At luncheon it chafed him that he must divide her with the Dean. Yet she

was charming with the old man, who chatted history, art, and Paris to

her, with a delightful innocence and ignorance of all that made Lady

Kitty Ashe the talk of the town, and an old-fashioned deference besides,

that insensibly curbed her manner and her phrases as she answered him.

Yet when the Dean left her free she returned to Cliffe, as though in

some sort they two had really been talking all the time, through all the

apparent conversation with other people.

"I have read all your telegrams," she said. "Why did you attack William

so fiercely?"

Cliffe was taken by surprise, but he felt no embarrassment--her tone was

not that of the wife in arms.

"I attacked the official--not the man. William knows that."

"He is coming in to-day if possible. He wanted to see you."

"Good news! William knows that he would have hit just as hard in my

place."

"I don't think he would," said Kitty, calmly. "He is so generous."

The color rushed to Cliffe's face.

"Well scored! I wish I had a wife to play these strokes for me. I shall

argue that a keen politician has no right to be generous. He is at war."

Kitty took no notice. She leaned her little chin on her hand, and her

eyes perused the face of her companion.

"Where have you been--all the time--before America?"

"In the deserts--fighting devils," said Cliffe, after a moment.

"What does that mean?" she asked, wondering.

"Read my new book. That will tell you about the deserts."

"And the devils?"

"Ah, I keep them to myself."

"Do you?" she said, softly. "I have just read your poems over again."

Cliffe gave a slight start, then looked indifferent.

"Have you? But they were written three years ago. Dieu merci, one finds

new devils like new acquaintances."

She shook her head.

"What do you mean?" he asked her, half amused, half arrested.

"They are always the old," she said, in a low voice. Their eyes met. In

hers was the same veiled, restless melancholy as in his own. Together

with the dazzling air of youth that surrounded her, the cherished,

flattered, luxurious existence that she and her house suggested, they

made a strange impression upon him. "Does she mean me to understand that

she is not happy?" he thought to himself. But the next moment she was

engaged in a merry chatter with the Dean, and all trace of the mood she

had thus momentarily shown him had vanished.

Half-way through the luncheon, Ashe came in. He appeared, fresh and

smiling, irreproachably dressed, and showing no trace whatever of the

hard morning of official work he had just passed through, nor of the

many embarrassments which, as every one knew, were weighing on the

Foreign Office. The Dean, with his keen sense for the dramatic, watched

the meeting between him and Cliffe with some closeness, having in mind

the almost personal duel between the two men--a duel of letters,

telegrams, or speeches, which had been lately carried on in the sight of

Europe and America. For Ashe now represented the Foreign Office in the

House of Commons, and had been much badgered by the Tory extremists who

followed Cliffe.

Naturally, being Englishmen, they met as though nothing had happened and

they had parted the day before in Pall Mall. A "Hullo, Ashe!" and

"Hullo, Cliffe! glad to see you back again," completed the matter. The

Dean enjoyed it as a specimen of English "phlegm," recalling with

amusement his last visit to the Paris of the Second Empire--Paris torn

between government and opposition, the _salons_ of the one divided from

the _salons_ of the other by a sulphurous gulf, unless when some Lazarus

of the moment, some well-known novelist or poet, cradled in the

Abraham's bosom of Liberalism, passed amid shrieks of triumph or howls

of treason into the official inferno.

Not that there was any avoiding of topics in this English case. Ashe had

no sooner slipped into his seat than he began to banter Cliffe upon a

letter of a supporter which had appeared in that morning's _Times_. It

was written by Lord S., who had played the part of public "fool" for

half a generation. To be praised by him was disaster, and Cliffe's flush

showed at once that the letter had caused him acute annoyance. He and

Ashe fell upon the writer, vying with each other in anecdotes that left

him presently close-plucked and bare.

"That's all very well," said Kitty, amid the laughter which greeted the

last tale, "but he never told _you_ how he proposed to the second Lady

S."

And lifting a red strawberry, which she held poised against her red,

laughing lips, she waited a moment--looking round her. "Go on, Kitty,"

said Ashe, approvingly; "go on."

Thus permitted, Kitty gave one of the little "scenes," arranged from

some experience of her own, which were very famous among her intimates.

Ashe called them her "parlor tricks," and was never tired of making her

exhibit them. And now, just as at Grosville Park, she held her audience.

She spoke without a halt, her small features answering perfectly to

every impulse of her talent, each touch of character or dialogue as

telling as a malicious sense of comedy could make it; arms, hands,

shoulders all aiding in the final result--a table swept by a very storm

of laughter, in the midst of which Kitty quietly finished her

strawberry.

"Well done, Kitty!" Ashe, who sat opposite to her, stretched his hand

across, and patted hers.

"Does she love him?" Cliffe asked himself, and could not make up his

mind, closely as he tried to observe their relations. He was more and

more conscious of the exciting effect she produced on himself, doubly

so, indeed, because of that sudden stroke of melancholy wherewith--like

a Rembrandt shadow, she had thrown into relief the gayety and frivolity

of her ordinary mood.

The stimulus, whatever it was, played upon his vanity. He, too, sought

an opening and found it. Soon it was he who was monopolizing the

conversation with an account of two days spent with Bismarck in a

Prussian country-house, during the triumphant days of the winter which

followed on Sadowa. The story was brilliantly told, and of some

political importance. But it was disfigured by arrogance and

affectation, and Ashe's eyes began to dance a little. Cliffe meanwhile

could not forget that he was in the presence of a rival and an official,

could not refrain after a while from a note of challenge here and there.

The conversation diverged from the tale into matters of current foreign

politics. Ashe, lounging and smoking, at first knew nothing, had heard

of nothing, as usual. Then a comment or correction dropped out; Cliffe

repeated himself vehemently--only to provoke another. Presently, no one

knew how, the two men were measured against each other _corps à

corps_--the wide knowledge and trained experience of the minister

against the originality, the force, the fantastic imagination of the

writer.

The Dean watched it with delight. He was very fond of Ashe, and liked to

see him getting the better of "the newspaper fellow." Kitty's lovely

brown eyes travelled from one to the other. Now it seemed to the Dean

that she was proud of Ashe, now that she sympathized with Cliffe. Soon,

however, like the god at Philippi, she swept upon the poet and bore him

from the field.

"Not a word more politics!" she said, peremptorily, to Ashe, holding up

her hand. "_I_ want to talk to Mr. Cliffe about the ball."

Cliffe was not very ready to obey. He had an angry sense of having been

somehow shown to disadvantage, and would like to have challenged his

host again. But Kitty poured balm into his wounds. She drew him apart a

little, using the play of her beautiful eyes for him only, and talking

to him in a new voice of deference.

"You're going, of course? Lady M. told me the other day she _must_ have

you."

Cliffe, still a little morose, replied that his invitation had been

waiting for him at his London rooms. He gave the information carelessly,

as though it did not matter to him a straw. In reality, as soon as,

while still in America, he had seen the announcement of the ball in one

of the New York papers, he had written at once to the Marchioness who

was to give it--an old acquaintance of his--practically demanding an

invitation. It had been sent indeed with alacrity, and without waiting

for its arrival Cliffe had ordered his dress in Paris. Kitty inquired

what it was to be.

"I told my man to copy a portrait of Alva."

"Ah, that's right," said Kitty, nodding--"that's right. Only it would

have been better if it had been Torquemada."

Rather nettled, Cliffe asked what there might be about him that so

forcibly suggested the Grand Inquisitor. Kitty, cigarette in hand, with

half-shut eyes, did not answer immediately. She seemed to be perusing

his face with difficulty.

"Strength, I suppose," she said at last, slowly. Cliffe waited, then

burst into a laugh.

"And cruelty?" She nodded.

"Who are my victims?"

She said nothing.

"Whose tales have you been listening to, Lady Kitty?"

She mentioned the name of a French lady. Cliffe changed countenance.

"Ah, well, if you have been talking to her," he said, haughtily, "you

may well expect to see me appear as Diabolus in person."

"No. But it's since then that I've read the poems again. You see, you

tell the public so much--"

"That you think you have the right to guess the rest?" He paused, then

added, with impatience, "Don't guess, Lady Kitty. You have everything

that life can give you. Let my secrets alone."

There was silence. Kitty looking round her saw that Madeleine Alcot was

entertaining her other guests, and that she and Cliffe were unobserved.

Suddenly Cliffe bent towards her, and said, with roughness, his face

struggling to conceal the feeling behind it:

"You heard--and you believed--that I tormented her--that I killed her?"

The anguish in his eyes seemed to strike a certain answering fire from

Kitty's.

"Yes, but--"

"But what?"

"I didn't think it very strange--"

Cliffe watched her closely.

"--that a man should be--an inhuman beast--if he were jealous--and

desperate. You can sympathize with these things?"

She drew a long breath, and threw away the cigarette she had been

holding suspended in her small fingers.

"I don't know anything about them."

"Because," he hesitated, "your own life has been so happy?"

