"You have done too much, Kitty—as usual!"

His voice was almost angry.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"What does it matter? You know very well it would be much better for you if—"

"If what?"

"If I followed Harry." The words were just breathed, and her eyes shrank from meeting his. Ashe, on the other hand, turned and looked at her steadily.

"Are you quite determined I sha'n't get any joy out of my holiday?"

She shook her head uncertainly. Then, almost immediately, she began to chatter to Margaret French about the sights of the lagoon, with her natural trenchancy and fun. But her hand, hidden under the folds of her black cloak, still clung to William's.

"It is her illness," he said to himself, "and the loss of the child."

And at the remembrance of his little son, a wave of sore yearning filled his own heart. Deep under the occupations and interests of the mind lay this passionate regret, and at any moment of pause or silence its "buried life" arose and seized him. But he was a busy politician, absorbed even in these days of holiday by the questions and problems of the hour. And Kitty was a delicate woman—with no defence against the torture of grief.

He thought of those first days after the child's death, when in spite of the urgency of the doctors it had been impossible to keep the news from Kitty; of the ghastly effect of it upon nerves and brain already imperilled by causes only half intelligible; of those sudden flights from her nurses, when the days of convalescence began, to the child's room, and, later, to his grave. There was stinging pain in these recollections. Nor was he, in truth, much reassured by his wife's more recent state. It was impossible, indeed, that he should give it the same constant thought as a woman might—or a man of another and more emotional type. At this moment, perhaps, he had literally no time for the subtleties of introspective feeling, even had his temperament inclined him to them, which was, in truth, not the case. He knew that Kitty had suddenly and resolutely ceased to talk about the boy, had thrown herself with the old energy into new pursuits, and, since she came to Venice in particular, had shown a feverish desire to fill every hour with movement and sight-seeing.

But was she, in truth, much better—in body or soul?—poor child! The doctors had explained her illness as nervous collapse, pointing back to a long preceding period of overstrain and excitement. There had been suspicions of tubercular mischief, but no precise test was then at command; and as Kitty had improved with rest and feeding the idea had been abandoned. But Ashe was still haunted by it, though quite ready—being a natural optimist—to escape from it, and all other incurable anxieties, as soon as Kitty herself should give the signal.

As to the moral difficulties and worries of those months at Haggart, Ashe remembered them as little as might be. Kitty's illness, indeed, had shown itself in more directions than one, as an amending and appeasing fact. Even Lord Parham had been moved to compassion and kindness by the immediate results of that horrible scene on the terrace. His leave-taking from Ashe on the morning afterwards had been almost cordial—almost intimate. And as to Lady Tranmore, whenever she had been able to leave her paralyzed husband she had been with Kitty, nursing her with affectionate wisdom night and day. While on the other members of the Haggart party the sheer pity of Kitty's condition had worked with surprising force. Lord Grosville had actually made his wife offer Grosville Park for Kitty's convalescence—Kitty got her first laugh out of the proposal. The Dean had journeyed several times from his distant cathedral town, to see and sit with Kitty; Eddie Helston's flowers had been almost a nuisance; Mrs. Alcot had shown herself quite soft and human.

The effect, indeed, of this general sympathy on Lord Parham's relations to the chief member of his cabinet had been but small and passing. Ashe disliked and distrusted him more than ever; and whatever might have happened to the Premier's resentment of a particular offence, there could be no doubt that a visit from which Ashe had hoped much had ended in complete failure, that Parham was disposed to cross his powerful henchman where he could, and that intrigue was busy in the cabinet itself against the reforming party of which Ashe was the head Ashe, indeed, felt his own official position, outwardly so strong, by no means secure. But the game of politics was none the less exhilarating for that.

As to Kitty's relation to himself—and life's most intimate and tender things—in these days, did he probe his own consciousness much concerning them? Probably not. Was he aware that, when all was said and done, in spite of her misdoings, in spite of his passion of anxiety during her illness, in spite of the pity and affection of his daily attitude, Kitty occupied, in truth, much less of his mind than she had ever yet occupied?—that a certain magic—primal, incommunicable—had ceased to clothe her image in his thoughts?

Again—probably not. For these slow changes in a man's inmost personality are like the ebb and flow of summer tides over estuary sands. Silent, the main creeps in, or out; and while we dream, the great basin fills, and the fishing-boats come in—or the gentle, pitiless waters draw back into the bosom of ocean, and the sea-birds run over the wide, untenanted flats.

* * * * *

They landed at the Piazzetta as the lamps were being lit. The soft October darkness was falling fast, and on the ledges of St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace the pigeons had begun to roost. An animated crowd was walking up and down in the Piazza where a band was playing; and on the golden horses of St. Mark's there shone a pale and mystical light, the last reflection from the western sky. Under the colonnades the jewellers and glass-shops blazed and sparkled, and the warm sea-wind fluttered the Italian flags on the great flag-staffs that but so recently had borne the Austrian eagle.

Ashe walked with his head thrown back, thinking absently, in this centre of Venice, of English politics, and of a phrase of Metternich's he had come across in a volume of memoirs he had been lately reading on the journey:

"Le jour qui court n'a aucune valeur pour moi, excepte comme la veille du lendemain. C'est toujours avec le lendemain que mon esprit lutte."

The phrase pleased him particularly.

He, too, was wrestling with the morrow, though in another sense than Metternich's. His mind was alive with projects; an exultant consciousness both of capacity and opportunity possessed him.

"Why, you've passed the club, William!" said Kitty.

Ashe awoke with a start, smiled at her, and with a wave of the hand disappeared in a stairway to the right.

Margaret French lingered in a bead-shop to make some purchases. Kitty walked home alone, and Margaret, whose watchful affection never failed, knew that she preferred it, and let her go her way.

The Ashes had rooms on the first bend of the Grand Canal looking south. To reach them by land from the Piazza, Kitty had to pass through a series of narrow streets, or calles, broken by campos, or small squares, in which stood churches. As she passed one of these churches she was attracted by the sound of gay music and by the crowd about the entrance. Pushing aside the leathern curtain over the door, she found herself in a great rococo nave, which blazed with lights and decorations. Lines of huge wax candles were fixed in temporary holders along the floor. The pillars were swathed in rose-colored damask, and the choir was ablaze with flowers, and even more brilliantly lit, if possible, than the rest of the church.

Kitty's Catholic training told her that an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament was going on. Mechanically she dipped her fingers into the holy water, she made her genuflection to the altar, and knelt down in one of the back rows.

How rich and sparkling it was—the lights, the bright colors, the dancing music! "Dolce Sacramento! Santo Sacramento!" these words of an Italian hymn or litany recurred again and again, with endless iteration. Kitty's sensuous, excitable nature was stirred with delight. Then, suddenly, she remembered her child, and the little face she had seen for the last time in the coffin. She began to cry softly, hiding her face in her black veil. An unbearable longing possessed her. "I shall never have another child," she thought. "That's all over."

Then her thoughts wandered back to the party at Haggart, to the scene on the terrace, and to that rush of excitement which had mastered her, she scarcely knew how or why. She could still hear the Dean's voice—see the lamp wavering above her head. "What possessed me! I didn't care a straw whether the lamp set me on fire—whether I lived or died. I wanted to die."

Was it because of that short conversation with William in the afternoon?—because of the calmness with which he had taken that word "separation," which she had thrown at him merely as a child boasts and threatens, never expecting for one moment to be taken at its word? She had proposed it to him before, after the night at Hamel Weir; she had been serious then, it had been an impulse of remorse, and he had laughed at her. But at Haggart it had been an impulse of temper, and he had taken it seriously. How the wound had rankled, all the afternoon, while she was chattering to the Royalties! And as she jumped on the pedestal, and saw his face of horror, there was the typical womanish triumph that she had made him feel—would make him feel yet more.

How good, how tender he had been to her in her illness! And yet—yet?

"He cares for politics, for his plans—not for me. He will never trust me again—as he did once. He'll never ask me to help him—he'll find ways not to—though he'll be very sweet to me all the time."

And the thought of her nullity with him in the future, her insignificance in his life, tortured her.

Why had she treated Lord Parham so? "I can be a lady when I choose," she said, mockingly, to herself. "I wasn't even a lady."

Then suddenly there flashed on her memory a little picture of Lord Parham, standing spectacled and bewildered, peering into her slip of paper. She bent her head on her hands and laughed, a stifled, hysterical laugh, which scandalized the woman kneeling beside her.

But the laugh was soon quenched again in restless pain. William's affection had been her only refuge in those weeks of moral and physical misery she had just passed through.

"But it's only because he's so terribly sorry for me. It's all quite different. And I can't ever make him love me again in the old way.... It wasn't my fault. It's something born in me—that catches me by the throat."

And she had the actual physical sense of some one strangled by a possessing force.

"Dolce Sacramento! Santo Sacramento!"... The music swayed and echoed through the church. Kitty uncovered her eyes and felt a sudden exhilaration in the blaze of light. It reminded her of the bending Christ in the picture of San Giorgio. Awe and beauty flowed in upon her, in spite of the poor music and the tawdry church. What if she tried religion?—recalled what she had been taught in the convent?—gave herself up to a director?

She shivered and recoiled. How would she ever maintain her faith against William—William, who knew so much more than she?

Then, into the emptiness of her heart there stole the inevitable temptations of memory. Where was Geoffrey? She knew well that he was a violent and selfish man; but he understood much in her that William would never understand. With a morbid eagerness she recalled the play of feeling between them, before that mad evening at Hamel Weir. What perpetual excitement—no time to think—or regret!

During her weeks of illness she had lost all count of his movements. Had he been still writing during the summer for the newspaper which had sent him out? Had there not been rumors of his being wounded—or attacked by fever? Her memory, still vague and weak, struggled painfully with memories it could not recapture.

