"Does that mean you chaps are going to win at the next election? I

devoutly hope you may--_we_'re all as stale as ditch-water--and as for

places, anybody's welcome to mine!" And so saying, Ashe lounged away,

attracted by the bow and smile of a pretty Frenchwoman, with whom it was

always agreeable to chat.

"Ashe trifles it as usual," said Cliffe, as he and Mary forced a passage

into one of the smaller rooms. "Is there anything in the world that he

really cares about?"

Mary looked at him with a start. It was almost on her lips to say, "Yes!

his wife." She only just succeeded in driving the words back.

"His not caring is a pretence," she said. "At least, Lady Tranmore

thinks so. She believes that he is becoming absorbed in politics--much

more ambitious than she ever thought he would be."

"That's the way of mothers," said Cliffe, with a sarcastic lip. "They

have got to make the best of their sons. Tell me what you are going to

do this summer."

He had thrown one arm round the back of a chair, and sat looking down

upon her, his colorless fair hair falling thick upon his brow, and

giving by contrast a strange inhuman force to the dark and singular eyes

beneath. He had a way of commanding a woman's attention by flashes of

brusquerie, melting when he chose into a homage that had in it the note

of an older world, a world that had still leisure for, passion and its

refinements, a world still within sight of that other which had produced

the _Carte du tendre_. Perhaps it was this, combined with the

virilities, not to be questioned, of his aspect, the signs of hard

physical endurance in the face burned by desert suns, and the

suggestions of a frame too lean and gaunt for drawing-rooms, that gave

him his spell and preserved it.

Mary's conversation with him consisted at first of much cool fencing on

her part, which gradually slipped back, as he intended it should, into

some of the tones of intimacy. Each meanwhile was conscious of a secret

range of thoughts--hers concerned with the effort and struggle, the

bitter disappointments and disillusions of the past six weeks; and his

with the schemes he had cherished in the East and on the way home, of

marrying Mary Lyster, or more correctly, Mary Lyster's money, and so

resigning himself to the inevitable boredoms of an English existence.

For her the mental horizon was full of Kitty--Kitty insolent,

Kitty triumphant. For him, too, Kitty made the background of

thought--environed, however, with clouds of indecision and resistance

that would have raised happiness in Mary could she have divined them.

For he was now not easy to capture. There had been enough and more than

enough of women in his life. The game of politics must somehow replace

them henceforth, if, indeed, anything were still worth while, except the

long day in the saddle and the dawn of new mornings in untrodden lands.

Mingled, all these, with hot dislike of Ashe, with the fascination of

Kitty, and a kind of venomous pleasure in the commotion produced by his

pursuit of her; inter penetrated, moreover, through and through with the

memory of his one true feeling, and of the woman who had died, alienated

from and despising him. He and Mary passed a profitless half-hour. He

would have liked to propitiate her, but he had no notion what he should

do with the propitiation, if it were reached. He wanted her money, but

he was beginning to feel with restlessness that he could not pay the

cost. The poet in him was still strong, crossed though it were by the

adventurer.

He took her back to the dancing-room. Mary walked beside him with a

dull, fierce sense of wrong. It was Kitty, of course, who had done

it--Kitty who had taken him away from her.

"That's finished," said Cliffe to himself, with a long breath of relief,

as he delivered her into the hands of her partner. "Now for the other!"

* * * * *

Thenceforward, no one saw Kitty and no one danced with her. She spent

her time in beflowered corners, or remote drawing-rooms, with Geoffrey

Cliffe. Ashe heard her voice in the distance once or twice, answering a

voice he detested; he looked into the supper-room with a lady on his

arm, and across it he saw Kitty, with her white elbow on the table and

her hand propping a face that was turned--half mocking and yet wholly

absorbed--to Cliffe. He saw her flitting across vistas or disappearing

through far doorways, but always with that sinister figure in

attendance.

