+would make additional provision for her which would insure her every
+comfort. She never sent a word of reply, and I have taken no steps. But
+as soon as I heard she was at Treviso, I wrote again--or, rather, this
+time my lawyers wrote, suggesting that the time had come for the extra
+provision I had spoken of, which I was most ready and anxious to make."
+
+He paused.
+
+"And this," said the Dean, "is all? This is, in fact, your answer to
+me?"
+
+Ashe made a sign of assent.
+
+"Except," he added, with emotion, "that I have heard, only to-day, that
+if Kitty wishes it, her old friend Miss French will go out to her at
+once, nurse her, and travel with her as long as she pleases. Miss
+French's brother has just married, and she is at liberty. She is most
+deeply attached to Kitty, and as soon as she heard Lady Alice's
+report of her state she forgot everything else. Can you not
+persuade--Kitty"--he looked up urgently--"to accept her offer?"
+
+"I doubt it," said the Dean, sadly. "There is only one thing she pines
+for, and without it she will be a sick child crossed. Ah! well--well! So
+to allow her to share your life again--however humbly and
+intermittently--is impossible?"
+
+It seemed to the Dean that a shudder passed through the man beside him.
+
+"Impossible," said Ashe, sharply. "But not only for private reasons."
+
+"You mean your public duty stands in the way?"
+
+"Kitty left me of her own free will. I have put my hand to the plough
+again--and I cannot turn back. You can see for yourself that I am not at
+my own disposal--I belong to my party, to the men with whom I act, who
+have behaved to me with the utmost generosity."
+
+"Of course Lady Kitty could no longer share your public life. But at
+Haggart--in seclusion?"
+
+"You know what her personality is--how absorbing--how impossible to
+forget! No--if she returned to me, on any terms whatever, all the old
+conditions would begin again. I should inevitably have to leave
+politics."
+
+"And that--you are not prepared to do?"
+
+The Dean wondered at his own audacity, and a touch of proud surprise
+expressed itself in Ashe.
+
+"I should have preferred to put it that I have accepted great tasks and
+heavy responsibilities--and that I am not my own master."
+
+The Dean watched him closely. Across the field of imagination there
+passed the figure of one who "went away sorrowful, having
+great possessions," and his heart--the heart of a child or a
+knight-errant--burned within him.
+
+But before he could speak again the door of the room opened and a lady
+in black entered. Ashe turned towards her.
+
+"Do you forbid me, William?" she said, quietly--"or may I join your
+conversation?"
+
+Ashe held out his hand and drew her to him. Lady Tranmore greeted her
+old friend the Dean, and he looked at her overcome with emotion and
+doubt.
+
+"You have come to us at a critical moment," he said--"and I am afraid
+you are against me."
+
+She asked what they had been discussing, though, indeed, as she said,
+she partly guessed. And the Dean, beginning to be shaken in his own
+cause, repeated his pleadings with a sinking heart. They sounded to him
+stranger and less persuasive than before. In doing what he had done he
+had been influenced by an instinctive feeling that Ashe would not treat
+the wrong done him as other men might treat it; that, to put it at the
+least, he would be able to handle it with an ethical originality, to
+separate himself in dealing with it from the mere weight of social
+tradition. Yet now as he saw the faces of mother and son together--the
+mother leaning on the son's arm--and realized all the strength of the
+social ideas which they represented, even though, in Ashe's case, there
+had been a certain individual flouting of them, futile and powerless in
+the end--the Dean gave way.
+
+"There--there!" he said, as he finished his plea, and Lady Tranmore's
+sad gravity remained untouched. "I see you both think me a dreamer of
+dreams!"
+
+"Nay, dear friend!" said Lady Tranmore, with the melancholy smile which
+lent still further beauty to the refined austerity of her face; "these
+things seem possible to you, because you are the soul of goodness--"
+
+"And a pious old fool to boot!" said the Dean, impatiently. "But I am
+willing--like St. Paul and my betters--to be a fool for Christ's sake.
+Lady Tranmore, are you or are you not a Christian?"
+
+"I hope so," she said, with composure, while her cheek flushed. "But our
+Lord did not ask impossibilities. He knew there were limits to human
+endurance--and human pardon--though there might be none to God's."
+
+"'Be ye perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,'" cried
+the Dean. "Where are the limits there?"
+
+"There are other duties in life besides that to a wife who has betrayed
+her husband," she said, steadily. "You ask of William what he has not
+the strength to give. His life was wrecked, and he has pieced it
+together again. And now he has given it to his country. That poor,
+guilty child has no claim upon it."
+
+"But understand," said Ashe, interposing, with an energy that seemed to
+express the whole man--"while I live, _everything_--short of what you
+ask--that can be done to protect or ease her, shall be done. Tell her
+that."
+
+His features worked painfully. The Dean took up his hat and stick.
+
+"And may I tell her, too," he said, pausing--"that you forgive her?"
+
+Ashe hesitated.
+
+"I do not believe," he said, at last, "that she would attach any more
+meaning to that word than I do. She would think it unreal. What's done
+is done."
+
+The Dean's heart leaped up in the typical Christian challenge to the
+fatal and the irrevocable. While life lasts the lost sheep can always be
+sought and found; and love, the mystical wine, can always be poured into
+the wounds of the soul, healing and recreating! But he said no more. He
+felt himself humiliated and defeated.
+
+Ashe and Lady Tranmore took leave of him with an extreme gentleness and
+affection. He would almost rather they had treated him ill. Yes, he was
+an optimist and a dreamer!--one who had, indeed, never grappled in his
+own person with the worst poisons and corrosions of the soul. Yet still,
+as he passed along the London streets--marked here and there by the
+newspaper placards which announced Ashe's committee triumphs of the
+night before--he was haunted anew by the immortal words:
+
+"One thing thou lackest," ... and "Come, follow me!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ah!--could he have done such a thing himself? or was he merely the
+scribe carelessly binding on other men's shoulders things grievous to be
+borne? The answering passion of his faith mounted within him--joined
+with a scorn for the easy conditions and happy, scholarly pursuits of
+his own life, and a thirst which in the early days of Christendom would
+have been a thirst for witness and for martyrdom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three days later the Dean--a somewhat shrunken and diminished figure, in
+ordinary clerical dress, without the buckles and silk stockings that
+typically belonged to him--stood once more at the entrance of a small
+villa outside the Venetian town of Treviso.