The Italian paper of that morning—she had spelled it out for herself at breakfast—had spoken of a defeat of the insurrectionary forces, and of their withdrawal into the highlands of Bosnia. There would be a lull in the fighting. Would he come home? And all this time had he been the mere spectator and reporter, or fighting, himself? Her pulses leaped as she thought of him leading down-trodden peasants against the Turk.

But she knew nothing. Surely during the last few months he had purposely made a mystery of his doings and his whereabouts. The only sign of him which seemed to have reached England had been that volume of poems—with those hateful lines! Her lip quivered. She was like a weak child—unable to bear the thought of anything hostile and unkind.

If he had already turned homeward? Perhaps he would come through Venice! Anyway, he was not far off. The day before she and Margaret had made their first visit to the Lido. And as Kitty stood fronting the Adriatic waves, she had dreamed that somewhere, beyond the farther coast, were those Bosnian mountains in which Geoffrey had passed the winter.

Then she started at her own thoughts, rose—loathing herself—drew down her veil, and moved towards the door.

* * * * *

As she reached the leathern curtain which hung over the doorway, a lady in front who was passing through held the curtain aside that Kitty might follow. Kitty stepped into the street and looked up to say a mechanical "Thank you."

But the word died on her lips. She gave a stifled cry, which was echoed by the woman before her.

Both stood motionless, staring at each other.

Kitty recovered herself first.

"It's not my fault that we've met," she said, panting a little. "Don't look at me so—so unkindly. I know you don't want to see me. Why—why should we speak at all? I'm going away." And she turned with a gesture of farewell.

Alice Wensleydale laid a detaining hand on Kitty's arm.

"No! stay a moment. You are in black. You look ill."

Kitty turned towards her. They had moved on instinctively into the shelter of one of the narrow streets.

"My boy died—two months ago," she said, holding herself proudly aloof.

Lady Alice started.

"I hadn't heard. I'm very sorry for you. How old was he?"

"Three years old."

"Poor baby!" The words were very low and soft. "My boy—was fourteen. But you have other children?"

"No—and I don't want them. They might die, too."

Lady Alice paused. She still held her half-sister by the arm, towering above her. She was quite as thin as Kitty, but much taller and more largely built; and, beside the elaborate elegance of Kitty's mourning, Alice's black veil and dress had a severe, conventual air. They were almost the dress of a religious.

"How are you?" she said, gently. "I often think of you. Are you happy in your marriage?"

Kitty laughed.

"We're such a happy lot, aren't we? We understand it so well. Oh, don't trouble about me. You know you said you couldn't have anything to do with me. Are you staying in Venice?"

"I came in from Treviso for a day or two, to see a friend—"

"You had better not stay," said Kitty, hastily. "Maman is here. At least, if you don't want to run across her."

Lady Alice let go her hold.

"I shall go home to-morrow morning."

They moved on a few steps in silence, then Alice paused. Kitty's delicate face and cloud of hair made a pale, luminous spot in the darkness of the calle. Alice looked at her with emotion.

"I want to say something to you."

"Yes?"

"If you are ever in trouble—if you ever want me, send for me. Address Treviso, and it will always find me."

Kitty made no reply. They had reached a bridge over a side canal, and she stopped, leaning on the parapet.

"Did you hear what I said?" asked her companion.

"Yes. I'll remember. I suppose you think it your duty. What do you do with yourself?"

"I have two orphan children I bring up. And there is my lace-school. It doesn't get on much; but it occupies me."

"Are you a Catholic?"

"Yes."

"Wish I was!" said Kitty. She hung over the marble balustrade in silence, looking at the crescent moon that was just peering over the eastern palaces of the canal. "My husband is in politics, you know. He's Home Secretary."

"Yes, I heard. Do you help him?"

"No—just the other thing."

Kitty lifted up a pebble and let it drop into the water.

"I don't know what you mean by that," said Alice Wensleydale, coldly. "If you don't help him you'll be sorry—when it's too late to be sorry."

"Oh, I know!" said Kitty. Then she moved restlessly. "I must go in. Good-night." She held out her hand.

Lady Alice took it.

"Good-night. And remember!"

"I sha'n't want anybody," said Kitty. "Addio!" She waved her hand, and Alice Wensleydale, whose way lay towards the Piazza, saw her disappear, a small tripping shadow, between the high, close-piled houses.

Kitty was in so much excitement after this conversation that when she reached the Campo San Maurizio, where she should have turned abruptly to the left, she wandered awhile up and down the campo, looking at the gondolas on the Traghetto between it and the Accademia, at the Church of San Maurizio, at the rising moon, and the bright lights in some of the shop windows of the small streets to the north. The sea-wind was still warm and gusty, and the waves in the Grand Canal beat against the marble feet of its palaces.

At last she found her way through narrow passages, past hidden and historic buildings, to the back of the palace on the Grand Canal in which their rooms were. A door in a small court opened to her ring. She found herself in a dark ground-floor—empty except for the felze or black top of a gondola—of which the farther doors opened on the canal. A cheerful Italian servant brought lights, and on the marble stairs was her maid waiting for her. In a few minutes she was on her sofa by a bright wood fire, while Blanche hovered round her with many small attentions.

"Have you seen your letters, my lady?" and Blanche handed her a pile. Upon a parcel lying uppermost Kitty pounced at once with avidity. She tore it open—pausing once, with scarlet cheeks, to look round her at the door, as though she were afraid of being seen.

A book—fresh and new—emerged. Politics and the Country Houses; so ran the title on the back. Kitty looked at it frowning. "He might have found a better name!" Then she opened it—looked at a page here and a page there—laughed, shivered—and at last bethought her to read the note from the publisher which accompanied it.

"'Much pleasure—the first printed copy—three more to follow—sure to make a sensation'—hateful wretch!—'if your ladyship will let us know how many presentation copies—' Goodness!—not one! Oh—well!—Madeleine, perhaps—and, of course, Mr. Darrell."

She opened a little despatch-box in which she kept her letters, and slipped the book in.

"I won't show it to William to-night—not—not till next week." The book was to be out on the 20th, a week ahead—three months from the day when she had given the MS. into Darrell's hands. She had been spared all the trouble of correcting proofs, which had been done for her by the publisher's reader, on the plea of her illness. She had received and destroyed various letters from him—almost without reading them—during a short absence of William's in the north.

Suddenly a start of terror ran through her. "No, no!" she said, wrestling with herself—"he'll scold me, perhaps—at first; of course I know he'll do that. And then, I'll make him laugh! He can't—he can't help laughing. I know it'll amuse him. He'll see how I meant it, too. And nobody need ever find out."

She heard his step outside, hastily locked her despatch-box, threw a shawl over it, and lay back languidly on her pillows, awaiting him.



XVIII

The following morning, early, a note was brought to Kitty from Madame d'Estrees:

"Darling Kitty,—Will you join us to-night in an expedition? You know that Princess Margherita is staying on the Grand Canal?—in one of the Mocenigo palaces. There is to be a serenata in her honor to-night—not one of those vulgar affairs which the hotels get up, but really good music and fine voices—money to be given to some hospital or other. Do come with us. I suppose you have your own gondola, as we have. The gondolas who wish to follow meet at the Piazzetta, weather permitting, eight o'clock. I know, of course, that you are not going out. But this is only music!—and for a charity. One just sits in one's gondola, and follows the music up the canal. Send word by bearer. Your fond mother,

"Marguerite d'Estrees."

Kitty tossed the note over to Ashe. "Aren't you dining out somewhere to-night?"

Her voice was listless. And as Ashe lifted his head from the cabinet papers which had just reached him by special messenger, his attention was disagreeably recalled from high matters of state to the very evident delicacy of his wife. He replied that he had promised to dine with Prince S—— at Danieli's, in order to talk Italian politics. "But I can throw it over in a moment, if you want me. I came to Venice for you, darling," he said, as he rose and joined her on the balcony which commanded a fine stretch of the canal.

"No, no! Go and dine with your prince. I'll go with maman—Margaret and I. At least, Margaret must, of course, please herself!"

She shrugged her shoulders, and then added, "Maman's probably in the pink of society here. Venice doesn't take its cue from people like Aunt Lina!"

Ashe smiled uncomfortably. He was in truth by this time infinitely better acquainted with the incidents of Madame d'Estrees's past career than Kitty was. He had no mind whatever that Kitty should become less ignorant, but his knowledge sometimes made conversation difficult.

Kitty was perfectly aware of his embarrassment.

"You never tell me—" she said, abruptly. "Did she really do such dreadful things?"

"My dear Kitty!—why talk about it?"

Kitty flushed, then threw a flower into the water below with a defiant gesture.

"What does it matter? It's all so long ago. I have nothing to do with what I did ten years ago—nothing!"

"A convenient doctrine!" laughed Ashe. "But it cuts both ways. You get neither the good of your good nor the bad of your bad."

"I have no good," said Kitty, bitterly.

"What's the matter with you, miladi?" said Ashe, half scolding, half tender. "You growl over my remarks as though you were your own small dog with a bone. Come here and let me tell you the news."

And drawing the sofa up to the open window which commanded the marvellous waterway outside, with its rows of palaces on either hand, he made her lie down while he read her extracts from his letters.

Margaret French, who was writing at the farther side of the room, glanced at them furtively from time to time. She saw that Ashe was trying to charm away the languor of his companion by that talk of his, shrewd, humorous, vehement, well informed, which made him so welcome to the men of his own class and mode of life. And when he talked to a woman as he was accustomed to talk to men, that woman felt it a compliment. Under the stimulus of it, Kitty woke up, laughed, argued, teased, with something of her natural animation.

Presently, indeed, the voices had sunk so much and the heads had drawn so close together that Margaret French slipped away, under the impression that they were discussing matters to which she was not meant to listen.