She evaded him. "Don't you think that jealousy will soon be as dead

as--saying your prayers and going to church? I never meet anybody that

cares enough--to be jealous."

She spoke first with passionate force, then with contempt, glancing

across the room at Madeleine Alcot. Cliffe saw the look, and remembered

that Mrs. Alcot's husband, a distinguished treasury official, had been

for years the intimate friend of a very noble and beautiful woman,

herself unhappily married. There was no scandal in the matter, though

much talk. Mrs. Alcot meanwhile had her own affairs; her husband and she

were apparently on friendly terms; only neither ever spoke of the other;

and their relations remained a mystery.

Cliffe bent over to Kitty.

"And yet you said you could understand?--such things didn't seem strange

to you."

She gave a little, reckless laugh.

"Did I? It's like the people who think they could act or sing, if they

only had the chance. I choose to think I could feel. And of course I

couldn't. We've lost the power. All the old, horrible, splendid things

are dead and done with."

"The old passions, you mean?"

"And the old poems! _You'll_ never write like that again."

"God forbid!" said Cliffe, under his breath. Then as Kitty rose he

followed her with his eyes. "Lady Kitty, you've thrown me a challenge

that you hardly understand. Some day I must answer it."

"Don't answer it," said Kitty, hastily.

"Yes, if I can drag the words out," he said, sombrely. She met his look

in a kind of fascination, excited by the memory of the story which had

been told her, by her own audacity in speaking of it, by the presence of

the dead passion she divined lying shrouded and ghastly in the mind of

the man beside her. Even the ugly things of which he was accused did but

add to the interest of his personality for a nature like hers, greedy of

experience, and discontented with the real.

While he on his side was nattered and astonished by her attitude towards

him, as Ashe's wife, she would surely dislike and try to trample on him.

That was what he had expected.

* * * * *

"I hear you are an Archangel, Lady Kitty," said the Dean, who, having

obstinately outstayed all the other guests, had now settled his small

person and his thin legs into a chair beside his hostess with a view to

five agreeable minutes. He was the most harmless of social epicures, was

the Dean, and he felt that Lady Kitty had defrauded him at lunch in

favor of that great, ruffling, Byronic fellow Cliffe, who ought to have

better taste than to come lunching with the Ashes.

"Am I?" said Kitty, who had thrown herself into the corner of a sofa,

and sat curled up there in an attitude which the Dean thought charming,

though it would not, he was aware, "have become Mrs. Winston.

"Well, you know best," said the Dean. "But, at any rate, be good and

explain to me what is an Archangel."

"Somebody whom most men and all women dislike," said Kitty, promptly.

"Yet they seem to be numerous," remarked the Dean.

"Not at all!" cried Kitty, with an air of offence; "not at all! If they

were numerous they would, of course, be popular."

"And in fact they are rare--and detested? What other characteristics

have they?"

"Courage," said Kitty, looking up.

"Courage to break rules? I hear they all call one another by their

Christian names, and live in one another's rooms, and borrow one

another's money, and despise conventionalities. I am sorry you are an

Archangel, Lady Kitty."

"I didn't admit that I was," said Kitty, "but if I am, why are you

sorry?"

"Because," said the Dean, smiling, "I thought you were too clever to

despise conventionalities."

Kitty sat up with revived energy, and joined battle. She flew into a

tirade as to the dulness and routine of English life, the stupidity of

good people, and the tyranny of English hypocrisy. The Dean listened

with amusement, then with a shade of something else. At last he got up

to go.

"Well, you know, we have heard all that before. My point of view is so

much more interesting--subtle--romantic! Anybody can attack Mrs. Grundy,

but only a person of originality can adore her. Try it, Lady Kitty. It

would be really worth your while."

Kitty mocked and exclaimed.

"Do you know what that phrase--that name of abomination--always recalls

to me?" pursued the old man.

"It bores me, even to guess," was Kitty's petulant reply.

"Does it? I think of some of the noblest people I have ever known--brave

men--beautiful women--who fought Mrs. Grundy, and perished."

The Dean stood looking down upon her, with an eager, sensitive

expression. Tales that he had heeded very little when he had first

heard them ran through his mind; he had thought Lady Kitty's intimate

_tête-à-tête_ with her husband's assailant in the press disagreeable and

unseemly; and as for Mrs. Alcot, he had disliked her particularly.

Kitty looked up unquelled.

"''Tis better to have fought and lost

Than never to have fought at all--'"

she quoted, with one of her most radiant and provoking smiles.

"Incorrigible!" cried the Dean, catching up his hat. "I see! Once an

Archangel--always an Archangel."

"Oh no!" said Kitty. "There may be 'war in heaven.'"

"Well, don't take Mrs. Alcot for a leader, that's all," said the Dean,

as he held out a hand of farewell.

"And now I understand!" cried Kitty, triumphantly. "You detest my best

friend."

The Dean laughed, protested, and went. Ashe, who had been writing

letters while Kitty and the Dean were talking, escorted the old man to

the door.

* * * * *

When he returned he found Kitty sitting with her hands in her lap, lost

apparently in thought.

"Darling," he said, looking at his watch, "I must be off directly, but I

should like to see the boy."

Kitty started. She rang, and the child was brought down. He sat on

Kitty's knee, and Ashe coming to the sofa, threw an arm round them both.

"You are not a bad-looking pair," he said, kissing first Kitty and then

the baby. "But he's rather pale, Kitty. I think he wants the country."

Kitty said nothing, but she lifted the little white embroidered frock

and looked at the twisted foot. Then Ashe felt her shudder.

"Dear, don't be morbid!" he cried, resentfully. "He will have so much

brains that nobody will remember that. Think of Byron."

Kitty did not seem to have heard.

"I remember so well when I first saw his foot--after your mother told

me--and they brought him to me," she said, slowly. "It seemed to me it

was the end--"

"The end of what?"

"Of my dream."

"What _do_ you mean, Kitty!"

"Do you remember the mask in the 'Tempest'? First Iris, with saffron

wings, and rich Ceres, and great Juno--"

She half closed her eyes.

"Then the nymphs and the reapers--dancing together on 'the short-grassed

green,' the sweetest, gayest show--"

She breathed the words out softly. "Then, suddenly--"

She sat up stiffly and struck her small hands together:

"Prospero starts and speaks. And in a moment--without warning--with 'a

strange, hollow, and confused noise'"--she dragged the words

drearily--"_they heavily vanish_. That"--she pointed, shuddering, to the

child's foot--"was for me the sign of Prospero."

Ashe looked at her with anxiety, finding it indeed impossible to laugh

at her.

She was very pale, her breath came with difficulty, and she trembled

from head to foot. He tried to draw her into his arms, but she held him

away.

"That first year I had been so happy," she continued, in the same voice.

"Everything was so perfect, so glorious. Life was like a great pageant,

in a palace. All the old terrors went. I often had fears as a

child--fears I couldn't put into words, but that overshadowed me. Then

when I saw Alice--the shadow came nearer. But that was all gone. I

thought God was reconciled to me, and would always be kind to me now.

And then I saw that foot, and I knew that He hated me still. He had

burned His mark into my baby's flesh. And I was never to be quite happy

again, but always in fear, fear of pain--and death--and grief--"

She paused. Her large eyes gazed into vacancy, and her whole slight

frame showed the working of some mysterious and pitiful distress.

A wave of poignant alarm swept through Ashe's mind, coupled also with a

curious sense of something foreseen. He had never witnessed precisely

this mood in her before; but now that it was thus revealed, he was

suddenly aware "that something like it had been for long moving

obscurely below the surface of her life. He took the child and laid him

on the floor, where he rolled at ease, cooing to himself. Then he came

back to Kitty, and soothed her with extraordinary tenderness and skill.

Presently she looked at him, as though some obscure trouble of which she

had been the victim had released her, and she were herself again.

"Don't go away just yet," she said, in a voice which was still low and

shaken. He came close to her, again put his arms round her, and held her

on his breast in silence.

"That is heavenly!" he heard her say to herself after a while, in a

whisper.

"Kitty!" His eyes grew dim and he stooped to kiss her.

"Heavenly--" she went on, still as though following out her own thought

rather than speaking to him, "because one _yields_--_yields_! Life is

such tension--always."

She closed her eyes quickly, and he watched the beautiful lashes lying

still upon her cheek. With an emotion he could not explain--for it was

not an emotion of the senses, just as her yielding had not been a

yielding of the senses but a yielding of the soul--he continued to hold

her in his arms, her life, her will given to him wholly, sighed out upon

his heart.

* * * * *

Then gradually she recovered her balance; the normal Kitty came back.

She put out her hand and touched his face.

"You must go back to the House, William."

"Yes, if you are all right."

She sat up, and began to rearrange some of her hair that had slipped

down.

"You have carried us both into such heights and depths, darling!" said

Ashe, after he had watched her a little in silence, "that I have

forgotten to tell you the gossip I brought back from mother this

morning."