+
+He was very weary, and as he sought disconsolately through all his
+pockets for the wherewithal to pay his fly, while the spring rain
+pattered on his wide-awake, he produced an impression as of some
+delicate, draggled thing, which would certainly have gone to the heart
+of his adoring wife could she have beheld it. The Dean's ways were not
+sybaritic. He pecked at food and drink like a bird; his clothes never
+caused him a moment's thought; and it seemed to him a waste of the night
+to use it for sleeping. But none the less did he go through life finely
+looked after. Mrs. Winston dressed him, took his tickets and paid his
+cabs, and without her it was an arduous matter for the Dean to arrive at
+any destination whatever. As it was, in the journey from Paris he had
+lost one of the two bags which Mrs. Winston had packed for him, and he
+looked remorsefully at the survivor as it was deposited on the steps
+beside him.
+
+It did not, however, remain on the steps. For when Lady Alice's
+maid-housekeeper appeared, she informed the Dean, with a certain flurry
+of manner, that the ladies were not at home. They had gone off that
+morning--suddenly--to Venice, leaving a letter for him, should he
+arrive.
+
+"_Fermate!_" cried the Dean, turning towards the cab, which was trailing
+away, and the man, who had been scandalously overpaid, came back with
+alacrity, while the Dean stepped in to read the letter.
+
+When he came out again he was very pale and in a great haste. He bade
+the man replace the bag and drive him at once to the railway-station.
+
+On the way thither he murmured to himself, "Horrible!--horrible!"--and
+both the letter and a newspaper which had been enclosed in it shook in
+his hands.
+
+He had half an hour to wait before the advent of the evening train for
+Venice, and he spent it in a quiet corner poring over the newspaper. And
+not that newspaper only, for he presently became aware that all the
+small, ill-printed sheets offered him by an old newsvender in the
+station were full of the same news, and some with later detail--nay,
+that the people walking up and down in the station were eagerly talking
+of it.
+
+An Englishman had been assassinated in Venice. It seemed that a body had
+been discovered early on the preceding morning floating in one of the
+small canals connecting the Fondamente Nuove with the Grand Canal. It
+had been stabbed in three places; two of the wounds must have been
+fatal. The papers in the pocket identified the murdered man as the
+famous English traveller, poet, and journalist, Mr. Geoffrey Cliffe. Mr.
+Cliffe had just returned from an arduous winter in the Balkans, where he
+had rendered superb service to the cause of the Bosnian insurgents. He
+was well known in Venice, and the terrible event had caused a profound
+sensation there. No clew to the outrage had yet been obtained. But Mr.
+Cliffe's purse and watch had not been removed.
+
+The Dean arrived in Venice by the midnight train, and went to the hotel
+on the Riva whither Lady Alice had directed him. She was still up,
+waiting to see him, and in the dark passage outside Kitty's door she
+told him what she knew of the murder. It appeared that late that night a
+startling arrest had been made--of no less a person than the Signorina
+Ricci, the well-known actress of the Apollo Theatre, and of two men
+supposed to have been hired by her for the deed. This news was still
+unknown to Kitty--she was in bed, and her companion had kept it from
+her.
+
+"How is she?" asked the Dean.
+
+"Frightfully excited--or else dumb. She let me give her something to
+make her sleep. Strangely enough, she said to me this morning on the
+way from Treviso: 'It is a woman--and I know her!'"
+
+The following day, when the Dean entered the dingy hotel sitting-room, a
+thin figure in black came hurriedly out of the bedroom beside it, and
+Kitty caught him by the hand.
+
+"Isn't it horrible?" she said, staring at him with her changed,
+dark-rimmed eyes. "She tried once, in Bosnia. One of the Italians who
+came out with us--she had got hold of him. Do you think--he suffered?"
+
+Her voice was quite quiet. The Dean shuddered.
+
+"One of the stabs was in the heart," he said. "But try and put it from
+you, Lady Kitty. Sit down." He touched her gently on the shoulder.
+
+Kitty nodded.
+
+"Ah, then," she said--"_then_ he couldn't have suffered--could he? I'm
+glad."
+
+She let the Dean put her in a chair, and, clasping her hands round her
+knees, she seemed to pursue her own thoughts.
+
+Her aspect affected him almost beyond bearing. Ashe's brilliant
+wife?--London's spoiled child?--this withered, tragic little creature,
+of whom it was impossible to believe that, in years, she was not yet
+twenty-four? So bewildered in mind, so broken in nerve was she, that it
+was not till he had sat with her some time, now entering perforce into
+the cloud of horror that brooded over her, now striving to drag her from
+it, that she asked him about his visit to England.
+
+He told her in a faltering voice.
+
+She received it very quietly, even with a little, queer, twisting
+laugh.
+
+"I thought he wouldn't. Was Lady Tranmore there?"
+
+The Dean replied that Lady Tranmore had been there.
+
+"Ah, then, of course there was no chance," said Kitty. "When one is as
+good as that, one never forgives."
+
+She looked up quickly. "Did William say he forgave me?"
+
+The Dean hesitated.
+
+"He said a great deal that was kind and generous."
+
+A slight spasm passed over Kitty's face.
+
+"I suppose he thought it ridiculous to talk of forgiving. So did
+I--once."
+
+She covered her eyes with her hands--removing them to say, impatiently:
+
+"One can't go on being sorry every moment of the day. No, one can't! Why
+are we made so? William would agree with me there."
+
+"Dear Lady Kitty!" said the Dean, tenderly--"God forgives--and with Him
+there is always hope, and fresh beginning."
+
+Kitty shook her head.
+
+"I don't know what that means," she said. "I wonder whether"--she looked
+at him with a certain piteous and yet affectionate malice--"if you'd
+been as deep as I, whether _you_'d know."
+
+The Dean flushed. The hidden wound stung again. Had he, then, no right
+to speak? He felt himself the elder son of the parable--and hated
+himself anew.
+
+But he was a Christian, on his Master's business. He must obey orders,
+even though he could feel no satisfaction, or belief in himself--though
+he seem to himself such a shallow and perfunctory person. So he did his
+tender best for Kitty. He spent his loving, enthusiastic, pitiful soul
+upon her; and while he talked to her she sat with her hands crossed on
+her lap, and her eyes wandering through the open window to the forests
+of masts outside and the dancing wavelets of the lagoon. When at last he
+spoke of the further provision Ashe wished to make for her, when he
+implored her to summon Margaret French, she shook her head. "I must
+think what I shall do," she said, quietly; and a minute afterwards, with
+a flash of her old revolt--"He cannot prevent my going to Harry's
+grave!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Early the following morning the murdered man was carried to the cemetery
+at San Michele. In spite of some attempt on the part of the police to
+keep the hour secret, half Venice followed the black-draped barca, which
+bore that flawed poet and dubious hero to his rest.