She had hardly closed the door when Kitty drew herself away from Ashe, and holding his arm with both hands looked strangely into his eyes.

"You're awfully good to me, William. But, you know—you don't tell me secrets!"

"What do you mean, darling?"

"You don't tell me the real secrets—what Lord Palmerston used to tell to Lady Palmerston!"

"How do you know what he used to tell her?" said Ashe, with a laugh. But his forehead had reddened.

"One hears—and one guesses—from the letters that have been published. Oh, I understand quite well! You can't trust me!"

Ashe turned aside and began to gather up his papers.

"Of course," said Kitty, a little hoarsely, "I know it's my own fault, because you used to tell me much more. I suppose it was the way I behaved to Lord Parham?"

She looked at him rather tremulously. It was the first time since her illness began that she had referred to the incidents at Haggart.

"Look here!" said Ashe, in a tone of decision; "I shall really give up talking politics to you if it only reminds you of disagreeable things."

She took no notice.

"Is Lord Parham behaving well to you—now—William?"

Ashe colored hotly. As a matter of fact, in his own opinion, Lord Parham was behaving vilely. A measure of first-rate importance for which he was responsible was already in danger of being practically shelved, simply, as it seemed to him, from a lack of elementary trustworthiness in Lord Parham. But as to this he had naturally kept his own counsel with Kitty.

"He is not the most agreeable of customers," he said, gayly. "But I shall get through. Pegging away does it."

"And then to see how our papers flatter him!" cried Kitty. "How little people know, who think they know! It would be amusing to show the world the real Lord Parham."

She looked at her husband with an expression that struck him disagreeably. He threw away his cigarette, and his face changed.

"What we have to do, my dear Kitty, is simply to hold our tongues."

Kitty sat up in some excitement.

"That man never hears the truth!"

Ashe shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to him incredible that she should pursue this particular topic, after the incidents at Haggart.

"That's not the purpose for which Prime Ministers exist. Anyway, we can't tell it him."

Undaunted, however, by his tone, and with what seemed to him extraordinary excitability of manner, Kitty reminded him of an incident in the life of a bygone administration, when the near relative of an English statesman, staying at the time in the statesman's house, had sent a communication to one of the quarterlies attacking his policy and belittling his character, by means of information obtained in the intimacy of a country-house party.

"One of the most treacherous things ever done!" said Ashe, indignantly. "Fair fight, if you like! But if that kind of thing were to spread, I for one should throw up politics to-morrow."

"Every one said it did a vast deal of good," persisted Kitty.

"A precious sort of good! Yes—I believe Parham in particular profited by it—more shame to him! If anybody ever tried to help me in that sort of way—anybody, that is, for whom I felt the smallest responsibility—I know what I should do."

"What?" Kitty fell back on her cushions, but her eye still held him.

"Send in my resignation by the next post—and damn the fellow that did it! Look here, Kitty!" He came to stand over her—a fine formidable figure, his hands in his pockets. "Don't you ever try that kind of thing—there's a darling."

"Would you damn me?"

She smiled at him—with a tremor of the lip.

He caught up her hand and kissed it. "Blow out my own brains, more like," he said, laughing. Then he turned away. "What on earth have we got into this beastly conversation for? Let's get out of it. The Parhams are there—male and female—aren't they?—and we've got to put up with them. Well, I'm going to the Piazza. Any commissions? Oh, by-the-way"—he looked back at a letter in his hands—"mother says Polly Lyster will probably be here before we go—she seems to be touring around with her father."

"Charming prospect!" said Kitty. "Does mother expect me to chaperon her?"

Ashe laughed and went. As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang from the sofa, and walked up and down the room in a passionate preoccupation. A tremor of great fear was invading her; an agony of unavailing regret.

"What can I do?" she said to herself, as her upper lip twisted and tortured the lower one.

Presently she caught up her purse, went to her room, where she put on her walking things without summoning Blanche, and stealing down the stairs, so as to be unheard by Margaret, she made her way to the back gate of the Palazzo, and so to the streets leading to the Piazza. William had taken the gondola to the Piazzetta, so she felt herself safe.

She entered the telegraphic office at the western end of the Piazza, and sent a telegram to England that nearly emptied her purse of francs. When she came out she was as pale as she had been flushed before—a little, terror-stricken figure, passing in a miserable abstraction through the intricate backways which took her home.

"It won't be published for ten days. There's time. It's only a question of money," she said to herself, feverishly—"only a question of money!"

* * * * *

All the rest of the day, Kitty was at once so restless and so languid that to amuse her was difficult. Ashe was quite grateful to his amazing mother-in-law for the plan of the evening.

As night fell, Kitty started at every sound in the old Palazzo. Once or twice she went half-way to the door—eagerly—with hand out-stretched—as though she expected a letter.

"No other English post to-night, Kitty!" said Ashe, at last, raising his head from the finely printed Poetae Minores he had just purchased at Ongania's. "You don't mean to say you're not thankful!"

* * * * *

The evening arrived—clear and mild, but moonless. Ashe went off to dine with his prince, in the ordinary gondola of commerce, hired at the Traghetto; while Margaret and Kitty followed a little later in one which had already drawn the attention of Venice, owing to the two handsome gondoliers, habited in black from head to foot, who were attached to it. They turned towards the Piazzetta, where they were to meet with Madame d'Estrees' party.

Kitty, in her deep mourning, sank listlessly into the black cushions of the gondola. Yet almost as they started, as the first strokes carried them past the famous palace which is now the Prefecture, the spell of Venice began to work.

City of rest!—as it seems to our modern senses—how is it possible that so busy, so pitiless, and covetous a life as history shows us should have gone to the making and the fashioning of Venice! The easy passage of the gondola through the soft, imprisoned wave; the silence of wheel and hoof, of all that hurries and clatters; the tide that comes and goes, noiseless, indispensable, bringing in the freshness of the sea, carrying away the defilements of the land; the narrow winding ways, now firm earth, now shifting sea, that bind the city into one social whole, where the industrial and the noble alike are housed in palaces, equal often in beauty as in decay; the marvellous quiet of the nights, save when the northeast wind, Hadria's stormy leader, drives the furious waves against the palace fronts in the darkness, with the clamor of an attacking host; the languor of the hot afternoons, when life is a dream of light and green water, when the play of mirage drowns the foundations of the lidi in the lagoon, so that trees and buildings rise out of the sea as though some strong Amphion-music were but that moment calling them from the deep; and when day departs, that magic of the swiftly falling dusk, and that white foam and flower of St. Mark's upon the purple intensity of the sky!—through each phase of the hours and the seasons, rest is still the message of Venice, rest enriched with endless images, impressions, sensations, that cost no trouble and breed no pain.

It was this spell of rest that descended for a while on Kitty as they glided downward to the Piazzetta. The terror of the day relaxed. Her telegram would be in time; or, if not, she would throw herself into William's arms, and he must forgive her!—because she was so foolish and weak, so tired and sad. She slipped her hand into Margaret's; they talked in low voices of the child, and Kitty was all appealing melancholy and charm.

At the Piazzetta there was already a crowd of gondolas, and at their head the barca, which carried the musicians.

"You are late, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrees, waving to them. "Shall we draw out and come to you?—or will you just join on where you are?"

For the Vercelli gondola was already wedged into a serried line of boats in the wake of the barca.

"Never mind us," said Kitty. "We'll tack on somehow."

And inwardly she was delighted to be thus separated from her mother and the chattering crowd by which Madame d'Estrees seemed to be surrounded. Kitty and Margaret bade their men fall in, and they presently found themselves on the Salute side of the floating audience, their prow pointing to the canal.

The barca began to move, and the mass of gondolas followed. Round them, and behind them, other boats were passing and repassing, each with its slim black body, its swanlike motion, its poised oarsman, and its twinkling light. The lagoon towards the Guidecca was alive with these lights; and a magnificent white steamer adorned with flags and lanterns—the yacht, indeed, of a German prince—shone in the mid-channel.

On they floated. Here were the hotels, with other illuminated boats in front of their steps, whence spoiled voices shouted, "Santa Lucia," till even Venice and the Grand Canal became a vulgarity and a weariness. These were the "serenate publiche," common and commercial affairs, which the private serenata left behind in contempt, steering past their flaring lights for the dark waters of romance which lay beyond.

Suddenly Kitty's sadness gave way; her starved senses clamored; she woke to poetry and pleasure. All round her, stretching almost across the canal, the noiseless flock of gondolas—dark, leaning figures impelling them from behind, and in front the high prows and glow-worm lights; in the boats, a multitude of dim, shrouded figures, with not a face visible; and in their midst the barca, temple of light and music, built up of flowers, and fluttering scarves, and many-colored lanterns, a sparkling fantasy of color, rose and gold and green, shining on the bosom of the night. To either side, the long, dark lines of thrice-historic palaces; scarcely a poor light here and there at their water-gates; and now and then the lamps of the Traghetti.... Otherwise, darkness, soundless motion, and, overhead, dim stars.

"Margaret! Look!"

Kitty caught her companion's arm in a mad delight.

Some one for the amusement of the guests of Venice was experimenting on the top of the campanile of St. Mark's with those electric lights which were then the toys of science, and are now the eyes and tools of war. A search-light was playing on the basin of St. Mark's and on the mouth of the canal. Suddenly it caught the Church of the Salute—and the whole vast building, from the Queen of Heaven on its topmost dome down to the water's brim, the figures of saints and prophets and apostles which crowd its steps and ledges, the white whorls, like huge sea-shells, that make its buttresses, the curves and volutes of its cornices and doorways, rushed upon the eye in a white and blinding splendor, making the very darkness out of which the vision sprang alive and rich. Not a Christian church, surely, but a palace of Poseidon! The bewildered gazer saw naiads and bearded sea-gods in place of angels and saints, and must needs imagine the champing of Poseidon's horses at the marble steps, straining towards the sea.