Kitty paused, interrogatively. She was still pale.

"Do you know that mother is convinced Mary Lyster has made up her mind

to marry Cliffe?"

There was a pause, then Kitty said, with incredulous contempt: "He would

never _dream_ of marrying her!"

"Not so sure! She has a great deal of money, and Cliffe wants money

badly."

Ashe began to put his papers together. Kitty questioned him a little

more, intermittently, as to what his mother had said. When he had left

her, she sat for long on the sofa, playing with some flowers she had

taken from her dress, or sombrely watching the child, as it lay on the

floor beside her.

X

"My lady! It's come!"

The maid put her head in just to convey the good news. Kitty was in her

bedroom walking up and down in a fury which was now almost speechless.

The housemaid was waiting on the stairs. The butler was waiting in the

hall. Till that hurried knock was heard at the front door, and the

much-tried Wilson had rushed to open it, the house had been wrapped in a

sort of storm silence. It was ten o'clock on the night of the ball. Half

Kitty's costume lay spread out upon her bed. The other half--although

since seven o'clock all Kitty's servants had been employed in rushing to

Fanchette's establishment in New Bond Street, at half-hour intervals, in

the fastest hansoms to be found--had not yet appeared.

However, here at last was the end of despair. A panting boy dragged the

box into the hall, the butler and footman carried it up-stairs and into

their mistress's room, where Kitty in a white peignoir stood waiting,

with the brow of Medea.

"The boy that brought it looked just fit to drop, my lady!" said the

maid, as she undid the box. She was a zealous servant, but she was glad

sometimes to chasten these great ones of the land by insisting on the

seamy side of their pleasures.

Kitty paused in the eager task of superintendence, and turned to the

under-housemaid, who stood by, gazing open-mouthed at the splendors

emerging from the box.

"Run down and tell Wilson to give him some wine and cake!" she said,

peremptorily. "It's all Fanchette's fault--odious creature!--running it

to the last like this--after all her promises!"

The housemaid went, and soon sped back. For no boy on earth would she

have been long defrauded of the sight of her ladyship's completed gown.

"Did Wilson feed him?" Kitty flung her the question as she bent,

alternately frowning and jubilant, over the creation before her.

"Yes, my lady. It was quite a little fellow. He said his legs were just

run off his feet," said the girl, growing confused as the moon-robe

unfolded.

"Poor wretch!" said Kitty, carelessly. "I'm glad I'm not an

errand--Blanche! you know Fanchette may be an old demon, but she _has_

got taste! Just look at these folds, and the way she's put on the

pearls! Now then--make haste!"

Off flew the peignoir, and, with the help of the excited maids, Kitty

slipped into her dress. Ten times, over did she declare that it was

hopeless, that it didn't fit in the least, that it wasn't one bit what

she had ordered, that she couldn't and wouldn't go out in it, that it

was simply scandalous, and Fanchette should never be paid a penny. Her

maids understood her, and simply went on pulling, patting, fastening, as

quickly as their skilled fingers could work, till the last fold fell

into its place, and the under-housemaid stepped back with clasped hands

and an "Oh, my lady!" couched in a note of irrepressible ecstasy.

"Well?" said Kitty, still frowning--"eh, Blanche?"

The maid proper would have scorned to show emotion; but she nodded

approval. "If you ask me, my lady, I think you have never looked so well

in anything."

Kitty's brow relaxed at last, as she stood gazing at the reflection in

the large glass before her. She saw herself as Artemis--á la Madame de

Longueville--in a hunting-dress of white silk, descending to the ankles,

embroidered from top to toe in crescents of seed pearls and silver, and

held at the waist by a silver girdle. Her throat was covered with

magnificent pearls, a Tranmore family possession, lent by Lady Tranmore

for the occasion. The slim ankles and feet were cased in white silk,

cross-gartered with silver and shod with silver sandals. Her belt held

her quiver of white-winged arrows; her bow of ivory inlaid with silver

was slung at her shoulder, while across her breast, the only note of

color in the general harmony of white, fell a scarf of apple-green

holding the horn, also of ivory and silver, which, like the belt and

bow, had been designed for her in Madame de Longueville's Paris.

But neither she nor her model would have been finally content with an

adornment so delicately fanciful and minute. Both Kitty and the goddess

of the Fronde knew that they must hold their own in a crowd. For this

there must be diamonds. The sleeves, therefore, on the white arms fell

back from diamond clasps; the ivory spear in her right hand was topped

by a small genius with glittering wings; and in the masses of her fair

hair, bound with pearl fillets, shone the large diamond crescent that

Lady Tranmore had foreseen, with one small attendant star at either

side.

[Illustration: THE FINISHING TOUCHES]

"Well, upon my word, Kitty!" said a voice from her husband's

dressing-room.

Kitty turned impetuously.

"Do you like it?" she cried. Ashe approached. She lifted her horn to her

mouth and stood tiptoe. The movement was enchanting; it had in it the

youth and freshness of spring woods; it suggested mountain distances and

the solitudes of high valleys. Intoxication spoke in Ashe's pulses; he

wished the maids had been far away that he might have taken the goddess

in his very human arms. Instead of which he stood lazily smiling.

"What Endymion are you calling?" he asked her. "Kitty, you are a dream!"

Kitty pirouetted, then suddenly stopped short and held out a foot.

"Look at those silk things, sir. Nobody but Fanchette could have made

them look anything but a botch. But they spoil the dress. And all to

please mother and Mrs. Grundy!"

"I like them. I suppose--the nearest you could get to buskins? You would

have preferred ankles _au naturel_? I don't think you'd have been

admitted, Kitty."

"Shouldn't I? And so few people have feet they can show!" sighed Kitty,

regretfully.

Ashe's eyes met those of the maid, who was trying to hide her smiles,

and he and she both laughed.

"What do you think about it, eh, Blanche?"

"I think her ladyship is much better as she is," said the maid,

decidedly. "She'd have felt very strange when she got there."

Kitty turned upon her like a whirlwind. "Go to bed!" she said, putting

both hands on the shoulders of the maid. "Go to bed at once! Esther can

give me my cloak. Do you know, William, she was awake all last night

thinking of her brother?"

"The brother who has had an operation? But I thought there was good

news?" said Ashe, kindly.

"He's much better," put in Kitty. "She heard this afternoon. She won't

be such a goose as to lie awake, I Should hope, to-night. Don't let me

catch you here when I get back!" she said, releasing the girl, whose

eyes had filled with tears. "Mr. Ashe will help me, and if he pulls the

strings into knots, I shall just cut them--so there! Go away, get your

supper, and go to bed. Such a life as I've led them all to-day!" She

threw up her hands in a perfunctory penitence.

The maid was forced to go, and the housemaid also returned to the hall

with Kitty's Opera-cloak and fan, till it should please her mistress to

descend. Both of them were dead tired, but they took a genuine

disinterested pleasure in Kitty's beauty and her fine frocks. She was

not by any means always considerate of them; but still, with that

wonderful generosity that the poor show every day to the rich, they

liked her; and to Ashe every servant in the house was devoted.

Kitty meanwhile had driven Ashe to his own toilette, and was walking

about the room, now studying herself in the glass, and now chattering to

him through the open door.

"Have you heard anything more about Tuesday?" she asked him, presently.

"Oh yes!--compliments by the dozen. Old Parham overtook me as I was

walking away from the House, and said all manner of civil things."

"And I met Lady Parham in Marshall's," said Kitty. "She does thank so

badly! I should like to show her how to do it. Dear me!" Kitty sighed.

"Am I henceforth to live and die on Lady Parham's ample breast?"

She sat with one foot beating the floor, deep in meditation.

"And shall I tell you what mother said?" shouted Ashe through the door.

"Yes."

He repeated--so far as dressing would let him a number of the charming

and considered phrases in which Lady Tranmore, full of relief, pleasure,

and a secret self-reproach, had expressed to him the effect produced

upon herself and a select public by Kitty's performance at the Parhams'.

Kitty had indeed behaved like an angel--an angel _en toilette de bal_,

reciting a scene from Alfred de Musset. Such politeness to Lady Parham,

such smiles, sometimes a shade malicious, for the Prime Minister, who on

his side did his best to efface all memory of his speech of the week

before from the mind of his fascinating guest; smiles from the Princess,

applause from the audience; an evening, in fact, all froth and

sweetstuff, from which Lady Parham emerged grimly content, conscious at

the same time that she was henceforward very decidedly, and rather

disagreeably, in the Ashes' debt; while Elizabeth Tranmore went home in

a tremor of delight, happily persuaded that Ashe's path was now clear.