+
+It was a morning of exceeding beauty. On the mean and solitary front of
+the Casa dei Spiriti there shone a splendor of light; the lagoon was
+azure and gold; the main-land a mist of trees in their spring leaf;
+while far away the cypresses of San Francesco, the slender tower of
+Torcello, and the long line of Murano--and farther still the majestic
+wall of silver Alps--greeted the eyes that loved them, as the ear is
+soothed by the notes of a glorious and yet familiar music.
+
+Amid the crowd of gondolas that covered the shallow stretch of lagoon
+between the northernmost houses of Venice and the island graveyard,
+there was one which held two ladies. Alice Wensleydale was there against
+her will, and her pinched and tragic face showed her repulsion and
+irritation. She had endeavored in vain to dissuade Kitty from coming;
+but in the end she had insisted on accompanying her. Possibly, as the
+boat glided over the water amid a crowd of laughing, chattering
+Italians, the silent Englishwoman was asking herself what was to be the
+future of the trust she had taken on herself. Kitty in her extremity had
+remembered her half-sister's promise, and had thrown herself upon it.
+But a few weeks' experience had shown that they were strange and
+uncongenial to each other. There was no true affection between
+them--only a certain haunting instinct of kindred. And even this was
+weakened or embittered by those memories in Alice's mind which Kitty
+could never approach and Alice never forget. What was she to do with her
+half-sister, stranded and dishonored as she was?--How content or comfort
+her?--How live her own life beside her?
+
+Kitty sat silent, her eyes fixed upon the barca which held the coffin
+under its pall. Her mind was the scene of an infinite number of floating
+and fragmentary recollections; of the day when she and Cliffe had
+followed the _murazzi_ towards the open sea; of the meeting at Verona;
+of the long winter, with its hardship and its horror; and that hatred
+and contempt which had sprung up between them. Could she love no one,
+cling faithfully to no one? And now the restless brain, the vast
+projects, the mixed nature, the half-greatness of the man had been
+silenced--crushed--in a moment, by the stroke of a knife. He had been
+killed by a jealous woman--because of his supposed love for another
+woman, whose abhorrence, in truth, he had earned in a few short weeks.
+There was something absurd mingled with the horror--as though one
+watched the prank of a demon.
+
+Her sensuous nature was tormented by the thought of the last moment. Had
+he had time to feel despair--the thirst for life? She prayed not. She
+thought of the Sunday afternoon at Grosville Park when they had tried to
+play billiards, and Lord Grosville had come down on them; or she saw him
+sitting opposite to her, at supper, on the night of the fancy ball, in
+the splendid Titian dress, while she gloated over the thoughts of the
+trick she had played on Mary Lyster--or bending over her when she woke
+from her swoon at Verona. Had she ever really loved him for one
+hour?--and if not, what possible excuse, before gods or men, was there
+for this ugly, self-woven tragedy into which she had brought herself and
+him, merely because her vanity could not bear that William had not been
+able to love her, for long, far above all her deserts?
+
+William! Her heart leaped in her breast. He was thirty-six--and she not
+twenty-four. A strange and desolate wonder overtook her as the thought
+seized her of the years they might still spend on the same
+earth--members of the same country, breathing the same air--and yet
+forever separate. Never to see him--or speak to him again!--the thought
+stirred her imagination, as it were, while it tortured her; there was in
+it a certain luxury and romance of pain.
+
+Thus, as she followed Cliffe to his last blood-stained rest, did her
+mind sink in dreams of Ashe--and in the dismal reckoning up of all that
+she had so lightly and inconceivably lost. Sometimes she found herself
+absorbed in a kind of angry marvelling at the strength of the old moral
+commonplaces.
+
+It had been so easy and so exciting to defy them. Stones which the
+builders of life reject--do they still avenge themselves in the old way?
+There was a kind of rage in the thought.
+
+On the way home Kitty expressed a wish to go into St. Mark's alone. Lady
+Alice left her there, and in the shadow of the atrium Kitty looked at
+her strangely, and kissed her.
+
+An hour after Lady Alice had reached the hotel a letter was brought to
+her. In it Kitty bade her--and the Dean--farewell, and asked that no
+effort should be made to track her. "I am going to friends--where I
+shall be safe and at peace. Thank you both with all my heart. Let no one
+think about me any more."
+
+Of course they disobeyed her. They made what search in Venice they
+could, without rousing a scandal, and Ashe rushed out to join it, using
+the special means at a minister's disposal. But it was fruitless. Kitty
+vanished like a wraith in the dawn; and the living world of action and
+affairs knew her no more.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+"Well, I must have a carriage!" said William Ashe to the landlord of one
+of the coaching inns of Domo Dossola--"and if you can't give me one for
+less, I suppose I shall have to pay this most ridiculous charge. Tell
+the man to put to at once."
+
+The landlord who owned the carriages, and would be sitting snugly at
+home while the peasant on the box faced the elements in consideration of
+a large number of extra francs to his master, retired with a deferential
+smile, and told Emilio to bring the horses.
+
+Meanwhile Ashe finished an indifferent dinner, paid a large bill, and
+went out to survey the preparations for departure, so far as the pelting
+rain in the court-yard would let him. He was going over the Simplon,
+starting rather late in the day, and the weather was abominable. His
+valet, Richard Dell, kept watch over the luggage and encouraged the
+ostlers, with a fairly stoical countenance. He was an old traveller, and
+though he would have preferred not to travel in a deluge, he disliked
+Italy, as a country of sour wine, and would be glad to find himself
+across the Alps. Moreover, he knew the decision of his master's
+character, and, being a man of some ability and education, he took a
+pride in the loftiness of the affairs on which Ashe was generally
+engaged. If Mr. Ashe said that he _must_ get to Geneva the following
+morning, and to London the morning after, on important business--why, he
+_must_, and it was no good talking about weather.
+
+They rattled off through the streets of Domo Dossola, Dell in front with
+the driver, under a waterproof hood and apron, Ashe in the closed landau
+behind, with a plentiful supply of books, newspapers, and cigars to
+while away the time.
+
+At Isella, the frontier village, he took advantage of the custom-house
+formalities and of a certain lull in the storm to stroll a little in
+front of the inn. On the Italian side, looking east, there was a certain
+wild lifting of the clouds, above the lower course of the stream
+descending from the Gondo ravine; upon the distant meadows and mountain
+slopes that marked the opening of the Tosa valley, storm-lights came and
+went, like phantom deer chased by the storm-clouds; beside him the
+swollen river thundered past, seeking a thirsty Italy; and behind, over
+the famous Gondo cleft, lay darkness, and a pelting tumult of rain.