The vision wavered, faded, reappeared, and finally died upon the night. Then the wild beams began to play on the canal, following the serenata, lighting up now the palaces on either hand, now some single gondola, revealing every figure and gesture of the laughing English or Americans who filled it, in a hard white flash.

"Oh! listen, Kitty!" said Margaret. "Some one is going to sing 'Che faro.'"

Miss French was very musical, and she turned in a trance of pleasure towards the barca whence came the first bars of the accompaniment.

She did not see meanwhile that Kitty had made a hurried movement, and was now leaning over the side of the gondola, peering with arrested breath into the scattered group of boats on their left hand. The search-light flashed here and there among them. A gondola at the very edge of the serenata contained one figure beside the gondolier, a man in a large cloak and slouch hat, sitting very still with folded arms. As Kitty looked, hearing the beating of her heart, their own boat was suddenly lit up. The light passed in a second, and while it lasted those in the flash could see nothing outside it. When it withdrew all was in darkness. The black mass of boats floated on, soundless again, save for an occasional plash of water or the hoarse cry of a gondolier—and in the distance the wail for Eurydice.

Kitty fell back in her seat. An excitement, from which she shrank in a kind of terror, possessed her. Her thoughts were wholly absorbed by the gondola and the figure she could no longer distinguish—for which, whenever a group of lamps threw their reflections on the water, she searched the canal in vain. If what she madly dreamed were true, had she herself been seen—and recognized?

The serenata in honor of Italy's beautiful princess duly made its way to the Grand Canal. The princess came to her balcony, while the "Jewel Song" in "Faust" was being sung below, and there was a demonstration which echoed from palace to palace and died away under the arch of the Rialto. Then the gondolas dispersed. That of Lady Kitty Ashe had some difficulty in making its way home against a force of wind and tide coming from the lagoon.

* * * * *

Kitty was apparently asleep when Ashe returned. He had sat late with his hosts—men prominent in the Risorgimento and in the politics of the new kingdom—discussing the latest intricacies of the Roman situation and the prospects of Italian finance. His mind was all alert and vigorous, ranging over great questions and delighting in its own strength. To come in contact with these able foreigners, not as the mere traveller but as an important member of an English government, beginning to be spoken of by the world as one of the two or three men of the future—this was a new experience and a most agreeable one. Doors hitherto closed had opened before him; information no casual Englishman could have commanded had been freely poured out for him; last, but not least, he had at length made himself talk French with some fluency, and he looked back on his performance of the evening with a boy's complacency.

For the rest, Venice was a mere trial of his patience! As his gondola brought him home, struggling with wind and wave, Ashe had no eye whatever for the beauty of this Venice in storm. His mind was in England, in London, wrestling with a hundred difficulties and possibilities. The old literary and speculative habit was fast disappearing in the stress of action and success. His well-worn Plato or Horace still lay beside his bedside; but when he woke early, and lit a candle carefully shaded from Kitty, it was not to the poets and philosophers that he turned; it was to a heap of official documents and reports, to the letters of political friends, or an unfinished letter of his own, the phrases of which had perhaps been running through his dreams. The measures for which he was wrestling against the intrigues of Lord Parham and Lord Parham's clique filled all his mind with a lively ardor of battle. They were the children—the darlings—of his thoughts.

Nevertheless, as he entered his wife's dim-lit room the eager arguments and considerations that were running through his head died away. He stood beside her, overwhelmed by a rush of feeling, alive through all his being to the appeal of her frail sweetness, the helplessness of her sleep, the dumb significance of the thin, blue-veined hand—eloquent at once of character and of physical weakness—which lay beside her. Her face was hidden, but the beautiful hair with its childish curls and ripples drew him to her—touched all the springs of tenderness.

It was a loveliness so full, it seemed, of meaning and of promise. Hand, brow, mouth—they were the signs of no mere empty and insipid beauty. There was not a movement, not a feature, that did not speak of intelligence and mind.

And yet, were he to wake her now and talk to her of the experience of his evening, how little joy would either get out of it.

Was it because she had no intellectual disinterestedness? Well, what woman had! But other women, even if they saw everything in terms of personality, had the power of pursuing an aim, steadily, persistently, for the sake of a person. He thought of Lady Palmerston—of Princess Lieven fighting Guizot's battles—and sighed.

By Jove! the women could do most things, if they chose. He recalled Kitty's triumph in the great party gathered to welcome Lord Parham, contrasting it with her wilful and absurd behavior to the man himself. There was something bewildering in such power—combined with such folly. In a sense, it was perfectly true that she had insulted her husband's chief, and jeopardized her husband's policy, because she could not put up with Lord Parham's white eyelashes.

Well, let him make his account with it! How to love her, tend her, make her happy—and yet carry on himself the life of high office—there was the problem! Meanwhile he recognized, fully and humorously, that she had married a political sceptic—and that it was hard for her to know what to do with the enthusiast who had taken his place.

Poor, pretty, incalculable darling! He would coax her to stay abroad part of the Parliamentary season—and then, perhaps, lure her into the country, with the rebuilding and refurnishing of Haggart. She must be managed and kept from harm—and afterwards indulged and spoiled and feted to her heart's content.

If only the fates would give them another child!—a child brilliant and lovely like herself, then surely this melancholy which overshadowed her would disperse. That look—that tragic look—she had given him on the day of the fete, when she spoke of "separation"! The wild adventure with the lamp had been her revenge—her despair. He shuddered as he thought of it.

He fell asleep, still pondering restlessly over her future and his own. Amid all his anxieties he never stooped to recollect the man who had endangered her name and peace. His optimism, his pride, the sanguine perfunctoriness of much of his character were all shown in the omission.

* * * * *

Kitty, however, was not asleep while Ashe was beside her. And she slept but little through the hours that followed. Between three and four she was finally roused by the sounds of storm in the canal. It was as though a fleet of gigantic steamers—in days when Venice knew but the gondola—were passing outside, sending a mountainous "wash" against the walls of the old palace in which they lodged. In this languid autumnal Venice the sudden noise and crash were startling. Kitty sprang softly out of bed, flung on a dressing-gown and fur cloak, and slipped through the open window to the balcony.

A strange sight! Beneath, livid waves, lashing the marble walls; above, a pale moonlight, obscured by scudding clouds. Not a sign of life on the water or in the dark palaces opposite. Venice looked precisely as she might have looked on some wild sixteenth-century night in the years of her glorious decay, when her palaces were still building and her state tottering. Opposite, at the Traghetto of the Accademia, there were lamps, and a few lights in the gondolas; and through the storm-noises one could hear the tossed boats grinding on their posts.

The riot of the air was not cold; there was still a recollection of summer in the gusts that beat on Kitty's fair hair and wrestled with her cloak. As she clung to the balcony she pictured to herself the tumbling waves on the Lido; the piled storm-clouds parting like a curtain above a dead Venice; and behind, the gleaming eternal Alps, sending their challenge to the sea—the forces that make the land, to the forces that engulf it.

Her wild fancy went out to meet the tumult of blast and wave. She felt herself, as it were, anchored a moment at sea, in the midst of a war of elements, physical and moral.

Yes, yes!—it was Geoffrey. Once, under the skipping light, she had seen the face distinctly. Paler than of old—gaunt, unhappy, absent. It was the face of one who had suffered—in body and mind. But—she trembled through all her slight frame!—the old harsh power was there unchanged.

Had he seen and recognized her—slipping away afterwards into the mouth of a side canal, or dropping behind in the darkness? Was he ashamed to face her—or angered by the reminder of her existence? No doubt it seemed to him now a monstrous absurdity that he should ever have said he loved her! He despised her—thought her a base and coward soul. Very likely he would make it up with Mary Lyster now, accept her nursing and her money.

Her lip curled in scorn. No, that she didn't believe! Well, then, what would be his future? His name had been but little in the newspapers during the preceding year; the big public seemed to have forgotten him. A cloud had hung for months over the struggle of races and of faiths now passing in the Balkans. Obscure fighting in obscure mountains; massacre here, revolt there; and for some months now hardly an accredited voice from Turk or Christian to tell the world what was going on.

But Geoffrey had now emerged—and at a moment when Europe was beginning perforce to take notice of what she had so far wilfully ignored. A lui la parole! No doubt he was preparing it, the bloody, exciting story which would bring him before the foot-lights again, and make him once more the lion of a day. More social flatteries, more doubtful love-affairs! Fools like herself would feel his spell, would cherish and caress him, only to be stung and scathed as she had been. The bitter lines of his "portrait" rung in her ears—blackening and discrowning her in her own eyes.

She abhorred him!—but the thought that he was in Venice burned deep into senses and imagination. Should she tell William she had seen him? No, no! She would stand by herself, protect herself!

So she stole back to bed, and lay there wakeful, starting guiltily at William's every movement. If he knew what had happened!—what she was thinking of! Why on earth should he? It would be monstrous to harass him on his holiday—with all these political affairs on his mind.

Then suddenly—by an association of ideas—she sat up shivering, her hands pressed to her breast. The telegram—the book! Oh, but of course she had been in time!—of course! Why, she had offered the man two hundred pounds! She lay down laughing at herself—forcing herself to try and sleep.



XIX

Sir Richard Lyster unfolded his Times with a jerk.

"A beastly rheumatic hole I call this," he said, looking angrily at the window of his hotel sitting-room, which showed drops from a light shower then passing across the lagoon. "And the dilatoriness of these Italian posts is, upon my soul, beyond bearing! This Times is three days old."

Mary Lyster looked up from the letter she was writing.

"Why don't you read the French papers, papa? I saw a Figaro of yesterday in the Piazza this morning."