Kitty listened, sometimes pleased, sometimes inclined to be critical or

scornful of her mother-in-law's praise. But she did love Lady Tranmore,

and on the whole she smiled. Smiles, indeed, had been Kitty's portion

since that evening of strange emotion, when she had found herself

sobbing in William's arms for reasons quite beyond her own defining. It

was as if, like the prince in the fairy tale, some iron band round her

heart had given way. She seemed to dance through the house; she devoured

her child with kisses; and she was even willing sometimes to let William

tell her what his mother suspected of the progress of Mary's affair with

Geoffrey Cliffe, though she carefully avoided speaking directly to Lady

Tranmore about it. As to Cliffe himself, she seemed to have dropped him

out of her thoughts. She never mentioned him, and Ashe could only

suppose she had found him disenchanting.

"Well, darling! I hope I have made a sufficient fool of myself to please

you!"

Ashe had thrown the door wide, and stood on the threshold, arrayed in

the brocade and fur of a Venetian noble. He was a somewhat magnificent

apparition, and Kitty, who had coaxed or driven him into the dress, gave

a scream of delight. She saw him before her own glass, and the crimson

senator made eyes at the white goddess as they posed triumphantly

together.

"You're a very rococo sort of goddess, you know, Kitty!" said Ashe. "Not

much Greek about you!"

"Quite as much as I want, thank you," said Kitty, courtesying to her own

reflection in the glass. "Fanchette could have taught them a thing or

two! Now come along! Ah! Wait!"

And, gathering up her possessions, she left the room. Ashe, following

her, saw that she was going to the nursery, a large room on the back

staircase. At the threshold she turned back and put her finger to her

lip. Then she slipped in, reappearing a moment afterwards to say, in a

whisper, "Nurse is not in bed. You may come in." Nurse, indeed, knew

much better than to be in bed. She had been sitting up to see her

ladyship's splendors, and she rose smiling as Ashe entered the room.

"A parcel of idiots, nurse, aren't we?" he said, as he, too, displayed

himself, and then he followed Kitty to the child's bedside. She bent

over the baby, removed a corner of the cot-blanket that might tease his

cheek, touched the mottled hand softly, removed a light that seemed to

her too near--and still stood looking.

"We must go, Kitty."

"I wish he were a little older," she said, discontentedly, under her

breath, "that he might wake up and see us both! I should like him to

remember me like this."

"Queen and huntress, come away!" said Ashe, drawing her by the hand.

Outside the landing was dimly lighted. The servants were all waiting in

the hall below.

"Kitty," said Ashe, passionately, "give me one kiss. You're so sweet

to-night--so sweet!"

She turned.

"Take care of my dress!" she smiled, and then she held out her face

under its sparkling crescent, held it with a dainty deliberation, and

let her lips cling to his.

* * * * *

Ashe and Kitty were soon wedged into one of the interminable lines of

carriages that blocked all the approaches to St. James's Square. The

ball had been long expected, and there was a crowd in the streets, kept

back by the police. The brougham went at a foot's pace, and there was

ample time either for reverie or conversation. Kitty looked out

incessantly, exclaiming when she caught sight of a costume or an

acquaintance. Ashe had time to think over the latest phase of the

negotiations with America, and to go over in his mind the sentences of a

letter he had addressed to the _Times_ in answer to one of great

violence from Geoffrey Cliffe. His own letter had appeared that morning.

Ashe was proud of it. He made bold to think that it exposed Cliffe's

exaggerations and insincerities neatly, and perhaps decisively. At any

rate, he hummed a cheerful tune as he thought of it.

Then suddenly and incongruously a recollection occurred to him.

"Kitty, do you know that I had a letter from your mother, this morning?"

"Had you?" said Kitty, turning to him with reluctance. "I suppose she

wanted some money."

"She did. She says she is very hard up. If I cared to use it, I have an

easy reply."

"What do you mean?"

"I might say,' D---n it, we are, too!'"

Kitty laughed uneasily.

"Don't begin to talk money matters now, William, _please_."

"No, dear, I won't. But we shall really have to draw in."

"You _will_ pay so many debts!" said Kitty, frowning.

Ashe went into a fit of laughter.

"That's my extravagance, isn't it? I assure you I go on the most

approved principles. I divide our available money among the greatest

number of hungry claimants it will stretch to. But, after all, it goes a

beggarly short way."

"I know mother will think my diamond crescent a horrible extravagance,"

said Kitty, pouting. "But you are the only son, William, and we must

behave like other people."

"Dear, don't trouble your little head," he said; "I'll manage it,

somehow."

Indeed, he knew very well that he could never bring his own indolent and

easy-going temper in such matters to face any real struggle with Kitty

over money. He must go to his mother, who now--his father being a

hopeless invalid--managed the estates with his own and the agent's help.

It was, of course, right that she should preach to Kitty a little; but

she would be sensible and help them out. After all, there was plenty of

money. Why shouldn't Kitty spend it?

Any one who knew him well might have observed a curious contrast between

his private laxity in these matters and the strictness of his public

practice. He was scruple and delicacy itself in all financial matters

that touched his public life--directorships, investments, and the like,

no less than in all that concerned interest and patronage. He would have

been a bold man who had dared to propose to William Ashe any expedient

whatever by which his public place might serve his private gain. His

proud and fastidious integrity, indeed, was one of the sources of his

growing power. But as to private debts--and the tradesmen to whom they

were owed--his standards were still essentially those of the Whigs from

whom he descended, of Fox, the all-indebted, or of Melbourne, who has

left an amusing disquisition on the art of dividing a few loaves and

fishes in the shape of bank-notes among a multitude of creditors.

Not that affairs were as yet very bad. Far from it. But there was little

to spare for Madame d'Estrées, who ought, indeed, to want nothing; and

Ashe was vaguely meditating his reply to that lady when a face in a

carriage near them, which was trying to enter the line, caught his

attention.

"Mary!" he said, "à la Sir Joshua--and mother. They don't see us. Query,

will Cliffe take the leap to-night? Mother reports a decided increase of

ardor on his part. Sorry you don't approve of it, darling!"

"It's just like lighting a lamp to put it out--that's all!" said Kitty,

with vivacity. "The man who marries Mary is done for."

"Not at all. Mary's money will give him the pedestal he wants, and trust

Cliffe to take care of his own individuality afterwards! Now, if you'll

transfer your alarms to _Mary_, I'm with you!"

"Oh! of _course_ he'll be unkind to her. She may lay her account for

that. But it's the _marrying_ her!" And Kitty's upper-lip curled under a

slow disdain.

William laughed out.

"Kitty, really!--you remind me, please, of Miss Jane Taylor:

"'I did not think there could be found--a little heart so hard!'

Mary is thirty; she would like to be married. And why not? She'll give

quite as good as she gets."

"Well, she won't get--anything. Geoffrey Cliffe thinks of no one but

himself."

Ashe's eyebrows went up.

"Oh, well, all men are selfish--and the women don't mind."

"It depends on how it's done," said Kitty.

Ashe declared that Cliffe was just an ordinary person, "l'homme sensuel

moyen"--with a touch of genius. Except for that, no better and no worse

than other people. What then?--the world was not made up of persons of

enormous virtue like Lord Althorp and Mr. Gladstone. If Mary wanted him

for a husband, and could capture him, both, in his opinion, would have

pretty nearly got their deserts.

Kitty, however, fell into a reverie, after which she let him see a face

of the same startling sweetness as she had several times shown him of

late.

"Do you want me to be nice to her?" She nestled up to him.

"Bind her to your chariot wheels, madam! You can!" said Ashe, slipping a

hand round hers.

Kitty pondered.

"Well, then, I won't tell her that I _know_ he's still in love with the

Frenchwoman. But it's on the tip of my tongue."

"Heavens!" cried Ashe. "The Vicomtesse D---, the lady of the poems? But

she's dead! I thought that was over long ago."

Kitty was silent for a moment, then said, with low-voiced emphasis:

"That any one could write those poems, and then _think_ of Mary!"

"Yes, the poems were fine," said Ashe, "but make-believe!"

Kitty protested indignantly. Ashe bantered her a little on being one of

the women who were the making of Cliffe.

"Say what you like!" she said, drawing a quick breath. "But, often and

often, he says divine things--divinely! I feel them there!" And she

lifted both hands to her breast with an impulsive gesture.

"Goddess!" said Ashe, kissing her hand because enthusiasm became her so

well. "And to think that I should have dared to roast the divine one in

a _Times_ letter this morning!"

* * * * *

The hall and staircase of Yorkshire House were already filled with a

motley and magnificent crowd when Ashe and Kitty arrived. Kitty, still

shrouded in her cloak, pushed her way through, exchanging greetings with

friends, shrieking a little now and then for the safety of her bow and

quiver, her face flushed with pleasure and excitement. Then she

disappeared into the cloak-room, and Ashe was left to wonder how he was

going to endure his robes through the heat of the evening, and to

exchange a laughing remark or two with the Parliamentary Secretary to

the Admiralty, into whose company he had fallen.

"What are we doing it for?" he asked the young man, whose thin person

was well set off by a Tudor dress.

"Oh, don't be superior!" said the other. "I'm going to enjoy myself like

a school-boy!"