+
+Ashe turned back to the carriage, bidding a silent farewell to a country
+he did not love--a country mainly significant to him of memories which
+rose like a harsh barrier between his present self and a time when he,
+too, fleeted life carelessly, like other men, and found every hour
+delightful. Never, as long as he lived, should he come willingly to
+Italy. But his mother this year had fallen into such an exhaustion of
+body and mind, caused by his father's long agony, that he had persuaded
+her to let him carry her over the Alps to Stresa--a place she had known
+as a girl and of which she often spoke--for a Whitsuntide holiday. He
+himself was no longer in office. A coalition between the Tories and
+certain dissident Liberals had turned out Lord Parham's government in
+the course of a stormy autumn session, some eight months before. It had
+been succeeded by a weak administration, resting on two or three loosely
+knit groups--with Ashe as leader of the Opposition. Hence his
+comparative freedom, and the chance to be his mother's escort.
+
+But at Stresa he had been overtaken by some startling political
+news--news which seemed to foreshadow an almost immediate change of
+ministry; and urgent telegrams bade him return at once. The coalition on
+which the government relied had broken down; the resignation of its
+chief, a "transient and embarrassed phantom," was imminent; and it was
+practically certain, in the singular dearth of older men on his own
+side, since the retirement of Lord Parham, that within a few weeks, if
+not days, Ashe would be called upon to form an administration....
+
+The carriage was soon on its way again, and presently, in the darkness
+of the superb ravine that stretches west and north from Gondo, the
+tumult of wind and water was such that even Ashe's slackened pulses felt
+the excitement of it. He left the carriage, and, wrapped in a waterproof
+cape, breasted the wind along the water's edge. Wordsworth's magnificent
+lines in the "Prelude," dedicated to this very spot, came back to him,
+as to one who in these later months had been able to renew some of the
+literary habits and recollections of earlier years
+
+     "--Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light!"
+
+But here on this wild night were only tumult and darkness; and if Nature
+in this aspect were still to be held, as Wordsworth makes her, the Voice
+and Apocalypse of God, she breathed a power pitiless and terrible to
+man. The fierce stream below, the tiny speck made by the carriage and
+horses straining against the hurricane of wind, the forests on the
+farther bank climbing to endless heights of rain, the flowers in the
+rock crannies lashed and torn, the gloom and chill which had thus
+blotted out a June evening: all these impressions were impressions of
+war, of struggle and attack, of forces unfriendly and overwhelming.
+
+A certain restless and melancholy joy in the challenge of the storm,
+indeed, Ashe felt, as many another strong man has felt before him, in a
+similar emptiness of heart. But it was because of the mere provocation
+of physical energy which it involved; not, as it would have been with
+him in youth, because of the infinitude and vastness of nature,
+breathing power and expectation into man:
+
+     "Effort, and expectation and desire--
+     And something evermore about to be!"
+
+He flung the words upon the wind, which scattered them as soon as they
+were uttered, merely that he might give them a bitter denial, reject for
+himself, now and always, the temper they expressed. He had known it
+well, none better!--gone to bed, and risen up with it--the mere joy in
+the "mere living." It had seasoned everything, twined round everything,
+great and small--a day's trout-fishing or deer-stalking; a new book, a
+friend, a famous place; then politics, and the joys of power.
+
+Gone! Here he was, hurrying back to England, to take perhaps in his
+still young hand the helm of her vast fortunes; and of all the old
+"expectation and desire," the old passion of hope, the old sense of the
+magic that lies in things unknown and ways untrodden, he seemed to
+himself now incapable. He would do his best, and without the political
+wrestle life would be too trifling to be borne; but the relish and the
+savor were gone, and all was gray.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ah!--he remembered one or two storm-walks with Kitty in their engaged or
+early married days--in Scotland chiefly. As he trudged up this Swiss
+pass he could see stretches of Scotch heather under drifting mist, and
+feel a little figure in its tweed dress flung suddenly by the wind and
+its own soft will against his arm. And then, the sudden embrace, and the
+wet, fragrant cheek, and her Voice--mocking and sweet!
+
+Oh, God! where was she now? The shock of her disappearance from Venice
+had left in some ways a deeper mark upon him than even the original
+catastrophe. For who that had known her could think of such a being,
+alone, in a world of strangers, without a peculiar dread and anguish?
+That she was alive he knew, for her five hundred a year--and she had
+never accepted another penny from him since her flight--was still drawn
+on her behalf by a banking firm in Paris. His solicitors, since the
+failure of their first efforts to trace her after Cliffe's death, had
+made repeated inquiries; Ashe had himself gone to Paris to see the
+bankers in question. But he was met by their solemn promise to Kitty to
+keep her secret inviolate. Madame d'Estrées supplied him with the name
+of the convent in which Kitty had been brought up; but the mother
+superior denied all knowledge of her. Meanwhile no course of action on
+Kitty's part could have restored her so effectually to her place in
+Ashe's imagination. She haunted his days and nights. So also did his
+memory of the Dean's petition. Insensibly, without argument, the whole
+attitude of his mind thereto had broken down; since he had been out of
+office, and his days and nights were no longer absorbed in the detail of
+administration and Parliamentary leadership, he had been the defenceless
+prey of grief; yearning and pity and agonized regret, rising from the
+deep subconscious self, had overpowered his first recoil and
+determination; and in the absence of all other passionate hope, the one
+desire and dream which still lived warm and throbbing at his heart was
+the dream that still in some crowd, or loneliness, he might again,
+before it was too late, see Kitty's face and the wildness of Kitty's
+eyes.
+
+And he believed much the same process had taken place in his mother's
+feeling. She rarely spoke of Kitty; but when she did the doubt and
+soreness of her mind were plain. Her own life had grown very solitary.
+And in particular the old friendship between her and Polly Lyster had
+entirely ceased to be. Lady Tranmore shivered when she was named, and
+would never herself speak of her if she could help it. Ashe had tried in
+vain to make her explain herself. Surely it was incredible that she
+could in any way blame Mary for the incident at Verona? Ashe, of course,
+remembered the passage in his mother's letter from Venice, and they had
+the maid Blanche's report to Lady Tranmore, of Kitty's intentions when
+she left Venice, of her terror when Cliffe appeared--of her swoon. But
+he believed with the Dean that any treacherous servant could have
+brought about the catastrophe. Vincenzo, one of the gondoliers who took
+Kitty to the station, had seen the luggage labelled for Verona; no doubt
+Cliffe had bribed him; and this explanation was, indeed, suggested to
+Lady Tranmore by the maid. His mother's suspicion--if indeed she
+entertained it--was so hideous that Ashe, finding it impossible to make
+his own mind harbor it for an instant, was harrowed by the mere
+possibility of its existence; as though it represented some hidden sore
+of consciousness that refused either to be probed or healed.