"Because I can't!" was the indignant reply. "There wasn't the same amount of money squandered on my education, my dear, that there has been on yours."

Mary smiled a little, unseen. Her father had been, of course, at Eton. She had been educated by a succession of small and hunted governesses, mostly Swiss, whose remuneration had certainly counted among the frugalities rather than the extravagances of the family budget.

Sir Richard read his Times for a while. Mary continued to write checks for the board wages of the servants left at home, and to give directions for the beating of carpets and cleaning of curtains. It was dull work, and she detested it.

Presently Sir Richard rose, with a stretch. He was a tall old man, with a shock of white hair and very black eyes. A victim to certain obscure forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid nor inhuman, but he suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class—too much money and too few ideas. He came abroad every year, reluctantly. He did not choose to be left behind by county neighbors whose wives talked nonsense about Botticelli. And Mary would have it. But Sir Richard's tours were generally one prolonged course of battle between himself and all foreign institutions; and if it was Mary who drove him forth, it was Mary also who generally hurried him home.

"Who was it you saw last night in that ridiculous singing affair?" he asked, as he put the fire together.

"Kitty Ashe—and her mother," said Mary—after a moment—still writing.

"Her mother!—what, that disreputable woman?"

"They weren't in the same gondola."

"Ashe will be a great fool if he lets his wife see much of that woman! By all accounts Lady Kitty is quite enough of a handful already. By-the-way, have you found out where they are?"

"On the Grand Canal. Shall we call this afternoon?"

"I don't mind. Of course, I think Ashe is doing an immense amount of harm."

"Well, you can tell him so," said Mary.

Sir Richard frowned. His daughter's manners seemed to him at times abrupt.

"Why do you see so little now of Elizabeth Tranmore?" he asked her, with a sharp look. "You used to be always there. And I don't believe you even write to her much now."

"Does she see much of anybody?"

"Because, you mean, of Tranmore's condition? What good can she be to him now? He knows nobody."

"She doesn't seem to ask the question," said Mary, dryly.

A queer, soft look came over Sir Richard's old face.

"No, the women don't," he said, half to himself, and fell into a little reverie. He emerged from it with the remark—accompanied by a smile, a little sly but not unkind:

"I always used to hope, Polly, that you and Ashe would have made it up!"

"I'm sure I don't know why," said Mary, fastening up her envelopes. As she did so it crossed her father's mind that she was still very good-looking. Her dress of dark-blue cloth, the plain fashion of her brown hair, her oval face and well-marked features, her plump and pretty hands, were all pleasant to look upon. She had rather a hard way with her, though, at times. The servants were always giving warning. And, personally, he was much fonder of his younger daughter, whom Mary considered foolish and improvident. But he was well aware that Mary made his life easy.

"Well, you were always on excellent terms," he said, in answer to her last remark. "I remember his saying to me once that you were very good company. The Bishop, too, used to notice how he liked to talk to you."

When Mary and her father were together, "the Bishop" was Sir Richard's property. He only fell to Mary's share in the old man's absence.

Mary colored slightly.

"Oh yes, we got on," she said, counting her letters the while with a quick hand.

"Well, I hope that young woman whom he did marry is now behaving herself. It was that fellow Cliffe with whom the scandal was last year, wasn't it?"

"There was a good deal of talk," said Mary.

"A rum fellow, that Cliffe! A man at the club told me last week it is believed he has been fighting for these Bosnian rebels for months. Shocking bad form I call it. If the Turks catch him, they'll string him up. And quite right, too. What's he got to do with other people's quarrels?"

"If the Turks will be such brutes—"

"Nonsense, my dear! Don't you believe any of this radical stuff. The Turks are awfully fine fellows—fight like bull-dogs. And as for the 'atrocities,' they make them up in London. Oh, of course, what Cliffe wants is notoriety—we all know that. Well, I'm going out to see if I can find another English paper. Beastly climate!"

But as Sir Richard turned again to the window, he was met by a burst of sunshine, which hit him gayly in the face like a child's impertinence. He grumbled something unintelligible as Mary put him into his Inverness cape, took hat and stick, and departed.

Mary sat still beside the writing-table, her hands crossed on her lap, her eyes absently bent upon them.

She was thinking of the serenata. She had followed it with an acquaintance from the hotel, and she had seen not only Kitty and Madame d'Estrees, but also—the solitary man in the heavy cloak. She knew quite well that Cliffe was in Venice; though, true to her secretive temper, she had not mentioned the fact to her father.

Of course he was in Venice on Kitty's account. It would be too absurd to suppose that he was here by mere coincidence. Mary believed that nothing but the intervention of Cliffe's mighty kinsman from the north had saved the situation the year before. Kitty would certainly have betrayed her husband but for the force majeure arrayed against her. And now the magnate who had played Providence slumbered in the family vault. He had passed away in the spring, full of years and honors, leaving Cliffe some money. The path was clear. As for the escapade in the Balkans, Geoffrey was, of course, tired of it. A sensational book, hurried out to meet the public appetite for horrors—and the pursuance of his intrigue with Lady Kitty Ashe—Mary was calmly certain that these were now his objects. He was, no doubt, writing his book and meeting Kitty where he could. Ashe would soon have to go home. And then! As if that girl Margaret French could stop it!

Well, William had only got his deserts! But as her thoughts passed from Kitty or Cliffe to William Ashe, their quality changed. Hatred and bitterness, scorn or wounded vanity, passed into something gentler. She fell into recollections of Ashe as he had appeared on that bygone afternoon in May when he came back triumphant from his election, with the world before him. If he had never seen Kitty Bristol!—

"I should have made him a good wife," she said to herself. "I should have known how to be proud of him."

And there emerged also the tragic consciousness that if the fates had given him to her she might have been another woman—taught by happiness, by love, by motherhood.

It was that little, heartless creature who had snatched them both from her—William and Geoffrey Cliffe—the higher and the lower—the man who might have ennobled her—and the man, half charlatan, half genius, whom she might have served and raised, by her fortune and her abilities. Her life might have been so full, so interesting! And it was Kitty that had made it flat, and cold, and futureless.

Poor William! Had he really liked her, in those boy-and-girl days? She dreamed over their old cousinly relations—over the presents he had sometimes given her.

Then a thought, like a burning arrow, pierced her. Her hands locked, straining one against the other. If this intrigue were indeed renewed—if Geoffrey succeeded in tempting Kitty from her husband—why then—then—

She shivered before the images that were passing through her mind, and, rising, she put away her letters and rang for the waiter, to order dinner.

"Where shall we go?" said Kitty, languidly, putting down the French novel she was reading.

* * * * *

"Mr. Ashe suggested San Lazzaro." Margaret looked up from her writing as Kitty moved towards her. "The rain seems to have all cleared off."

"Well, I'm sure it doesn't matter where," said Kitty, and was turning away; but Margaret caught her hand and caressed it.

"Naughty Kitty! why this sea air can't put some more color into your cheeks I don't understand."

"I'm not pale!" cried Kitty, pouting. "Margaret, you do croak about me so! If you say any more I'll go and rouge till you'll be ashamed to go out with me—there! Where's William?"

William opened the door as she spoke, the Gazetta di Venezia in one hand and a telegram in the other.

"Something for you, darling," he said, holding it out to Kitty. "Shall I open it?"

"Oh no!" said Kitty, hastily. "Give it me. It's from my Paris woman."

"Ah—ha!" laughed Ashe. "Some extravagance you want to keep to yourself, I'll be bound. I've a good mind to see!"

And he teasingly held it up above her head. But she gave a little jump, caught it, and ran off with it to her room.

"Much regret impossible stop publication. Fifty copies distributed already. Writing."

She dropped speechless on the edge of her bed, the crumpled telegram in her hand. The minutes passed.

"When will you be ready?" said Ashe, tapping at the door.

"Is the gondola there?"

"Waiting at the steps."

"Five minutes!" Ashe departed. She rose, tore the telegram into little bits, and began with deliberation to put on her mantle and hat.

"You've got to go through with it," she said to the white face in the glass, and she straightened her small shoulders defiantly.

* * * * *

They were bound for the Armenian convent. It was a misty day, with shafts of light on the lagoon. The storm had passed, but the water was still rough, and the clouds seemed to be withdrawing their forces only to marshal them again with the darkness. A day of sudden bursts of watery light, of bands of purple distance struck into enchanting beauty by the red or orange of a sail, of a wild salt breath in air that seemed to be still suffused with spray. The Alps were hidden; but what sun there was played faintly on the Euganean hills.

"I say, Margaret, at last she does us some credit!" said Ashe, pointing to his wife.

Margaret started. Was it rouge?—or was it the strong air? Kitty's languor had entirely disappeared; she was more cheerful and more talkative than she had been at any time since their arrival. She chattered about the current scandals of Venice—the mysterious contessa who lived in the palace opposite their own, and only went out, in deep mourning, at night, because she had been the love of a Russian grand-duke, and the grand-duke was dead; of the Carlist pretender and his wife, who had been very popular in Venice until they took it into their heads to require royal honors, and Venice, taking time to think, had lazily decided the game was not worth the candle—so now the sulky pair went about alone in a fine gondola, turning glassy eyes on their former acquaintance; of the needy marchese who had sold a Titian to the Louvre, and had then found himself boycotted by all his kinsfolk in Venice who were not needy and had no Titians to sell—all these tales Kitty reeled out at length till the handsome gondoliers marvelled at the little lady's vivacity and the queer brightness of her eyes.

"Gracious, Kitty, where do you get all these stories from?" cried Ashe, when the chatter paused for a moment.

He looked at her with delight, rejoicing in her gayety, the slight touches of white which to-day for the first time relieved the sombreness of her dress, the return of her color. And Margaret wondered again how much of it was rouge.