And that, indeed, seemed to be the attitude of most of the people

present. And not only of the younger members of the dazzling company.

What struck Ashe particularly, as he mingled with the crowd, was the

alacrity of the elder men. Here was a famous lawyer already nearing the

seventies, in the Lord Chancellor's garb of a great ancestor; here an

ex-Viceroy of Ireland with a son in the government, magnificent in an

Elizabethan dress, his fair bushy hair and reddish beard shining above a

doublet on which glittered a jewel given to the founder of his house by

Elizabeth's own hand; next to him, a white-haired judge in the robes of

Judge Gascoyne; a peer, no younger, at his side, in the red and blue of

Mazarin: and showing each and all in their gay complacent looks a clear

revival of that former masculine delight in splendid clothes which came

so strangely to an end with that older world on the ruins of which

Napoleon rose. So with the elder women. For this night they were young

again. They had been free to choose from all the ages a dress that

suited them; and the result of this renewal of a long-relinquished

eagerness had been in many cases to call back a bygone self, and the

tones and gestures of those years when beauty is its own chief care.

As for the young men, the young women, and the girls, the zest and

pleasure of the show shone in their eyes and movements, and spread

through the hall and up the crowded staircase, like a warm, contagious

atmosphere. At all times, indeed, and in all countries, an aristocracy

has been capable of this sheer delight in its own splendor, wealth, good

looks, and accumulated treasure; whether in the Venice that Petrarch

visited; or in the Rome of the Renaissance popes; in the Versailles of

the Grand Monarque; or in the Florence of to-day, which still at moments

of _festa_ reproduces in its midst all the costumes of the Cinque-cento.

In this English case there was less dignity than there would have been

in a Latin country, and more personal beauty; less grace, perhaps, and

yet a something richer and more romantic.

At the top of the stairs stood a marquis in a dress of the Italian

Renaissance, a Gonzaga who had sat for Titian; beside him a fair-haired

wife in the white satin and pearls of Henrietta Maria; while up the

marble stairs, watched by a laughing multitude above, streamed

Gainsborough girls and Reynolds women, women from the courts of

Elizabeth, or Henri Quatre, of Maria Theresa, or Marie Antoinette, the

figures of Holbein and Vandyck, Florentines of the Renaissance, the

youths of Carpaccio, the beauties of Titian and Veronese.

"Kitty, make haste!" cried a voice in front, as Kitty began to mount the

stairs. "Your quadrille is just called."

Kitty smiled and nodded, but did not hurry her pace by a second. The

staircase was not so full as it had been, and she knew well as she

mounted it, her slender figure drawn to its full height, her eyes

flashing greeting and challenge to those in the gallery, the diamond

genius on her spear glittering above her, that she held the stage, and

that the play would not begin without her.

And indeed her dress, her brilliance, and her beauty let loose a hum of

conversation--not always friendly.

"What is she?" "Oh, something mythological! She's in the next

quadrille." "My dear, she's Diana! Look at her bow and quiver, and the

moon in her hair." "Very incorrect!--she ought to have the towered

crown!" "Absurd, such a little thing to attempt Diana! I'd back Actæon!"

The latter remark was spoken in the ear of Louis Harman, who stood in

the gallery looking down. But Harman shook his head.

"You don't understand. She's not Greek, of course; but she's fairyland.

A child of the Renaissance, dreaming in a wood, would have seen Artemis

so--dressed up and glittering, and fantastic--as the Florentines saw

Venus. Small, too, like the fairies!--slipping through the leaves; small

hounds, with jewelled collars, following her!"

He smiled at his own fancy, still watching Kitty with his painter's

eyes.

"She has seen a French print somewhere," said Cliffe, who stood close

by. "More Versailles in it than fairyland, I think!"

"It is _she_ that is fairyland," said Harman, still fascinated.

Cliffe's expression showed the sarcasm of his thought. Fairy,

perhaps!--with the touch of malice and inhuman mischief that all

tradition attributes to the little people. Why, after that first

meeting, when the conversation of a few minutes had almost swept them

into the deepest waters of intimacy, had she slighted him so, in other

drawing-rooms and on other occasions? She had actually neglected and

avoided him--after having dared to speak to him of his secret! And now

Ashe's letter of the morning had kindled afresh his sense of rancor

against a pair of people, too prosperous and too arrogant. The stroke

in the _Times_ had, he knew, gone home; his vanity writhed under it, and

the wish to strike back tormented him, as he watched Ashe mounting

behind his wife, so handsome, careless, and urbane, his jewelled cap

dangling in his hand.

* * * * *

The quadrille of gods and goddesses was over. Kitty had been dancing

with a fine clumsy Mars, in ordinary life an honest soldier and

deer-stalker, the heir to a Scotch dukedom; having as her _vis-à-vis_

Madeleine Alcot--as the Flora of Botticelli's "Spring"--and slim as

Mercury in fantastic Renaissance armor. All the divinities of the

Pantheon, indeed, were there, but in Gallicized or Italianate form;

scarcely a touch of the true antique, save in the case of one beautiful

girl who wore a Juno dress of white whereof the clinging folds had been

arranged for her by a young Netherlands painter, Mr. Alma Tadema, then

newly settled in this country. Kitty at first envied her; then decided

that she herself could have made no effect in such a gown, and threw her

the praises of indifference.

When, to Kitty's sharp regret, the music stopped and the glittering crew

of immortals melted into the crowd, she found behind her a row of

dancers waiting for the quadrille which was to follow. This was to

consist entirely of English pictures revived--Reynolds, Gainsborough,

and Romney--and to be danced by those for whose families they had been

originally painted. As she drew back, looking eagerly to right and left,

she came across Mary Lyster. Mary wore her hair high and powdered--a

black silk scarf over white satin, and a blue sash.

"Awfully becoming!" said Kitty, nodding to her. "Who are you?"

"My great-great aunt!" said Mary, courtesying. "You, I see, go even

farther back."

"Isn't it fun?" said Kitty, pausing beside her. "Have you seen William?

Poor dear! he's so hot. How do you do?" This last careless greeting was

addressed to Cliffe, whom she now perceived standing behind Mary.

Cliffe bowed stiffly.

"Excuse me. I did not see you. I was absorbed in your dress. You are

Artemis, I see--with additions."

"Oh! I am an 'article de Paris,'" said Kitty. "But it seems odd that

some people should take me for Joan of Arc." Then she turned to Mary. "I

think your dress is quite lovely!" she said, in that warm, shy voice she

rarely used except for a few intimates, and had never yet been known to

waste on Mary. "Don't you admire it enormously, Mr. Cliffe?"

"Enormously," said Cliffe, pulling at his mustache. "But by now my

compliments are stale."

"Is he cross about William's letter?" thought Kitty. "Well, let's leave

them to themselves."

Then, as she passed him, something in the silent personality of the man

arrested her. She could not forbear a look at him over her shoulder.

"Are you--Oh! of course, I remember--" for she had recognized the dress

and cap of the Spanish grandee.

Cliffe did not reply for a moment, but the harsh significance of his

face revived in her the excitable interest she had felt in him on the

day of his luncheon in Hill Street; an interest since effaced and

dispersed, under the influence of that serenity and home peace which

had shone upon her since that very day.

"I should apologize, no doubt, for not taking your advice," he said,

looking her in the eyes. Their expression, half bitter, half insolent,

reminded her.

"Did I give you any advice?" Kitty wrinkled up her white brows. "I don't

recollect."

Mary looked at her sharply, suspiciously. Kitty, quite conscious of the

look, was straightway pricked by an elfish curiosity. Could she carry

him off--trouble Mary's possession there and then? She believed she

could. She was well aware of a certain relation between herself and

Cliffe, if, at least, she chose to develop it. Should she? Her vanity

insisted that Mary could not prevent it.

However, she restrained herself and moved on. Presently looking back,

she saw them still together, Cliffe leaning against the pedestal of a

bust, Mary beside him. There was an animation in her eyes, a rose of

pleasure on her cheek which stirred in Kitty a queer, sudden sympathy.

"I _am_ a little beast!" she said to herself. "Why shouldn't she be

happy?"

Then, perceiving Lady Tranmore at the end of the ballroom, she made her

way thither surrounded by a motley crowd of friends. She walked as

though on air, "raining influence." And as Lady Tranmore caught the

glitter of the diamond crescent, and beheld the small divinity beneath

it, she, too, smiled with pleasure, like the other spectators on Kitty's

march. The dress was monstrously costly. She knew that. But she forgot

the inroad on William's pocket, and remembered only to be proud of

William's wife. Since the Parhams' party, indeed, the unlooked-for

submission of Kitty, and the clearing of William's prospects, Lady

Tranmore had been sweetness itself to her daughter-in-law.

But her fine face and brow were none the less inclined to frown. She

herself as Katharine of Aragon would have shed a dignity on any scene,

but she was in no sympathy with what she beheld.

"We shall soon all of us be ashamed of this kind of thing," she declared

to Kitty. "Just as people now are beginning to be ashamed of enormous

houses and troops of servants."