+
+As he labored on against the storm all thought of his present life and
+activities dropped away from him; he lived entirely in the past. "What
+is it in me," he thought, "that has made the difference between my life
+and that of other men I know--that weakened me so with Kitty?" He
+canvassed his own character, as a third person might have done.
+
+The Christian, no doubt, would say that his married life had failed
+because God had been absent from it, because there had been in it no
+consciousness of higher law, of compelling grace.
+
+Ashe pondered what such things might mean. "The Christian--in
+speculative belief--fails under the challenge of life as often as other
+men. Surely it depends on something infinitely more primitive and
+fundamental than Christianity?--something out of which Christianity
+itself springs? But this something--does it really exist--or am I only
+cheating myself by fancying it? Is it, as all the sages have said, the
+pursuit of some eternal good, the identification of the self with
+it--the 'dying to live'? And is this the real meaning at the heart of
+Christianity?--at the heart of all religion?--the everlasting meaning,
+let science play what havoc it please with outward forms and
+statements?"
+
+Had he, perhaps, _doubted the soul?_
+
+He groaned aloud. "O my God, what matter that I should grow wise--if
+Kitty is lost and desolate?"
+
+And he trampled on his own thoughts--feeling them a mere hypocrisy and
+offence.
+
+As they left the Gondo ravine and began to climb the zigzag road to the
+Simplon inn, the storm grew still wilder, and the driver, with set lips
+and dripping face, urged his patient beasts against a deluge. The road
+ran rivers; each torrent, carefully channelled, that passed beneath it
+brought down wood and soil in choking abundance; and Ashe watched the
+downward push of the rain on the high, exposed banks above the carriage.
+Once they passed a fragment of road which had been washed away; the
+driver pointing to it said something sulkily about "_frane"_ on the
+"other side."
+
+This bad moment, however, proved to be the last and worst, and when they
+emerged upon the high valley in which stands the village of Simplon, the
+rain was already lessening and the clouds rolling up the great sides and
+peaks of the Fletschhorn. Ashe promised himself a comparatively fine
+evening and a rapid run down to Brieg.
+
+Outside the old Simplon posting-house, however, they presently came upon
+a crowd of vehicles of every description, of which the drivers were
+standing in groups with dripping rugs across their shoulders--shouting
+and gesticulating.
+
+And as they drove up the news was thundered at them in every possible
+tongue. Between the hospice and Bérizal two hundred metres of road had
+been completely washed away. The afternoon diligence had just got
+through by a miracle an hour before the accident occurred; before
+anything else could pass it would take at least ten or twelve hours'
+hard work, through the night, before the laborers now being
+requisitioned by the commune could possibly provide even a temporary
+passage.
+
+Ashe in despair went into the inn to speak with the landlord, and found
+that unless he was prepared to abandon books and papers, and make a push
+for it over mountain paths covered deep in fresh snow, there was no
+possible escape from the dilemma. He must stay the night. The navvies
+were already on their way; and as soon as ever the road was passable he
+should know. For not even a future Prime Minister of England could Herr
+Ludwig do more.
+
+He and Dell went gloomily up the narrow stone stairs of the inn to look
+at the bedrooms, which were low-roofed and primitive, penetrated
+everywhere by the roar of a stream which came down close behind the inn.
+Through the open door of one of the rooms Ashe saw the foaming mass,
+framed as it were in a window, and almost in the house.
+
+He chose two small rooms looking on the street, and bade Dell get a fire
+lit in one of them, a bed moved out, an arm-chair moved in, and as large
+a table set for him as the inn could provide, while he took a stroll
+before dinner. He had some important letters to answer, and he pointed
+out to Dell the bag which contained them.
+
+Then he stepped out into the muddy street, which was still a confusion
+of horses, vehicles, and men, and, turning up a path behind the inn, was
+soon in solitude. An evening of splendor! Nature was still in a tragic,
+declamatory mood--sending piled thunder-clouds of dazzling white across
+a sky extravagantly blue, and throwing on the high snow-fields and
+craggy tops a fierce, flame-colored light. The valley was resonant with
+angry sound, and the village, now in shadow, with its slender, crumbling
+campanile, seemed like a cowering thing over which the eagle has passed.
+
+The grandeur and the freshness, the free, elemental play of stream and
+sky and mountain, seized upon a man in whom the main impulses of life
+were already weary, and filled him with an involuntary physical delight.
+He noticed the flowers at his feet, in the drenched grass which was
+already lifting up its battered stalks, and along the margins of the
+streams--deep blue colombines, white lilies, and yellow anemones.
+Incomparable beauty lived and breathed in each foot of pasture; and when
+he raised his eyes from the grass they fed on visionary splendors of
+snow and rock, stretching into the heavens.
+
+No life visible--except a line of homing cattle, led by a little girl
+with tucked-up skirt and bare feet. And--in the distance--the slender
+figure of a woman walking--stopping often to gather a flower--or to
+rest? Not a woman of the valley, clearly. No doubt a traveller,
+weather-bound like himself at the inn. He watched the figure a little,
+for some vague grace of movement that seemed to enter into and make a
+part of that high beauty in which the scene was steeped; but it
+disappeared behind a fold of pasture, and he did not see it again.
+
+In spite of the multitude of vehicles gathered about the inn there were
+not so many guests in the _salle-à-manger_, when Ashe entered it, as he
+had expected. He supposed that a majority of these vehicles must be
+return carriages from Brieg. Still there was much clatter of talk and
+plates, and German seemed to be the prevailing tongue. Except for a
+couple whom Ashe took to be a Genevese professor and his wife, there was
+no lady in the room.
+
+He lingered somewhat late at table, toying with his orange, and reading
+a _Journal de Genève_, captured from a neighbor, which contained an
+excellent "London letter." The room emptied. The two Swiss handmaidens
+came in to clear away soiled linen and arrange the tables for the
+morning's coffee. Only, at a farther table, a _couvert_ for one person,
+set by itself, remained still untouched.
+
+He happened to be alone in the room when the door again opened and a
+lady entered. She did not see him behind his newspaper, and she walked
+languidly to the farther table and sat down. As she did so she was
+seized with a fit of coughing, and when it was over she leaned her head
+on her hands, gasping.
+
+Ashe had half risen--the newspaper was crushed in his hand--when the
+Swiss waitress whom the men of the inn called Fräulein Anna--who was,
+indeed, the daughter of the landlord--came back.
+
+"How are you, madame?" she said, with a smile, and in a slow English of
+which she was evidently proud.