His mind was divided between a secret fury--roused in him by the pride

of a man of high birth and position, who has always had the world at

command, and now sees an impertinence offered him which he does not know

how to punish--and a mood of irony. Cliffe's persecution of Kitty was a

piece of confounded bad manners. But to look at it with the round,

hypocritical eyes some of these people were bringing to bear on it was

really too much! Let them look to their own affairs--they needed it.

At last the party broke up. Kitty touched him on the shoulder as he was

standing on the stairs, apparently absorbed in a teasing skirmish with a

charming child in her first season, who thought him the most delightful

of men.

"I'm ready, William."

He turned sharply, and saw that she was alone.

"Come along, then! In five minutes more I should have been asleep on the

stairs."

They descended. Kitty went for her cloak. Ashe sent for the carriage. As

he was standing on the steps Cliffe pushed past him and called for a

hansom. It came in the rear of two or three carriages already under the

portico. He ran along the pavement and jumped in. The doors were just

being shut by the linkman when a little figure in a white cloak flew

down the steps of the house and held up a hand to the driver of the

hansom.

"Do you see that?" said Lady Parham, in a voice of suppressed but

contemptuous amazement, as she turned to Mary Lyster, who was driving

home with her. "Call my carriage, please!" she said, imperiously, to one

of the footmen at the door. Her carriage, as it happened, was

immediately behind the hansom; but the hansom could not move because of

the small lady who had jumped upon the step and was leaning eagerly

forward.

There was a clamor of shouting voices: "Move on, cabby! Move on!" "Stand

clear, ma'am, please," said the driver, while Cliffe opened the door of

the cab, and seemed about to jump down again.

"Who is it?" said an impatient judge behind Lady Parham. "What's the

matter?"

Lady Parham shrugged her shoulders.

"It's Lady Kitty Ashe," whispered the _débutante_, who was the judge's

daughter, "talking to Mr. Cliffe. Isn't she pretty?"

A sudden silence fell upon the group in the porch. Kitty's high, clear

laugh seemed to ring back into the house. Then Ashe ran down the steps.

"Kitty, don't stop the way." He peremptorily drew her back.

Cliffe raised his hat, fell back into the hansom, and the man whipped up

his horse.

Kitty came back to the outer hall with Ashe. Her cheeks had a rose

flush, her wild eyes laughed at the crowd on the steps, without really

seeing them.

"Are you going with Lady Parham?" she said, absently, to Mary Lyster.

"Yes."

Kitty looked up and Ashe saw the two faces as she and Mary confronted

each other--the contempt in Mary's, the startled wrath in Kitty's.

"Come, Miss Lyster!" said Lady Parham, and pushing past the Ashes

without a good-night, she hurried to her carriage, drawing up the glass

with a hasty hand, though the night was balmy.

For a few moments none of those left on the steps spoke, except to fret

in undertones for an absent carriage. Then Ashe saw his own groom, and

stormed at him for delay. In another minute he and Kitty were in the

carriage, and the figures under the porch dropped out of sight.

* * * * *

"Better not do that again, Kitty, I think," said Ashe.

Kitty glanced at him. But both voice and manner were as usual. "Why

shouldn't I?" she said, haughtily; he saw that she had grown very white.

"I was telling Geoffrey where to find me at Lord's."

Ashe winced at the "Archangelism" of the Christian name.

"You kept Lady Parham waiting."

"What does that matter?" said Kitty, with an angry laugh.

"And you did Cliffe too much honor," said Ashe. "It's the men who should

stand on the steps--not the women!"

Kitty sat erect. "What do you mean?" she said, in a low, menacing voice.

"Just what I say," was the laughing reply.

Kitty threw herself back in her corner, and could not be induced to open

her lips or look at her companion till they reached home.

On the landing, however, outside her bedroom, she turned and said:

"Don't, please, say impertinent things to me again!" And drawn up to her

full height, the most childish and obstinate of tragedy queens, she

swept into her room.

