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 negligee 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-a-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'Estrees', 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, coute que coute, 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 aesthetic 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 Jesus!"

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 fete 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 formulae 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 fete, 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 facade 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 senorita 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 mechant 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 "Pieta" 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'Estrees."

Miss French, who found herself greeted with effusion by the strange lady, saw before her a woman of fifty, marvellously preserved. Madame d'Estrees 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 chere!—un miracle!" cried Madame d'Estrees, 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 installees!—and really nothing to pay!"—Madame d'Estrees 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'Estrees' 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'Estrees 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'Estrees' 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'Estrees 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'Estrees 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'Estrees 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'Estrees—"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'Estrees 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, chere 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'Estrees, 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'Estrees 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'Estrees 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'Estrees, 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'Estrees. 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'Estrees.

"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.