+
+"I'm better to-day," said the other, hastily. "I shall start to-morrow.
+What a noise there is to-night!" she added, in a tone both fretful and
+weary.
+
+"We are so full--it is the accident to the road, madame. Will madame
+have a _thé complet_ as before?"
+
+The lady nodded, and Frãulein Anna, who evidently knew her ways, brought
+in the tea at once, stayed chatting beside her for a minute, and then
+departed, with a long, disapproving look at the gentleman in the corner
+who was so long over his coffee and would not let her clear away.
+
+Ashe made a fierce effort to still the thumping in his breast and decide
+what he should do. For the guests there was only one door of entrance or
+exit, and to reach it he must pass close beside the new-comer.
+
+He laid down his newspaper. She heard the rustling, and involuntarily
+looked round.
+
+There was a slight sound--an exclamation. She rose. He heard and saw her
+coming, and sat tranced and motionless, his eyes bent upon her. She came
+tottering, clinging to the chairs, her hand on her side, till she
+reached the corner where he was.
+
+"William!" she said, with a little, glad sob, under her
+breath--"William!"
+
+He himself could not speak. He stood there gazing at her, his lips
+moving without sound. It seemed to him that she turned her head a
+moment, as though to look for some one beside him--with an exquisite
+tremor of the mouth.
+
+"Isn't it strange?" she said, in the same guarded voice. "I had a dream
+once--a valley--and mountains--and an inn. You sat here--just like
+this--and--"
+
+She put up her hands to her eyes a moment, shivered, and withdrew them.
+From her expression she seemed to be waiting for him to speak. He moved
+and stood beside her.
+
+"Where can we talk?" he said, with difficulty. She shook her head
+vaguely, looking round her with that slight frown, complaining and yet
+sweet, which was like a touch of fire on memory.
+
+The waitress came back into the room.
+
+"It _is_ odd to have met you here!" said Kitty, in a laughing voice.
+"Let us go into the _salon de lecture_. The maids want to clear away.
+Please bring your newspaper."
+
+Fräulein Anna looked at them with a momentary curiosity, and went on
+with her work. They passed into the passage-way outside, which was full
+of smokers overflowing from the crowded room beyond, where the humbler
+frequenters of the inn ate and drank.
+
+Kitty glanced round her in bewilderment. "The _salon de lecture_ will be
+full, too. Where shall we go?" she said, looking up.
+
+Ashe's hand clinched as it hung beside him. The old gesture--and the
+drawn, emaciated face--they pierced the heart.
+
+"I told my servant to arrange me a sitting-room up-stairs," he said,
+hurriedly, in her ear. "Will you go up first?--number ten."
+
+She nodded, and began slowly to mount the stairs, coughing as she went.
+The man whom Ashe had taken for a Genevese professor looked after her,
+glanced at his neighbor, and shrugged his shoulders. "Phthisique," he
+said, with a note of pity. The other nodded. "Et d'un type très avancé!"
+
+They moved towards the door and stood looking into the night, which was
+dark with intermittent rain. Ashe studied a map of the commune which
+hung on the wall beside him, till at a moment when the passage had
+become comparatively clear he turned and went up-stairs.
+
+The door of his improvised _salon_ was ajar. Beyond it his valet was
+coming out of his bedroom with wet clothes over his arm. Ashe hesitated.
+But the man had been with him through the greater part of his married
+life, and was a good heart. He beckoned him back into the room he was
+leaving, and the two stepped inside.
+
+"Dell, my good fellow, I want your help. I have just met my wife
+here--Lady Kitty. You understand. Neither of us, of course,
+had any idea. Lady Kitty is very ill. We wish to have a
+conversation--uninterrupted. I trust you to keep guard."
+
+The young man, son of one of the Haggart gardeners, started and flushed,
+then gave his master a look of sympathy.
+
+"I'll do my best, sir."
+
+Ashe nodded and went back to the next room. He closed the door behind
+him. Kitty, who was sitting by the fire, half rose. Their eyes met. Then
+with a stifled cry he flung himself down, kneeling beside her, and she
+sank into his arms. His tears fell on her face, anguish and pity
+overwhelmed him.
+
+"You may!" she said, brokenly, putting up her hand to his cheek, and
+kissing him--"you may! I'm not mad or wicked now--and I'm dying!"
+
+Agonized murmurs of love, pardon, self-abasement passed between them. It
+was as though a great stream bore them on its breast; an awful and
+majestic power enwrapped them, and made each word, each kiss, wonderful,
+sacramental. He drew himself away at last, holding her hair back from
+her brow and temples, studying her features, his own face convulsed.
+
+"Where have you been? Why did you hide from me?"
+
+"You forbade me," she said, stroking his hair. "And it was quite right.
+The dear Dean told me--and I quite understood. If I'd gone to Haggart
+then there'd have been more trouble. I should have tried to get my old
+place back. And now it's all over. You can give me all I want, because I
+can't live. It's only a question of months, perhaps weeks. Nobody could
+blame you, could they? People don't laugh when--it's death. It
+simplifies things so--doesn't it?"
+
+She smiled, and nestled to him again.
+
+"What do you mean?" he said, almost violently. "Why are you so ill?"
+
+"It was Bosnia first, and then--being miserable--I suppose. And Poitiers
+was very cold--and the nuns very stuffy, bless them--they wouldn't let
+me have air enough."
+
+He groaned aloud while he remembered his winter in London, in the
+forlorn luxury of the Park Lane house.
+
+"Where have you been?" he repeated.
+
+"Oh! I went to the Soeurs Blanches--you remember?--where I used to be.
+You went there, didn't you?"--he made a sign of miserable assent--"but I
+made them promise not to tell! There was an old mistress of novices
+there still who used to be very fond of me. She got one of the houses of
+the Sacré Coeur to take me in--at Poitiers. They thought they were
+gathering a stray sheep back into the fold, you understand, as I was
+brought up a Catholic--of sorts. And I didn't mind!" The familiar
+intonation, soft, complacent, humorous, rose like a ghost between them.
+"I used to like going to mass. But this Easter they wanted to make me
+'go to my duties'--you know what it means?--and I wouldn't. I wanted to
+confess." She shuddered and drew his face down to hers again--"but only
+once--to--you--and then, well then, to die, and have done with it. You
+see, I knew one can't get on long with three-quarters of a lung. And
+they were rather tiresome--they didn't understand. So three weeks ago I
+drew some money out and said good-bye to them. Oh! they were very kind,
+and very sorry for me. They wanted me to take a maid, and I meant to.