Ashe went into his dressing-room. And almost immediately afterwards he

heard the key turn in the lock which separated his room from Kitty's.

For the first time since their marriage! He threw himself on his bed,

and passed some sleepless hours. Then fatigue had its way. When he

awoke, there was a gray dawn in the room, and he was conscious of

something pressing against his bed. Half asleep, he raised himself and

saw Kitty, in a long white dressing-gown, sitting curled up on the

floor, or rather on a pillow, her head resting on the edge of the bed.

In a glass opposite he saw the languid grace of her slight form and the

cloud of her hair.

"Kitty"--he tried to shake himself into full consciousness--"do go to

bed!"

"Lie down," said Kitty, lifting her arm and pressing him down, "and

don't say anything. I shall go to sleep."

He lay down obediently. Presently he felt that her cheek was resting on

one of his hands, and in his semi-consciousness he laid the other on her

hair. Then they both fell asleep.

His dreams were a medley of the fancy ball and of some pageant scene in

which Iris and Ceres appeared, and there was a rustic dance of maidens

and shepherds. Then a murmur as of thunder ran through the scene,

followed by darkness. He half woke, in a hot distress, but the soft

cheek was still there, his hand still felt the silky curls, and sleep

recaptured him.

XII

When Ashe woke up in earnest he was alone. He sprang up in bed and

looked round the darkened room, ashamed of his long sleep; but there was

no sign of Kitty.

After dressing, he knocked, as usual, at Kitty's door.

"Oh, come in," cried Kitty's lightest voice. "Margaret's here; but if

you don't mind her, she won't mind you."

Ashe entered. Kitty, as was her wont four days out of the seven, was

breakfasting in bed. Margaret French was beside her with a batch of

notes, mostly bills and unanswered invitations, with which she was

trying to make Kitty cope.

"Excuse me, Mr. Ashe," Margaret lifted a smiling face. "I had to be out

on business for my brother all day, so I thought I'd come early and

remind Kitty of some of these tiresome things while there was still a

chance of finding her."

"I don't know why guardian angels excuse themselves," said Ashe, as they

shook hands.

"Oh, dear, what a lot of them there are!" said Kitty, tossing over the

notes with a bored air. "Refuse them all, Margaret; I'm tired to death

of dining out."

"Not all, I think," pleaded Margaret. "Here's that nice woman--you

remember--who wanted to thank Mr. Ashe for what he'd done for her son.

You promised to dine with her."

"Did I?" Kitty wriggled with annoyance. "Well, then, I suppose we must.

What did William do for her? When I ask him to do something for the

nicest boys in the world, he won't lift a finger."

"I gave him some introductions in Berlin," laughed Ashe. "What you

generally want me to do, Kitty, is to stuff the public service with

good-looking idiots. And there I really can't oblige you."

"Every one knows that corruption gets the best men," said Kitty. "Hullo,

what's that?" and she lifted a dinner-card, and looked at it strangely.

"My dear Kitty! when did it come?" exclaimed Margaret French, in dismay.

It was a dinner-card, whereby Lord and Lady Parham requested the honor

of Mr. and Lady Kitty Ashe's company at dinner, on a date somewhere

within the first week of July.

Ashe bent over to look at it.

"I think that came ten days ago," he said, quietly. "I imagined Kitty

accepted it."

"I never thought of it from that day to this," said Kitty, who had

clasped her hands behind her head and was staring at the ceiling. "Say,

please, that"--she spaced out the words deliberately--"Mr. and Lady

Kitty Ashe--are unable to accept--Lord and Lady Parham's

invitation--etc.--"

"Kitty!" said Margaret, firmly, "there must be a 'regret' and a 'kind.'

Think! Ten days! The party is next week!"

"No 'regret,' and no 'kind'!" said Kitty, still staring overhead. "It's

my affair, please, Margaret, altogether. And I'll see the note before it

goes, or you'll be putting in civilities."