At the Armenian convent a handsome young monk took charge of them. As George Sand and Lamennais had done before them, they looked at the printing-press, the garden, the cloister, the church; they marvelled lazily at the cleanliness and brightness of the place; and finally they climbed to the library and museum, and the room close by where Byron played at grammar-making. In this room Ashe fell suddenly into a political talk with the young monk, who was an ardent and patriotic son of the most unfortunate of nations, and they passed out and down the stairs, followed by Margaret French, not noticing that Kitty had lingered behind.

Kitty stood idly by the window of Byron's room, thinking restlessly of verses that were not Byron's, though there was in them, clothed in forms of the new age, the spirit of Byronic passion, and more than a touch of Byronic affectation—thinking also of the morning's telegram. Supposing Darrell's prophecy, which had seemed to her so absurd, came true, that the book did William harm, not good—that he ceased to love her—that he cast her off?...

... A plash of water outside, and a voice giving directions. From the lagoon towards Malamocco a gondola approached. A gentleman and lady were seated in it. The lady—a very handsome Italian, with a loud laugh and brilliant eyes—carried a scarlet parasol. Kitty gave a stifled cry as she drew back. She fled out of the room and overtook the other two.

"May we go back into the garden a little?" she said, hurriedly, to the monk who was talking to William. "I should like to see the view towards Venice."

William held up a watch, to show that there was but just time to get back to the Piazza, for lunch. Kitty persisted, and the monk, understanding what the impetuous young lady wished, good-naturedly turned to obey her.

"We must be very quick!" said Kitty. "Take us please, to the edge, beyond the trees."

And she herself hurried through the garden to its farther side, where it was bounded by the lagoon.

The others followed her, rather puzzled by her caprice.

"Not much to be seen, darling!" said Ashe, as they reached the water—"and I think this good man wants to get rid of us!"

And, indeed, the monk was looking backward across the intervening trees at a party which had just entered the garden.

"Ah, they have found another brother!" he said, politely, and he began to point out to Kitty the various landmarks visible, the arsenal, the two asylums, San Pietro di Castello.

The new-comers just glanced at the garden apparently, as the Ashes had done on arrival, and promptly followed their guide back into the convent.

Kitty asked a few more questions, then led the way in a hasty return to the garden door, the entrance-hall, and the steps where their gondola was waiting. Nothing was to be seen of the second party. They had passed on into the cloisters.

* * * * *

Animation, oddity, inconsequence, all these things Margaret observed in Kitty during luncheon in a restaurant of the Merceria, and various incidents connected with it; animation above all. The Ashes fell in with acquaintance—a fashionable and harassed mother, on the fringe of the Archangels, accompanied by two daughters, one pretty and one plain, and sore pressed by their demands, real or supposed. The parents were not rich, but the girls had to be dressed, taken abroad, produced at country-houses, at Ascot, and the opera, like all other girls. The eldest girl, a considerable beauty, was an accomplished egotist at nineteen, and regarded her mother as a rather inefficient dame de compagnie. Kitty understood this young lady perfectly, and after luncheon, over her cigarette, her little, sharp, probing questions gave the beauty twenty minutes' annoyance. Then appeared a young man, ill-dressed, red-haired, and shy. Carelessly as he greeted the mother and daughters, his entrance, however, transformed them. The mother forgot fatigue; the beauty ceased to yawn; the younger girl, who had been making surreptitious notes of Kitty's costume in the last leaf of her guide-book, developed a charming gush. He was the owner of the Magellan estates and the historic Magellan Castle; a professed hater of "absurd womankind," and, in general, a hunted and self-conscious person. Kitty gave him one finger, looked him up and down, asked him whether he was yet engaged, and when he laughed an embarrassed "No," told him that he would certainly die in the arms of the Magellan housekeeper.

This got a smile out of him. He sat down beside her, and the two laughed and talked with a freedom which presently drew the attention of the neighboring tables, and made Ashe uncomfortable. He rose, paid the bill, and succeeded in carrying the whole party off to the Piazza, in search of coffee. But here again Kitty's extravagances, the provocation of her light loveliness, as she sat toying with a fresh cigarette and "chaffing" Lord Magellan, drew a disagreeable amount of notice from the Italians passing by.

"Mother, let's go!" said the angry beauty, imperiously, in her mother's ear. "I don't like to be seen with Lady Kitty! She's impossible!"

And with cold farewells the three ladies departed. Then Kitty sprang up and threw away her cigarette.

"How those girls bully their mother!" she said, with scorn. "However, it serves her right. I'm sure she bullied hers. Well, now we must go and do something. Ta-ta!"

Lord Magellan, to whom she offered another casual finger, wanted to know why he was dismissed. If they were going sight-seeing, might he not come with them?"

"Oh no!" said Kitty, calmly. "Sight—seeing with people you don't really know is too trying to the temper. Even with one's best friend it's risky."

"Where are you? May I call?" said the young man.

"We're always out," was Kitty's careless reply. "But—"

She considered—

"Would you like to see the Palazzo Vercelli?"

"That magnificent place on the Grand Canal? Very much."

"Meet me there to-morrow afternoon," said Kitty. "Four o'clock."

"Delighted!" said Lord Magellan, making a note on his shirt-cuff. "And who lives there?"

"My mother," said Kitty, abruptly, and walked away.

Ashe followed her in discomfort. This young man was the son of a certain Lady Magellan, an intimate friend of Lady Tranmore's—one of the noblest women of her generation, pure, high-minded, spiritual, to whom neither an ugly word nor thought was possible. It annoyed him that either he or Kitty should be introducing her son to Madame d'Estrees.

It was really tiresome of Kitty! Rich young men with characters yet indeterminate were not to be lightly brought in contact with Madame d'Estrees. Kitty could not be ignorant of it—poor child! It had been one of her reckless strokes, and Ashe was conscious of a sharp annoyance.

However, he said nothing. He followed his companions from church to church, till pictures became an abomination to him. Then he pleaded letters, and went to the club.

"Will you call on maman to-morrow?" said Kitty, as he turned away, looking at him a little askance.

She knew that he had disapproved of her invitation to Lord Magellan. Why had she given it? She didn't know. There seemed to be a kind of revived mischief and fever in the blood, driving her to these foolish and ill-considered things.

Ashe met her question with a shake of the head and the remark, in a decided tone, that he should be too busy.

Privately he thought it a piece of impertinence that Madame d'Estrees should expect either Kitty or himself to appear in her drawing-room at all. That this implied a complete transformation of his earlier attitude he was well aware; he accepted it with a curious philosophy. When he and Kitty first met he had never troubled his head about such things. If a woman amused or interested him in society, so long as his taste was satisfied she might have as much or as little character as she pleased. It stirred his mocking sense of English hypocrisy that the point should be even raised. But now—how can any individual, he asked himself, with political work to do, affect to despise the opinions and prejudices of society? A politician with great reforms to put through will make no friction round him that he can avoid—unless he is a fool. It weighed sorely, therefore, on his present mind that Madame d'Estrees was in Venice—that she was a person of blemished repute—that he must be and was ashamed of her. It would have been altogether out of consonance with his character to put any obstacle in the way of Kitty's seeing her mother. But he chafed as he had never yet chafed under the humiliation of his relationship to the notorious Margaret Fitzgerald of the forties, who had been old Blackwater's chere amie before she married him, and, as Lady Blackwater, had sacrificed her innocent and defenceless step-daughter to one of her own lovers, in order to secure for him the step-daughter's fortune—black and dastardly deed!

Was it all part of the general growth and concentration that any shrewd observer might have read in William Ashe?—the pressure—enormous, unseen—of the traditional English ideals, English standards, asserting itself at last in a brilliant and paradoxical nature? It had been so—conspicuously—in the case of one of his political predecessors. Lord Melbourne had begun his career as a person of idle habits and imprudent adventures, much given to coarse conversation, and unable to say the simplest thing without an oath. He ended it as the man of scrupulous dignity, tact, and delicacy, who moulded the innocent youth of a girl-queen, to his own lasting honor and England's gratitude. In ways less striking, the same influence of vast responsibilities was perhaps acting upon William Ashe. It had already made him a sterner, tougher, and—no doubt—a greater man.

The defection of William only left Kitty, it seemed, still more greedy of things to see and do. Innumerable sacristans opened all possible doors and unveiled all possible pictures. Bellini succeeded Tintoret, and Carpaccio Bellini. The two sable gondoliers wore themselves out in Kitty's service, and Margaret's kind, round face grew more and more puzzled and distressed. And whence this strange impression that the whole experience was a flight on Kitty's part?—or, rather, that throughout it she was always eagerly expecting, or eagerly escaping from some unknown, unseen pursuer? A glance behind her—a start—a sudden shivering gesture in the shadows of dark churches—these things suggested it, till Margaret herself was caught by the same suppressed excitement that seemed to be alive in Kitty. Did it all point merely to some mental state—to the nervous effects of her illness and her loss?

When they reached home about five o'clock, Kitty was naturally tired out. Margaret put her on the sofa, gave her tea, and tended her, hoping that she might drop asleep before dinner. But just as tea was over, and Kitty was lying curled up, silent and white, with that brooding look which kept Margaret's anxiety about her constantly alive, there was a sudden sound of voices in the anteroom outside.

"Margaret!" cried Kitty, starting up in dismay—"say I'm not at home."

Too late! Their smiling Italian housemaid threw the door open, with the air of one bringing good-fortune. And behind her appeared a tall lady, and an old gentleman hat in hand.

"May we come in, Kitty?" said Mary Lyster, advancing. "Cousin Elizabeth told us you were here."

Kitty had sprung up. The disorder of her fair hair, her white cheeks, and the ghostly thinness of her small, black-robed form drew the curious eyes of Sir Richard. And the oddness of her manner as she greeted them only confirmed the old man's prejudice against her.