+But the one they found wouldn't come with me when she saw how ill I
+was--and it all lingered on--so one day I just walked out to the
+railway-station and went to Paris. But Paris was rainy--and I felt I
+must see the sun again. So I stayed two nights at a little hotel maman
+used to go to--horrid place!--and each night I read your speeches in the
+reading-room--and then I got my things from Poitiers, and started--"
+
+A fit of coughing stopped her, coughing so terrible and destructive that
+he almost rushed for help. But she restrained him. She made him
+understand that she wanted certain remedies from her own room across the
+corridor. He went for them. The door of this room had been shut by the
+observant Dell, who was watching the passage from his own bedroom
+farther on. When Ashe had opened it he found himself face to face as it
+were with the foaming stream outside. The window, as he had seen it
+before, was wide open to the water-fall just beyond it, and the
+temperature was piercingly cold and damp. The furniture was of the
+roughest, and a few of Kitty's clothes lay scattered about. As he
+fumbled for a light, there hovered before his eyes the remembrance of
+their room in Hill Street, strewn with chiffons and all the elegant and
+costly trifles that made the natural setting of its mistress.
+
+He found the medicines and hurried back. She feebly gave him directions.
+"Now the strychnine!--and some brandy."
+
+He did all he could. He drew some chairs together before the fire, and
+made a couch for her with pillows and rugs. She thanked him with smiles,
+and her eyes followed his every movement.
+
+"Tell your man to get some milk! And listen"--she caught his hand. "Lock
+my door. That nice woman down-stairs will come to look after me, and
+she'll think I'm asleep."
+
+It was done as she wished. Ashe took in the milk from Dell's hands, and
+a fresh supply of wood. Then he turned the key in his own door and came
+back to her. She was lying quiet, and seemed revived.
+
+"How cosey!" she said, with a childish pleasure, looking round her at
+the bare white walls and scoured boards warmed with the fire-light. The
+bitter tears swam in Ashe's eyes. He fell into a chair on the other side
+of the fire, and stared--seeing nothing--at the burning logs.
+
+"You needn't suppose that I don't get people to look after me!" she went
+on, smiling at him again, one shadowy hand propping her cheek. And she
+prattled on about the kindness of the chambermaids at Vevey and Brieg,
+and how one of them had wanted to come with her as her maid. "Oh! I
+shall find one at Florence if I get there--or a nurse. But just for
+these few days I wanted to be free! In the winter there were so many
+people about--so many eyes! I just pined to cheat them--get quit of
+them. A maid would have bothered me to stay in bed and see doctors--and
+you know, William, with this illness of mine you're so _restless_!"
+
+"Where were you going to?" he said, without looking up.
+
+"Oh! to Italy somewhere--just to see some flowers again--and the sun.
+Only not to Venice!"
+
+There was a silence, which she broke by a sudden cry as she drew him
+down to her.
+
+"William! you know--I was coming home to you, when that man--found me."
+
+"I know. If it had only been I who killed him!"
+
+"I'm just--_Kitty_!" she said, choking--"as bad as bad can be. But I
+couldn't have done what Mary Lyster did."
+
+"Kitty--for God's sake!"
+
+"Oh, I know it," she said, almost with triumph--"now I _know_ it. I
+determined to know--and I got people in Venice to find out. She sent the
+message--that told him where I was--and I know the man who took it. I
+suppose it would be pathetic if I sent her word that I had forgiven her.
+But I _haven't_!"
+
+Ashe cried out that it was wholly and utterly inconceivable.
+
+[Illustration: "HE DREW SOME CHAIRS TOGETHER BEFORE THE FIRE"]
+
+"Oh no!--she hated me because I had robbed her of Geoffrey. I had killed
+her life, I suppose--she killed mine. It was what I deserved, of
+course; only just at that moment--If there is a God, William, how could
+He have let it happen so?"
+
+The tears choked her. He left his seat, and, kneeling beside her, he
+raised her in his arms, while she murmured broken and anguished
+confessions.
+
+"I was so weak--and frightened. And _he_ said, it was no good trying to
+go back to you. Everybody knew I had gone to Verona--and he had followed
+me--No one would ever believe--And he wouldn't go--wouldn't leave me. It
+would be mere cruelty and desertion, he said. My real life was--with
+him. And I seemed--paralyzed. Who _had_ sent that message? It never
+occurred to me--I felt as if some demon held me--and I couldn't
+escape--"
+
+And again the sighs and tears, which wrung his heart--with which his own
+mingled. He tried to comfort her; but what comfort could there be? They
+had been the victims of a crime as hideous as any murder; and
+yet--behind the crime--there stretched back into the past the
+preparations and antecedents by which they themselves, alack, had
+contributed to their own undoing. Had they not both trifled with the
+mysterious test of life--he no less than she? And out of the dark had
+come the axe-stroke that ends weakness, and crushes the unsteeled,
+inconstant will.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After long silence, she began to talk in a rambling, delirious way of
+her months in Bosnia. She spoke of the _cold_--of the high mountain
+loneliness--of the terrible sights she had seen--till he drew her,
+shuddering, closer into his arms. And yet there was that in her talk
+which amazed him; flashes of insight, of profound and passionate
+experience, which seemed to fashion her anew before his eyes. The hard
+peasant life, in contact with the soil and natural forces; the elemental
+facts of birth and motherhood, of daily toil and suffering; what it
+means to fight oppressors for freedom, and see your dearest--son, lover,
+wife, betrothed--die horribly amid the clash of arms; into this caldron
+of human fate had Kitty plunged her light soul; and in some ways Ashe
+scarcely knew her again.
+
+She recurred often to the story of a youth, handsome and beardless, who
+had been wounded by a stray Turkish shot in the course of the long climb
+to the village where she nursed. He had managed to gain the height, and
+then, killed by the march as much as by the shot, he had sunk down to
+die on the ground-floor of the house where Kitty lived.
+
+"He was a stranger--no one knew him in the village--no one cared. They
+had their own griefs. I dressed his wound--and gave him water. He
+thought I was his mother, and asked me to kiss him. I kissed him,
+William--and he smiled once--before the last hemorrhage. If you had seen
+the cold, dismal room--and his poor face!"
+
+Ashe gathered her to his breast. And after a while she said, with closed
+eyes:
+
+"Oh, what pain there is in the world, William!--what _pain_! That's
+what--I never knew."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening wore on. All the noises ceased down-stairs. One by one the
+guests came up the stone stairs and along the creaking corridor. Boots
+were thrown out; the doors closed. The strokes of eleven o'clock rang
+out from the village campanile; and amid the quiet of the now drizzling
+rain the echoes of the bell lingered on the ear. Last of all a woman's
+step passed the door--stopped at the door of Kitty's room, as though
+some one listened, and then gently returned. "Fräulein Anna!" said
+Kitty--"she's a good soul."