"No, please! Only bored with them!" said Kitty. "There are so many other

ways now of amusing yourself--that's all."

"Well, this way will die out," said Lady Tranmore. "The cost of it is

too scandalous--people's consciences prick them."

Kitty vowed she did not believe there was a conscience in the room; and

then, as the music struck up, she carried off her companion to some

steps overlooking the great marble gallery, where they had a better view

of the two lines of dancers.

It is said that as a nation the English have no gift for pageants. Yet

every now and then--as no doubt in the Elizabethan mask--they show a

strange felicity in the art. Certainly the dance that followed would

have been difficult to surpass even in the ripe days and motherlands of

pageantry. To the left, a long line, consisting mainly of young girls in

their first bloom, dressed as Gainsborough and his great contemporaries

delighted to paint these flowers of England--the folds of plain white

muslin crossed over the young breast, a black velvet at the throat, a

rose in the hair, the simple skirt showing the small pointed feet, and

sometimes a broad sash defining the slender waist. Here were Stanleys,

Howards, Percys, Villierses, Butlers, Osbornes--soft slips of girls

bearing the names of England's rough and turbulent youth, bearing

themselves to-night with a shy or laughing dignity, as though the touch

of history and romance were on them. And facing them, the youths of the

same families, no less handsome than their sisters and brides--in

Romney's blue coats, or the splendid red of Reynolds and Gainsborough.

To and fro swayed the dancers, under the innumerable candles that filled

the arched roof and upper walls of the ballroom; and each time the lines

parted they disclosed at the farther end another pageant, to which that

of the dance was in truth subordinate--a dais hung with blue and silver,

and upon it a royal lady whose beauty, then in its first bloom, has been

a national possession, since as, the "sea-king's daughter" she brought

it in dowry to her adopted country. To-night she blazed in jewels as a

Valois queen, with her court around her, and as the dancers receded,

each youth and maiden seemed instinctively to turn towards her as roses

to the sun.

"Oh, beautiful, beautiful world!" said Kitty to herself, in an ecstasy,

pressing her small hands together; "how I love you!--_love_ you!"

* * * * *

Meanwhile Darrell and Harman stood side by side near the doorway of the

ballroom, looking in when the crowd allowed.

"A strange sight," said Harman. "Perhaps they take it too seriously."

"Ah! that is our English upper class," said Darrell, with a sneer. "Is

there anything they take lightly?--_par exemple!_ It seems to me they

carry off this amusement better than most. They may be stupid, but they

are good-looking. I say, Ashe"--he turned towards the new-comer who had

just sauntered up to them--"on this exceptional occasion, is it allowed

to congratulate you on Lady Kitty's gown?"

For Kitty, raised upon her step, was at the moment in full view.

Ashe made some slight reply, the slightest of which indeed annoyed the

thin-skinned and morbid Darrell, always on the lookout for affronts. But

Louis Harman, who happened to observe the Under-Secretary's glance at

his wife, said to himself, "By George! that queer marriage is turning

out well, after all."

* * * * *

The Tudor and Marie Antoinette quadrilles had been danced. There was a

rumor of supper in the air.

"William!" said Kitty, in his ear, as she came across him in one of the

drawing-rooms, "Lord Hubert takes me in to supper. Poor me!" She made an

extravagant face of self-pity and swept on. Lord Hubert was one of the

sons of the house, a stupid and inarticulate guardsman, Kitty's butt and

detestation. Ashe smiled to himself over her fate, and went back to the

ballroom in search of his own lady.

Meanwhile Kitty paused in the next drawing-room, and dismissed her

following.

"I promised to wait here for Lord Hubert," she said. "You go on, or

you'll get no tables."

And she waved them peremptorily away. The drawing-room, one of a suite

which looked on the garden, thinned temporarily. In a happy fatigue,

Kitty leaned dreamily over the ledge of one of the open windows, looking

at the illuminated space below her. Amid the colored lights, figures of

dream and fantasy walked up and down. In the midst flashed a

flame-colored fountain. The sounds of a Strauss waltz floated in the

air. And beyond the garden and its trees rose the dull roar of London.

A silk curtain floated out into the room under the westerly breeze,

then, returning, sheathed Kitty in its folds. She stood there hidden,

amusing herself like a child with the thought of startling that great

heavy goose, Lord Hubert.

Suddenly a pair of voices that she knew caught her ear. Two persons,

passing through, lingered, without perceiving her. Kitty, after a first

movement of self-disclosure, caught her own name and stood motionless.

"Well, of course you've heard that we got through," said Lady Parham.

"For once Lady Kitty behaved herself!"

"You were lucky!" said Mary Lyster. "Lady Tranmore was dreadfully

anxious--"

"Lest she should cut us at the last?" cried Lady Parham. "Well, of

course, Lady Kitty is 'capable de tout.'" She laughed. "But perhaps as

you are a cousin I oughtn't to say these things."

"Oh, say what you like," said Mary. "I am no friend of Kitty's, and

never pretended to be."

Lady Parham came closer, apparently, and said, confidentially: "What on

earth made that man marry her? He might have married anybody. She had

no money, and worse than no position."

"She worked upon his pity, of course, a good deal. I saw them in the

early days at Grosville Park. She played her cards very cleverly. And

then, it was just the right moment. Lady Tranmore had been urging him to

marry."

"Well, of course," said Lady Parham, "there's no denying the beauty."

"You think so?" said Mary, as though in wonder. "Well, I never could see

it. And now she has so much gone off."

"I don't agree with you. Many people think her the star to-night. Mr.

Cliffe, I am told, admires her."

Kitty could not see how the eyes of the speaker, under a Sir Joshua

turban, studied the countenance of Miss Lyster, as she threw out the

words.

Mary laughed.

"Poor Kitty! She tried to flirt with him long ago--just after she

arrived in London, fresh out of the convent. It was so funny! He told me

afterwards he never was so embarrassed in his life--this baby making

eyes at him! And now--oh no!"

"Why not now? Lady Kitty's very much the rage, and Mr. Cliffe likes

notoriety."

"But a notoriety with--well, with some style, some distinction! Kitty's

sort is so cheap and silly."

"Ah, well, she's not to be despised," said Lady Parham. "She's as clever

as she can be. But her husband will have to keep her in order."

"Can he?" said Mary. "Won't she always be in his way?"

"Always, I should think. But he must have known what he was about. Why

didn't his mother interfere? Such a family!--such a history!"

"She did interfere," said Mary. "We all did our best"--she dropped her

voice--"I know I did. But it was no use. If men like spoiled children

they must have them, I suppose. Let's hope he'll learn how to manage

her. Shall we go on? I promised to meet my supper-partner in the

library."

They moved away.

* * * * *

For some minutes Kitty stood looking out, motionless, but the beating of

her heart choked her. Strange ancestral things--things of evil--things

of passion--had suddenly awoke, as it were, from sleep in the depths of

her being, and rushed upon the citadel of her life. A change had passed

over her from head to foot. Her veins ran fire.

At that moment, turning round, she saw Geoffrey Cliffe enter the room in

which she stood. With an impetuous movement she approached him.

"Take me down to supper, Mr. Cliffe. I can't wait for Lord Hubert any

more, I'm _so_ hungry!"

"Enchanted!" said Cliffe, the color leaping into his tanned face as he

looked down upon the goddess. "But I came to find--"

"Miss Lyster? Oh, she is gone in with Mr. Darrell. Come with me. I have

a ticket for the reserved tent. We shall have a delicious corner to

ourselves."

And she took from her glove the little coveted paste-board,

which--handed about in secret to a few intimates of the house--gave

access to the sanctum sanctorum of the evening.

Cliffe wavered. Then his vanity succumbed. A few minutes later the

supper guests in the tent of the _élite_ saw the entrance of a darkly

splendid Duke of Alva, with a little sandalled goddess. All compact, it

seemed, of ivory and fire, on his arm.

XI

The spring freshness of London, had long since departed. A crowded

season; much animation in Parliament, where the government, to its own

amazement, had rather gained than lost ground; industrial trouble at

home, and foreign complications abroad; and in London the steady growth

of a new plutocracy, the result, so far, of American wealth and American

brides. In the first week of July, the outward things of the moment

might have been thus summed up by any careful observer.

On a certain Tuesday night, the debate on a private member's bill

unexpectedly collapsed, and the House rose early. Ashe left the House

with his secretary, but parted from him at the corner of Birdcage Walk,

and crossed the park alone. He meant to join Kitty at a party in

Piccadilly; there was just time to go home and dress; and he walked at a

quick pace.

Two members sitting on the same side of the House with himself were also

going home. One of them noticed the Under-Secretary.

"A very ineffective statement Ashe made to-night--don't you think so?"

he said to his companion.

"Very! Really, if the government can't take up a stronger line, the

general public will begin to think there's something in it."