However, greeted they were, in some sort of fashion; and Miss French gave them tea. She kept Sir Richard entertained, while Kitty and Mary conversed. They talked perfunctorily of ordinary topics—Venice, its sights, its hotels, and the people staying in them—of Lady Tranmore and various Ashe relations. Meanwhile the inmost thought of each was busy with the other.

Kitty studied the lines of Mary's face and the fashion of her dress.

"She looks much older. And she's not enjoying her life a bit. That's my fault. I spoiled all her chances with Geoffrey—and she knows it. She hates me. Quite right, too."

"Oh, you mean that nonsensical thing last night?" Sir Richard was saying to Margaret French. "Oh no, I didn't go. But Mary, of course, thought she must go. Somebody invited her."

Kitty started.

"You were at the serenata?" she said to Mary.

"Yes, I went with a party from the hotel."

Kitty looked at her. A sudden flush had touched her pale cheeks, and she could not conceal the trembling of her hands.

"That was marvellous, that light on the Salute, wasn't it?"

"Wonderful!—and on the water, too. I saw two or three people I knew—just caught their faces for a second."

"Did you?" said Kitty. And thoughts ran fast through her head. "Did she see Geoffrey?—and does she mean me to understand that she did? How she detests me! If she did see him, of course she supposes that I know all about it, and that he's here for me. Why don't I ask her, straight out, whether she saw him, and make her understand that I don't care twopence?—that she's welcome to him—as far as I'm concerned?"

But some hidden feeling tied her tongue. Mary continued to talk about the serenata, and Kitty was presently conscious that her every word and gesture in reply was closely watched. "Yes, yes, she saw him. Perhaps she'll tell William—or write home to mother?"

And in her excitement she began to chatter fast and loudly, mostly to Sir Richard—repeating some of the Venice tales she had told in the gondola—with much inconsequence and extravagance. The old man listened, his hands on his stick, his eyes on the ground, the expression on his strong mouth hostile or sarcastic. It was a relief to everybody when Ashe's step was heard stumbling up the dark stairs, and the door opened on his friendly and courteous presence.

"Why, Polly!—and Cousin Richard! I wondered where you had hidden yourselves."

Mary's bright, involuntary smile transformed her. Ashe sat down beside her, and they were soon deep in all sorts of gossip—relations, acquaintance, politics, and what not. All Mary's stiffness disappeared. She became the elegant, agreeable woman, of whom dinner-parties were glad. Ashe plunged into the pleasant malice of her talk, which ranged through the good and evil fortunes—mostly the latter—of half his acquaintance; discussed the debts, the love-affairs, and the follies of his political colleagues or Parliamentary foes; how the Foreign Secretary had been getting on at Balmoral—how so-and-so had been ruined at the Derby and restored to sanity and solvency by the Oaks—how Lady Parham, at Hatfield, had been made to know her place by the French Ambassador—and the like; passing thereby a charming half-hour.

Meanwhile Kitty, Margaret French, and Sir Richard kept up intermittent remarks, pausing at every other phrase to gather the crumbs that fell from the table of the other two.

Kitty was very weary, and a dead weight had fallen on her spirits. If Sir Richard had thought her bad form ten minutes before, his unspoken mind now declared her stupid. Meanwhile Kitty was saying to herself, as she watched her husband and Mary:

"I used to amuse William just as well—last year!"

When the door closed on them, Kitty fell back on her cushions with an "ouf!" of relief. William came back in a few minutes from showing the visitors the back way to their hotel, and stood beside his wife with an anxious face.

"They were too much for you, darling. They stayed too long."

"How you and Mary chattered!" said Kitty, with a little pout. But at the same moment she slipped an appealing hand into his.

Ashe clasped the hand, and laughed.

"I always told you she was an excellent gossip."

* * * * *

Sir Richard and Mary pursued their way through the narrow calles that led to the Piazza. Sir Richard was expatiating on Ashe's folly in marrying such a wife.

"She looks like an actress!—and as to her conversation, she began by telling me outrageous stories and ended by not having a word to say about anything. The bad blood of the Bristols, it seems to me, without their brains."

"Oh no, papa! Kitty is very clever. You haven't heard her recite. She was tired to-night."

"Well, I don't want to flatter you, my dear!" said the old man, testily, "but I thought it was pathetic—the way in which Ashe enjoyed your conversation. It showed he didn't get much of it at home."

Mary smiled uncertainly. Her whole nature was still aglow from that contact with Ashe's delightful personality. After months of depression and humiliation, her success with him had somehow restored those illusions on which cheerfulness depends.

How ill Kitty looked—and how conscious! Mary was impetuously certain that Kitty had betrayed her knowledge of Cliffe's presence in Venice; and equally certain that William knew nothing. Poor William!

Well, what can you expect of such a temperament—such a race? Mary's thoughts travelled confusedly towards—and through—some big and dreadful catastrophe.

And then? After it?

It seemed to her that she was once more in the Park Lane drawing-room; the familiar Morris papers and Burne-Jones drawings surrounded her; and she and Elizabeth Tranmore sat, hand in hand, talking of William—a William once more free, after much folly and suffering, to reconstruct his life....

"Here we are," said Sir Richard Lyster, moving down a dark passage towards the brightly lit doorway of their hotel.

With a start—as of one taken red-handed—Mary awoke from her dream.



XX

Madame d'Estrees and her friend, Donna Laura, occupied the mezzanin of the vast Vercelli palace. The palace itself belonged to the head of the Vercelli family. It was a magnificent erection of the late seventeenth century, at this moment half furnished, dilapidated, and forsaken. But the entresol on the eastern side of the cortile was in good condition, and comfortably fitted up for the occasional use of the Principe. As he was wintering in Paris, he had let his rooms at an ordinary commercial rent to his kinswoman, Donna Laura. She, a soured and melancholy woman, unmarried in a Latin society which has small use or kindness for spinsters, had seized on Marguerite d'Estrees—whose acquaintance she had made in a Mont d'Or hotel—and was now keeping her like a caged canary that sings for its food.

Madame d'Estrees was quite willing. So long as she had a sofa on which to sit enthroned, a sufficiency of new gowns, a maid, cigarettes, breakfast in bed, and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most harmless and engaging of mortals. Her youth had been cruel, disorderly, and vicious. It had lasted long; but now, when middle age stood at last confessed, she was lapsing, it seemed, into amiability and good behavior. She was, indeed, fast forgetting her own history, and soon the recital of it would surprise no one so much as herself.

It was five o'clock. Madame d'Estrees had just established herself in the silk-panelled drawing-room of Donna Laura's apartment, expectant of visitors, and, in particular, of her daughter.

In begging Kitty to come on this particular afternoon, she had not thought fit to mention that it would be Donna Laura's "day." Had she done so, Kitty, in consideration of her mourning, would perhaps have cried off. Whereas, really—poor, dear child!—what she wanted was distraction and amusement.

And what Madame d'Estrees wanted was the presence beside her, in public, of Lady Kitty Ashe. Kitty had already visited her mother privately, and had explored the antiquities of the Vercelli palace. But Madame d'Estrees was now intent on something more and different.

For in the four years which had now elapsed since the Ashe's marriage this lively lady had known adversity. She had been forced to leave London, as we have seen, by the pressure of certain facts in her past history so ancient and far removed when their true punishment began that she no doubt felt it highly unjust that she should be punished for them at all. Her London debts had swallowed up what then remained to her of fortune; and, afterwards, the allowance from the Ashes was all she had to depend on. Banished to Paris, she fell into a lower stratum of life, at a moment when her faithful and mysterious friend, Markham Warington, was held in Scotland by the first painful symptoms of his sister's last illness, and could do but little for her. She had, in fact, known the sordid shifts and straits of poverty, though the smallest moral effort would have saved her from them. She had kept disreputable company, she had been miserable, and base; and although shame is not easy to persons of her temperament, it may perhaps be said that she was ashamed of this period of her existence. Appeals to the Ashes yielded less and less, and Warington seemed to have forsaken her. She awoke at last to a panic-stricken fear of darker possibilities and more real suffering than any she had yet known, and under the stress of this fear she collapsed physically, writing both to Warington and to the Ashes in a tone of mingled reproach and despair.

The Ashes sent money, and, though Kitty was at the moment not fit to travel, prepared to come. Warington, who had just closed the eyes of his sister, went at once. He was now the last of his family, without any ties that he could not lawfully break. Within two days of his arrival in Paris, Madame d'Estrees had promised to marry him in three months, to break off all her Paris associations, and to give her life henceforward into his somewhat stern hands. The visit to Venice was part of the price that he had had to pay for her decision. Marguerite pleaded, with a shudder, that she must have a little amusement before she went to live in Dumfriesshire; and he had been obliged to acquiesce in her arrangement with Donna Laura—stipulating only that he should be their escort and guardian.

What had moved him to such an act? His reasons can only be guessed at. Warington was a man of religion, a Calvinist by education and inheritance, and of a silent and dreamy temperament. He had been intimate with very few women in his life. His sister had been a second mother to him, and both of them had been the guardians of their younger brother. When this adored brother fell shot through the lungs in the hopeless defence of Lady Blackwater's reputation, it would have been natural enough that Markham should hate the woman who had been the occasion of such a calamity. The sister, a pious and devoted Christian, had indeed hated her, properly and duly, thenceforward. Markham, on the contrary, accepted his brother's last commission without reluctance. In this matter at least Lady Blackwater had not been directly to blame; his mind acquitted her; and her soft, distressed beauty touched his heart. Before he knew where he was she had made an impression upon him that was to be life-long.