+
+Soon nothing was heard but the roar of the flooded stream on one side of
+the old narrow building and the dripping of rain on the other. Their low
+voices were amply covered by these sounds. The night lay before them,
+safe and undisturbed. Candles burned on the mantel-piece, and on a table
+behind Kitty's head was a paraffine lamp. She seemed to have a craving
+for light.
+
+"Kitty!" said Ashe, suddenly bending over her--"understand! I shall
+never leave you again."
+
+She started, her head fell back on his arm, and her brown eyes
+considered him:
+
+"William! I saw the _Standard_ at Geneva. Aren't you going home--because
+of politics?"
+
+"A few telegrams will settle that. I shall take you to Geneva to-morrow.
+We shall get doctors there."
+
+A little smile played about her mouth--a smile which did not seem to
+have any reference to his words or to her next question.
+
+"Nobody thinks of the book now, do they, William?"
+
+"No, Kitty, no! It's all forgotten, dear."
+
+"Oh, it was abominable!" She drew a long breath. "But I can't help it--I
+did get a horrid pleasure out of writing it--till Venice--till you left
+off loving me. Oh, William! William!--what a good thing it is I'm
+dying!"
+
+"Hush, Kitty--hush."
+
+"It gives one such an unfair advantage, though, doesn't it? You can't
+ever be angry with me again. There won't be time. William, dear!--I
+haven't had a brain like other people. I know it. It's only since I've
+been so ill--that I've been sane! It's a strange feeling--as though one
+had been _bled_--and some poison had drained away. But it would never do
+for me to take a turn and live! Oh no!--people like me are better safely
+under the grass. Oh, my beloved! my beloved! I just want to say that all
+the time, and nothing else--I've hungered so to say it!"
+
+He answered her with all the anguish, all the passionate, fruitless
+tenderness and vain comfortings that rise from the human heart in such a
+strait. But when he asked her pardon for his hardness towards the Dean's
+petition, when he said that his conscience had tormented him
+thenceforward, she would scarcely hear a word.
+
+"You did quite right," she said, peremptorily--"quite right."
+
+Then she raised herself on her arm and looked at him.
+
+"William!" she said, with a strange, kindled expression. "I--I don't
+think I can live any more! I think--I'm dying--here--now!"
+
+She fell back on her pillows, and he sprang to his feet, crying that he
+must go for Fräulein Anna and a doctor. But she held him feebly,
+motioning towards the brandy and strychnine. "That's all--you can do."
+
+He gave them to her, and again she revived and smiled at him.
+
+"Don't be frightened. It was a sudden feeling--it came over me--that
+this dear little room--and your arms--would be the end. Oh, how much
+best! There!--that was foolish!--I'm better. It isn't only the lungs,
+you see; they say the heart's worst. I nearly went at Vevey, one night.
+It was such a long faint."
+
+Then she lay quiet, with her hand in his, in a dreamy, peaceful
+state, and his panic subsided. Once she sent messages to Lady
+Tranmore--messages full of sorrow, touched also--by a word here, a look
+there--by the charm of the old Kitty.
+
+"I don't deserve to die like this," she said, once, with a
+half-impatient gesture. "Nothing can prevent it's being beautiful--and
+touching--you know; our meeting like this--and your goodness to me. Oh,
+I'm glad! But I don't want to glorify--what I've done. _Shame! Shame!"_
+
+And again her face contracted with the old habitual agony, only to be
+soothed away gradually by his tone and presence, the spending of his
+whole being in the broken words of love.
+
+Towards the morning, when, as it seemed to him, she had been sleeping
+for a time, and he had been, if not sleeping, at least dreaming awake
+beside her, he heard a little, low laugh, and looked round. Her brown
+eyes were wide open, till they seemed to fill the small, blighted face;
+and they were fixed on an empty chair the other side of the fire.
+
+"It's so strange--in this illness," she whispered--"that it makes one
+dream--and generally kind dreams. It's fever--but it's nice." She turned
+and looked at him. "Harry was there, William--sitting in that chair. Not
+a baby any more--but a little fellow--and so lively, and strong, and
+quick. I had you both--_both_."
+
+Looking back afterwards, also, he remembered that she spoke several
+times of religious hopes and beliefs--especially of the hope in another
+life--and that they seemed to sustain her. Most keenly did he recollect
+the delicacy with which she had refrained from asking his opinion upon
+them, lest it should trouble him not to be able to uphold or agree with
+her; while, at the same time, she wished him to have the comfort of
+remembering that she had drawn strength and calm, in these last hours,
+from religious thoughts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For they proved, indeed, to be the last hours. About three the morning
+began to dawn, clear and rosy, with rich lights striking on the snow.
+Suddenly Kitty sat up, disengaged herself from her wraps, and tottered
+to her feet.
+
+"I'll go back to my room," she said, in bewilderment. "I'd rather."
+
+And as she clung to him, with a startled yet half-considering look, she
+gazed round her, at the bright fire, the morning light, the chair from
+which he had risen--his face.
+
+He tried to dissuade her. But she would go. Her aspect, however, was
+deathlike, and as he softly undid the doors, and half-helped,
+half-carried her across the passage, he said to her that he must go and
+waken Fräulein Anna and find a doctor.
+
+"No--no." She grasped him with all her remaining strength; "stay with
+me."
+
+They entered the little room, which seemed to be in a glory of light,
+for the sun striking across the low roof of the inn had caught the foamy
+water-fall beyond, and the reflection of it on the white walls and
+ceiling was dazzling.
+
+Beside the bed she swayed and nearly fell.
+
+"I won't undress," she murmured--"I'll just lie down."
+
+She lay down with his help, turning her face to make a fond, hardly
+articulate sound, and press her cheek against his. In a few minutes it
+seemed to him that she was sleeping again. He softly went out of the
+room and down-stairs. There, early as it was, he found Fräulein Anna,
+who looked at him with amazement.
+
+"Where can I find a doctor?" he asked her; and they talked for a few
+minutes, after which she went up-stairs beside him, trembling and
+flushed.
+
+They found Kitty lying on her side, her face hidden entirely in the
+curls which had fallen across it, and one arm hanging. There was that in
+her aspect which made them both recoil. Then Ashe rushed to her with a
+cry, and as he passionately kissed her cold cheek he heard the clamor of
+the frightened girl behind him. "Ach, Gott!--Ach Gott!"--and the voices
+of others, men and women, who began to crowd into the narrow room.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Marriage of William Ashe, by Mrs. Humphry Ward
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14126 ***