"Oh, if you only shriek long enough and sharp enough in England

something's sure to come of it. Cliffe and his group have been playing a

very shrewd game. The government will get their agreement approved all

right, but Cliffe has certainly made some people on our side uneasy.

However--"

"However, what?" said the other, after a moment.

"I wish I thought that were the only reason for Ashe's change of tone,"

said the first speaker, slowly.

"What do you mean?"

The two were intimate personal friends, belonging, moreover, to a group

of evangelical families well known in English life; but even so, the

answer came with reluctance:

"Well, you see, it's not very easy to grapple in public with the man

whose name all smart London happens to be coupling with that of your

wife!"

"I say"--the other stood still, in genuine consternation and

distress--"you don't mean to say that there's that in it!"

"You notice that the difference is not in _what_ Ashe says, but in _how_

he says it. He avoids all personal collision with Cliffe. The government

stick to their case, but Ashe mentions everybody but Cliffe, and

confutes all arguments but his. And meanwhile, of course, the truth is

that Cliffe is the head and front of the campaign, and if he threw up

to-morrow, everything would quiet down."

"And Lady Kitty is flirting with him at this particular moment? Damned

bad taste and bad feeling, to say the least of it!"

"You won't find one of the Bristol lot consider that kind of thing when

their blood is up!" said the other. "You remember the tales of old Lord

Blackwater?"

"But is there really any truth in it? Or is it mere gossip?"

"Well, I hear that the behavior of both of them at Grosville Park last

week was such that Lady Grosville vows she will never ask either of them

again. And at Ascot, at Lord's, the opera, Lady Kitty sits with him,

talks with him, walks with him, the whole time, and won't look at any

one else. They must be asked together or neither will come--and

'society,' as far as I can make out, thinks it a good joke and is always

making plans to throw them together."

"Can't Lady Tranmore do anything?"

"I don't know. They say she is very unhappy about it. Certainly she

looks ill and depressed."

"And Ashe?"

His companion hesitated. "I don't like to say it, but, of course, you

know there are many people who will tell you that Ashe doesn't care

twopence what his wife does so long as she is nice to him, and he can

read his books and carry on his politics as he pleases!"

"Ashe always strikes me as the soul of honor," said the other,

indignantly.

"Of course--for himself. But a more fatalist believer in liberty than

Ashe doesn't exist--liberty especially to damn yourself--if you must and

will."

"It would be hard to extend that doctrine to a wife," said the other,

with a grave, uncomfortable laugh.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the man whose affairs they had been discussing walked home,

wrapped in solitary and disagreeable thought. As he neared the

Marlborough House corner a carriage passed him. It was delayed a moment

by other carriages, and as it halted beside him Ashe recognized Lady

M----, the hostess of the fancy ball, and a very old friend of his

parents. He took off his hat. The lady within recognized him and

inclined slightly--very slightly and stiffly. Ashe started a little and

walked on.

The meeting vividly recalled the ball, the _terminus a quo_ indeed from

which the meditation in which he had been plunged since entering the

park had started. Between six and seven weeks ago, was it? It might have

been a century. He thought of Kitty as she was that night--Kitty

pirouetting in her glittering dress, or bending over the boy, or holding

her face to his as he kissed her on the stairs. Never since had she

shown him the smallest glimpse of such a mood. What was wrong with her

and with himself? Something, since May, had turned their life

topsy-turvy, and it seemed to Ashe that in the general unprofitable rush

of futile engagements he had never yet had time to stop and ask himself

what it might be.

Why, at any rate, was _he_ in this chafing irritation and discomfort?

Why could he not deal with that fellow Cliffe as he deserved? And what

in Heaven's name was the reason why old friends like Lady M---- were

beginning to look at him coldly, and avoid his conversation?

His mother, too! He gathered that quite lately there had been some

disagreeable scene between her and Kitty. Kitty had resented some

remonstrance of hers, and for some days now they had not met. Nor had

Ashe seen his mother alone. Did she also avoid him, shrink from speaking

out her real mind to him?

Well, it was all monstrously absurd!--a great coil about nothing, as far

as the main facts were concerned, although the annoyance and worry of

the thing were indeed becoming serious. Kitty had no doubt taken a wild

liking to Geoffrey Cliffe--

"And, by George!" said Ashe, pausing in his walk, "she warned me."

And there rose in his memory the formal garden at Grosville Park, the

little figure at his side, and Kitty's franknesses--"I shall take mad

fancies for people. I sha'n't be able to help it. I have one now, for

Geoffrey Cliffe."

He smiled. There was the difficulty! If only the people whose envious

tongues were now wagging could see Kitty as she was, could understand

what a gulf lay between her and the ordinary "fast" woman, there would

be an end of this silly, ill-natured talk. Other women might be of the

earth earthy. Kitty was a sprite, with all the irresponsibility of such

incalculable creatures. The men and women--women especially--who

gossiped and lied about her, who sent abominable paragraphs to

scurrilous papers--he had one now in his pocket which had reached him at

the House from an anonymous correspondent--spoke out of their own vile

experience, judged her by their own standards. His mother, at any

rate--he proudly thought--ought to know better than to be misled by them

for a moment.

At the same time, something must be done. It could not be denied that

Kitty had been behaving like a romantic, excitable child with this

unscrupulous man, whose record with regard to women was probably wholly

unknown to her, however foolishly she might idealize the _liaison_

commemorated in his poems. What had Kitty, indeed, been doing with

herself this six weeks? Ashe tried to recall them in detail. Ascot,

Lord's, innumerable parties in London and in the country, to some of

which he had not been able to accompany her, owing to the stress of

Parliamentary and official work. Grosville Park, for instance--he had

been stopped at the last moment from going down there by the arrival of

some important foreign news, and Kitty had gone alone. She had

reappeared on the Monday, pale and furious, saying that she and her aunt

had quarrelled, and that she would never go near the Grosvilles either

in town or country again. She had not volunteered any further

explanation, and Ashe had refrained from inquiry. There were in him

certain disgusts and disdains, belonging to his general epicurean

conception of existence, which not even his love for Kitty could

overcome. One was a disdain for the quarrels of women. He supposed they

were inevitable; he saw, by-the-way, that Kitty and Lady Parham were

once more at daggers drawn; and Kitty seemed to enjoy it. Well, it was

her own affair; but while there was a Greek play, or a Shakespeare

sonnet, or even a Blue Book to read, who could expect him to listen?

What had old Lady Grosville been about? He understood that Cliffe had

been of the party. And Kitty must have done something to bring down upon

her the wrath of the Puritanical mistress of the house.

Well, what was he to do? It was now July. The session would last

certainly till the middle of August, and though the American business

would be disposed of directly, there was fresh trouble in the Balkan

Peninsula, and an anxious situation in Egypt. Impossible that he should

think of leaving his post. And as for the chance of a dissolution, the

government was now a good deal stronger than it had been before

Easter--worse luck!

Of course he ought to take Kitty away. But short of resignation how was

it to be done? And what, even, would resignation do--supposing, _per

impossibile_, it could be thought of--but give to gnawing gossip a

bigger bone, and probably irritate Kitty to the point of rebellion? Yet

how induce her to go with any one else? Lady Tranmore was out of the

question. Margaret French, perhaps?

Then, suddenly, Ashe was assailed by an inner laughter, hollow and

discomfortable. Things were come to a pretty pass when he must even

dream of resigning because a man whom he despised would haunt his house,

and absorb the company of his wife; when, moreover, he could not even

think of a remedy for such a state of things without falling back

dismayed from the certainty of Kitty's temper--Kitty's wild and furious

temper.

For during the last fortnight, as it seemed to Ashe, all the winds of

tempest had been blowing through his house. Himself, the servants, even

Margaret, even the child, had all suffered. He also had lost his temper

several times--such a thing had scarcely happened to him since his

childhood. He thought of it as of a kind of physical stain or weakness.

To keep an even and stoical mind, to laugh where one could not

conquer--this had always seemed to him the first condition of decent

existence. And now to be wrangling over an expenditure, an engagement, a

letter, the merest nothing--whether it was a fine day or it

wasn't--could anything be more petty, degrading, intolerable?

He vowed that this should stop. Whatever happened, he and Kitty should

not degenerate into a pair of scolds--besmirch their life with quarrels

as ugly as they were silly. He would wrestle with her, his beloved,

unreasonable, foolish Kitty; he ought, of course, to have done so

before. But it was only within the last week or so that the horizon had

suddenly darkened--the thing grown serious. And now this beastly

paragraph! But, after all, what did such garbage matter? It would of

course be a comfort to thrash the editor. But our modern life breeds

such creatures, and they have to be borne.

* * * * *

He let himself into a silent house. His letters lay on the hall-table.

Among them was a handwriting which arrested him. He remembered, yet

could not put a name to it. Then he turned the envelope. "H'm. Lady

Grosville!" He read it, standing there, then thrust it into his pocket,

thinking angrily that there seemed to be a good many fools in this world

who occupied themselves with other people's business. Exaggeration, of

course, damnable _parti pris_! When did she ever see Kitty except with a

jaundiced eye? "I wonder Kitty condescends to go to the woman's house!