Then gradually he awoke to a full knowledge of her character. He suffered, but otherwise it made no difference. Finding it was then impossible to persuade her to marry him, he watched over her as best he could for some years, passing through phases of alternate hope and disgust. His sister's affection for him was clouded by his strange relation to the Jezebel who in her opinion had destroyed their brother. He could not help it; he could only do his best to meet both claims upon him. During her lingering passage to the grave, his sister had nearly severed him from Marguerite d'Estrees. She died, however, just in time, and now here he was in Venice, passing through what seemed to him one of the ante-rooms of life, leading to no very radiant beyond. But, radiant or no, his path lay thither. And at the same time he saw that although Marguerite felt him to be her only refuge from poverty and disgrace, she was painfully afraid of him, and afraid of the life into which he was leading her.

* * * * *

The first guest of the afternoon proved to be Louis Harman, the painter and dilettante, who had been in former days one of the habitues of the house in St. James's Place. This perfectly correct yet tolerant gentleman was wintering in Venice in order to copy the Carpaccios in San Giorgio dei Schiavoni. His copies were not good, but they were all promised to artistic fair ladies, and the days which the painter spent upon them were happy and harmless.

He came in gayly, delighted to see Madame d'Estrees in flourishing circumstances again, delivered apparently from the abyss into which he had found her sliding on the occasion of various chance visits of his own to Paris. Warington's doing, apparently—queer fellow!

"Well!—I saw Lady Kitty in the Piazza this afternoon," he said, as he sat down beside his hostess. Donna Laura had not yet appeared. "Very thin and fragile! But, by Jove! how these English beauties hold their own."

"Irish, if you please," said Madame d'Estrees, smiling.

Harman bowed to her correction, admiring at the same time both the toilette and the good looks of his companion. Dropping his voice, he asked, with a gingerly and sympathetic air, whether all was now well with the Ashe menage. He had been sorry to hear certain gossip of the year before.

Madame d'Estrees laughed. Yes, she understood that Kitty had behaved like a little goose with that poseur Cliffe. But that was all over—long ago.

"Why, the silly child has everything she wants! William is devoted to her—and it can't be long before he succeeds."

"No need to go trifling with poets," said Harman, smiling. "By-the-way, do you know that Geoffrey Cliffe is in Venice?"

Madame d'Estrees opened her eyes. "Est-il possible? Oh! but Kitty has forgotten all about him."

"Of course," said Harman. "I am told he has been seen with the Ricci."

Madame d'Estrees raised her shoulders this time in addition to her eyes. Then her face clouded.

"I believe," she said, slowly, "that woman may come here this afternoon."

"Is she a friend of yours?" Harman's tone expressed his surprise.

"I knew her in Paris," said Madame d'Estrees, with some hesitation, "when she was a student at the Conservatoire. She and I had some common acquaintance. And now—frankly, I daren't offend her. She has the most appalling temper!—and she sticks at nothing."

Harman wondered what the exact truth of this might be, but did not inquire. And as guests—including Colonel Warington—began to arrive, and Donna Laura appeared and began to dispense tea, the tete-a-tete was interrupted.

Donna Laura's salon was soon well filled, and Harman watched the gathering with curiosity. As far as it concerned Madame d'Estrees—and she was clearly the main attraction which had brought it together—it represented, he saw, a phase of social recovery. A few prominent Englishmen, passing through Venice, came in without their wives, making perfunctory excuse for the absence of these ladies. But the cosmopolitans of all kinds, who crowded in—Anglo-Italians, foreign diplomats, travellers of many sorts, and a few restless Venetians, bearing the great names of old, to whom their own Venice was little more than a place of occasional sojourn—made satisfactory amends for these persons of too long memories. In all these travellers' towns, Venice, Rome, and Florence, there is indeed a society, and a very agreeable society, which is wholly irresponsible, and asks few or no questions. The elements of it meet as strangers, and as strangers they mostly part. But between the meeting and the parting there lies a moment, all the gayer, perhaps, because of its social uncertainty and freedom.

Madame d'Estrees was profiting by it to the full. She was in excellent spirits and talk; bright-rose carnations shone in the bosom of her dress; one white arm, bared to the elbow, lay stretched carelessly on the fine cut-velvet which covered the gilt sofa—part of a suite of Venetian Louis Quinze, clumsily gorgeous—on which she sat; the other hand pulled the ears of a toy spaniel. On the ceiling above her, Tiepolo had painted a headlong group of sensuous forms, alive with vulgar movement and passion; the putti and the goddesses, peering through aerial balustrades, looked down complacently on Madame d'Estrees.

Meanwhile there stood behind her—a silent, distinguished figure—the man of whom Harman saw that she was always nervously and sometimes timidly conscious. Harman had been reading Moliere's Don Juan. The sentinel figure of Warington mingled in his imagination with the statue of the Commander.

Or, again, he was tickled by a vision of Madame d'Estrees grown old, living in a Scotch house, turreted and severe, tended by servants of the "Auld Licht," or shivering under a faithful minister on Sundays. Had she any idea of the sort of fold towards which Warington—at once Covenanter and man of the world—was carrying his lost sheep?

The sheep, however, was still gambolling at large. Occasionally a guest appeared who proved it. For instance, at a certain tumultuous entrance, billowing skirts, vast hat, and high-pitched voice all combining in the effect, Madame d'Estrees flushed violently, and Warington's stiffness redoubled. On the threshold stood the young actress, Mademoiselle Ricci, a Marseillaise, half French, half Italian, who was at the moment the talk of Venice. Why, would take too long to tell. It was by no means mostly due to her talent, which, however, was displayed at the Apollo theatre two or three times a week, and was no doubt considerable. She was a flamboyant lady, with astonishing black eyes, a too transparent white dress, over which was slung a small black mantilla, a scarlet hat and parasol, and a startling fan of the same color. Both before and after her greeting of Madame d'Estrees—whom she called her "cherie" and her "belle Marguerite"—she created a whirlwind in the salon. She was noisy, rude, and false; it could only be said on the other side that she was handsome—for those who admired the kind of thing; and famous—more or less. The intimacy of the party was broken up by her, for wherever she was she brought uproar, and it was impossible to forget her. And this uneasy attention which she compelled was at its height when the door was once more thrown open for the entrance of Lady Kitty Ashe.

"Ah, my darling Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrees, rising in a soft enthusiasm.

Kitty came in slowly, holding herself very erect, a delicate and distinguished figure, in her deep mourning. She frowned as she saw the crowd in the room.

"I'll come another time!" she said, hastily, to her mother, beginning to retreat.

"Oh, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrees, in distress, holding her fast.

At that moment Harman, who was watching them both with keenness, saw that Kitty had perceived Mademoiselle Ricci. The actress had paused in her chatter to stare at the new-comer. She sat fronting the entrance, her head insolently thrown back, knees crossed, a cigarette poised in the plump and dimpled hand.

A start ran through Kitty's small person. She allowed her mother to lead her in and introduce her to Donna Laura.

"Ah-ha, my lady!" said Harman, to himself. "Are you, perhaps, interested in the Ricci? Is it possible even that you have seen her before?"

Kitty, however, betrayed herself to no one else. To other people it was only evident that she did not mean to be introduced to the actress. She pointedly and sharply avoided it. This was interpreted as aristocratic hauteur, and did her no harm. On the contrary, she was soon chattering French with a group of diplomats, and the centre of the most animated group in the room. All the new-comers who could attached themselves to it, and the actress found herself presently almost deserted. She put up her eye-glass, studied Kitty impertinently, and asked a man sitting near her for the name of the strange lady.

"Isn't she lovely, my little Kitty!" said Madame d'Estrees, in the ears of a Bavarian baron, who was also much occupied in staring at the small beauty in black. "I may say it, though I am her mother. And my son-in-law, too. Have you seen him? Such a handsome fellow!—and such a dear!—so kind to me. They say, you know, that he will be Prime Minister."

The baron bowed, ironically, and inquired who the gentleman might be. He had not caught Kitty's name, and Madame d'Estrees had been for some time labelled in his mind as something very near to an adventuress.

Madame d'Estrees eagerly explained, and he bowed again, with a difference. He was a man of great intelligence, acquainted with English politics. So that was really the wife of the man to whose personality and future the London correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung had within the preceding week devoted a particularly interesting article, which he had read with attention. His estimate of Madame d'Estrees' place in the world altered at once. Yet it was strange that she—or, rather, Donna Laura—should admit such a person as Mademoiselle Ricci to their salon.

The mother, indeed, that afternoon had much reason to be socially grateful to the daughter. Curious contrast with the days when Kitty had been the mere troublesome appendage of her mother's life! It was clear to Marguerite d'Estrees now that if she was to accept restraint and virtuous living, if she was to submit to this marriage she dreaded, yet saw no way to escape, her best link with the gay world in the future might well be through the Ashes. Kitty could do a great deal for her; let her cultivate Kitty; and begin, perhaps, by convincing William Ashe on this present occasion that for once she was not going to ask him for money.

In the height of the party, Lord Magellan appeared. Madame d'Estrees at first looked at him with bewilderment, till Kitty, shaking herself free, came hastily forward to introduce him. At the name the mother's face flashed into smiles. The ramifications of two or three aristocracies represented the only subject she might be said to know. Dear Kitty!

Lord Magellan, after Madame d'Estrees had talked to him about his family in a few light and skilful phrases, which suggested knowledge, while avoiding flattery, was introduced to the Bavarian baron and a French naval officer. But he was not interesting to them, nor they to him; Kitty was surrounded and unapproachable; and a flood of new arrivals distracted Madame d'Estrees' attention. The Ricci, who had noticed the restrained empressement of his reception, pounced on the young man, taming her ways and gestures to what she supposed to be his English prudery, and produced an immediate effect upon him. Lord Magellan, who was only dumb with English marriageable girls, allowed himself to be amused, and threw himself into a low chair by the actress—a capture apparently for the afternoon.