She must know that everything she does is seen there _en noir_.

Pharisaical, narrow-minded Philistines!"

The letter acted as a tonic. Ashe was positively grateful to the "old

gorgon" who wrote it. He ran up-stairs, his pulses tingling in defence

of Kitty. He would show Lady Grosville that she could not write to him,

at any rate, in that strain, with impunity.

He took a candle from the landing, and opened his wife's door in order

to pass through her room to his own. As he did so, he ran against

Kitty's maid, Blanche, who was coming out. She shrank back as she saw

him, but not before the light of his candle had shone full upon her. Her

face was disfigured with tears, which were, indeed, still running down

her cheeks.

"Why, Blanche!" he said, standing still--then in the kind voice which

endeared him to the servants--"I am afraid your brother is worse?"

For the poor brother in hospital had passed through many vicissitudes

since his operation, and the little maid's spirits had fluctuated

accordingly.

"Oh no, sir--no, sir!" said Blanche, drying her eyes and retreating into

the shadows of the room, where only a faint flame of gas was burning.

"It's not that, sir, thank you. I was just putting away her ladyship's

things," she said, inconsequently, looking round the room.

"That was hardly what caused the tears, was it?" said Ashe, smiling. "Is

there anything in which Lady Kitty or I could help you?"

The girl, who had always seemed to him on excellent terms with Kitty,

gave a sudden sob.

"Thank you, sir; I've just given her ladyship warning."

"Indeed!" said Ashe, gravely. "I'm sorry for that. I thought you got on

here very well."

"I used to, sir, but this last few weeks there's nothing pleases her

ladyship; you can't do anything right. I'm sure I've worked my hands

off. But I can't do any more. Perhaps her ladyship will find some one

else to suit her better."

"Didn't her ladyship try to persuade you to stay?"

"Yes--but--I gave warning once before, and then I stayed. And it's no

good. It seems as if you must do wrong. And I don't sleep, sir. It gets

on your nerves so. But I didn't mean to complain. Good-night, sir."

"Good-night. Don't sit up for your mistress. You look tired out. I'll

help her."

"Thank you, sir," said the maid, in a depressed voice, and went.

* * * * *

Half an hour later, Ashe mounted the staircase of a well-known house in

Piccadilly. The evening party was beginning to thin, but in a side

drawing-room a fine Austrian band was playing Strauss, and some of the

intimates of the house were dancing.

Ashe at once perceived his wife. She was dancing with a clever Cambridge

lad, a cousin of Madeleine Alcot's, who had long been one of her

adorers. And so charming was the spectacle, so exhilarating were the

youth and beauty of the pair, that Ashe presently suspected what was

indeed the truth, that most of the persons gathering in the room were

there to watch Kitty dance, rather than to dance themselves. He himself

watched her, though he professed to be talking to his hostess, a woman

of middle age, with honest eyes and a brow of command.

"It is a delight to see Lady Kitty dance," she said to him, smiling.

"But she is tired. I am sure she wants the country."

"Like my boy," said Ashe. "I wish to goodness they'd both go."

"Oh, I know it's hard to leave the husband toiling in town!" said his

companion, who, as the daughter, wife, and mother of politicians, had

had a long experience of official life.

Ashe glanced at her--at her face moulded by kind and scrupulous

living--with a sudden relief from tension. Clearly no gossip had reached

her. He lingered beside her, for the sheer pleasure of talking to her.

But their _tête-à-tête_ was soon interrupted by the approach of Lady

Parham, with a daughter--a slim and silent girl, to whom, it was

whispered, her mother was giving "a last chance" this season, before

sending her into the country as a failure, and bringing out her younger

sister.

Lady Parham greeted the hostess with effusion. It was a rich house, and

these small, informal dances were said to be more helpful to matrimonial

development than larger affairs. Then she perceived Ashe, and her whole

manner changed. There was a very evident bristling, and she gave him a

greeting deliberately careless.

"Confound the woman!" thought Ashe, and his own pride rose.

"Working as hard as usual, Lady Parham?" he asked her, with a smile.

"If you like to put it so," was the stiff reply. "There is, of course, a

good deal of going out."

"I hope, if I may say so, you don't allow Lord Parham to do too much of

it."

"Lord Parham never was better in his life," said Lord Parham's spouse,

with the air of putting down an impertinence.

"That's good news. I must say when I saw him this afternoon I thought he

seemed to be feeling his work a good deal."

"Oh, he's worried," said Lady Parham, sharply. "Worried about a good

many things." She turned suddenly, and looked at her companion--an

insolent and deliberate look.

"Ah, that's where the wives come in!" replied Ashe, unperturbed. "Look

at Mrs. Loraine. She has the art to perfection--hasn't she? The way she

cushions Loraine is something wonderful to see."

Lady Parham flushed angrily. The suggested comparison between herself,

and that incessant rattle and blare of social event through which she

dragged her husband--conducting thereby a vulgar campaign of her own, as

arduous as his and far more ambitious--and the ways and character of

gentle Mrs. Loraine, absorbed in the man she adored, scatter-brained and

absent-minded towards the rest of the world, but for him all eyes and

ears, an angel of shelter and protection--this did not now reach the

Prime Minister's wife for the first time. But she had no opportunity to

launch a retort, even supposing she had one ready, for the music ceased,

and the tide of dancers surged towards the doors. It brought Kitty

abruptly face to face with Lady Parham.

"Oh! how d'you do?" said Kitty, in a tone that was already an offence,

and she held out a small hand with an indescribably regal air.

Lady Parham just touched it, glanced at the owner from top to toe, and

walked away. Kitty slipped in beside Ashe for a moment, with her back to

the wall, laughing and breathless.

"I say, Kitty," said Ashe, bending over her and speaking in her small

ear, "I thought Lady Parham was eternally obliged to us. What's wrong

with her?"

"Only that I can't stand her," said Kitty. "What's the good of trying?"

She looked up, a flame of mutiny in her cheeks.

"What, indeed?" said Ashe, feeling as reckless as she. "Her manners are

beyond the bounds. But look here, Kitty, don't you think you'll come

home? You know you do look uncommonly tired."

Kitty frowned.

"Home? Why, I'm only just beginning to enjoy myself! Take me into the

cool, please," she said to the boy who had been dancing with her, and

who still hovered near, in case his divinity might allow him yet a few

more minutes. But as she put out her hand to take his arm, Ashe saw her

waver and look suddenly across the room.

A group parted that had been clustering round a farther door, and Ashe

perceived Cliffe, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed. He

was surrounded by pretty women, with whom he seemed to be carrying on a

bantering warfare. Involuntarily Ashe watched for the recognition

between him and Kitty. Did Kitty's lips move? Was there a signal? If so,

it passed like a flash; Kitty hurried away, and Ashe was left, haughtily

furious with himself that, for the first time in his life, he had played

the spy.

He turned in his discomfort to leave the dancing-room. He himself

enjoyed society frankly enough. Especially since his marriage had he

found the companionship of agreeable women delightful. He went

instinctively to seek it, and drive out this nonsense from his mind.

Just inside the larger drawing-room, however, he came across Mary

Lyster, sitting in a corner apparently alone. Mary greeted him, but

with an evident coldness. Her manner brought back all the preoccupations

of his walk from the House. In spite of her small cordiality, he sat

down beside her, wondering with a vicarious compunction at what point

her fortunes might be, and how Kitty's proceedings might have already

affected them. But he had not yet succeeded in thawing her when a voice

behind him said:

"This is my dance, I think, Miss Lyster. Where shall we sit it out?"

Ashe moved at once. Mary looked up, hesitated visibly, then rose and

took Geoffrey Cliffe's arm.

"Just read your remarks this evening," said Cliffe to Ashe. "Well, now,

I suppose to-morrow will see your ship in port?"

For it was reasonably expected that the morrow would see the American

agreement ratified by a substantial ministerial majority.

"Certainly. But you may at least reflect that you have lost us a deal of

time."

"And now you slay us," said Cliffe. "Ah, well--'_dulce et decorum est_,'

etcetera."

"Don't imagine that you'll get many of the honors of martyrdom," laughed

Ashe--in Cliffe's eyes an offensive and triumphant figure, as he leaned

carelessly upon a marble pedestal that carried a bust of Horace Walpole.

"Why?" Cliffe's hand had gone instinctively to his mustache. Mary had

dropped his arm, and now stood quietly beside him, pale and somewhat

jaded, her fine eyes travelling between the speakers.

"Why? Because the heresies have no martyrs. The halo is for the true

Church!"

"H'm!" said Cliffe, with a reflective sneer. "I suppose you mean for the

successful?"

"Do I?" said Ashe, with nonchalance. "Aren't the true Church the people

who are justified by the event?"

"The orthodox like to think so," said Cliffe. "But the heretics have a

way of coming out top."