Margaret, in despair, looked entreatingly at Ashe. He and she had often

conspired before this to soften down Kitty's enormities. But he said

nothing--made not the smallest sign.

With difficulty Margaret got a few more directions out of Kitty, over

whom a shade of sombre taciturnity had now fallen. Then, saying she

would write the notes down-stairs and come back, she gathered up her

basketful of letters and departed.

As soon as she was alone with Ashe, Kitty took up a novel beside her,

and pretended to be absorbed in it.

He hesitated a moment, then he stooped over her and took her hand.

"Why did you come in to visit me, Kitty?" he said, in a low voice.

"I don't know," was her indifferent reply, and her hand pulled itself

away, though not with violence.

"I wish I could understand you, Kitty." His tone was not quite steady.

"Well, I don't understand myself!" said Kitty, shortly, reaching out for

a bunch of roses that Margaret had just brought her, and burying her

face among them.

"Perhaps, if you submitted the problem to me," said Ashe, laughing, "we

might be able to thresh it out together!"

He folded his arms and leaned against the foot of the bed, delighting

his eyes with the vision of her amid the folds of muslin and lace, and

all the costly refinements of pillow and coverlet with which she liked

to surround herself at that hour of the morning. She might have been a

French princess of the old regime, receiving her court.

Kitty shook her head. The roses fell idly from her hands, and made

bright patches of blush pink about her. Ashe went on:

"Anyway, dear, don't give silly tongues _too_ good a handle!"

He threw her a gay comrade's look, as though to say that they both knew

the folly of the world, but he perhaps the better, as he was the elder.

"You mean," said Kitty, calmly, "that I am not to talk so much to

Geoffrey Cliffe?"

"Is he worth it?" said Ashe. "That's what I want to know--worth the fuss

that some people make?"

"It's the fuss and the people that drive one on," said Kitty, under her

breath.

"You flatter them too much, darling! Do you think you were quite kind to

me last night?--let's put it that way. I looked a precious fool, you

know, standing on those steps, while you were keeping old Mother Parham

and the whole show waiting!"

She looked at him a moment in silence, at his heightened color and

insistent eyes.

"I can't think what made you marry me," she said, slowly.

Ashe laughed, and came nearer.

"And I can't think," he said, in a lower voice, "what made you come--if

you weren't a little bit sorry--and lean your dear head against me like

that, last night."

"I wasn't sorry--I couldn't sleep," was her quick reply, while her eyes

strove to keep up their war with his.

A knock was heard at the door. Ashe moved hastily away. Kitty's maid

entered.

"I was to tell you, sir, that your breakfast was ready. And Lady

Tranmore's servant has brought this note."

Ashe took it and thrust it into his pocket.

"Get my things ready, please," said Kitty to her maid. Ashe felt himself

dismissed and went.

As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang out of bed, threw on a

dressing-gown, and ran across to Blanche, who was bending over a chest

of drawers. "Why did you say those foolish things to me yesterday?" she

demanded, taking the girl impetuously by the arm, and so startling her

that she nearly dropped the clothes she held.

"They weren't foolish, my lady," said Blanche, sullenly, with averted

eyes.

"They were!" cried Kitty. "Of course, I'm a vixen--I always was. But you

know, Blanche, I'm not always as bad as I have been lately. Very soon I

shall be quite charming again--you'll see!"

"I dare say, my lady." Blanche went on sorting and arranging the

_lingerie_ she had taken out of the drawer.

Kitty sat down beside her, nursing a bare foot which was crossed over

the other.

"You know how I abused you about my hair, Blanche? Well, Mrs. Alcot

said, that very night, she never saw it so well done. She thought it

must be Pierrefitte's best man. Wasn't it hellish of me? I knew quite

well you'd done it beautifully."

The maid said nothing, but a tear fell on one of Kitty's night-dresses.

"And you remember the green garibaldi--last week? I just loathed

it--because you'd forgotten that little black rosette."

"No!" said Blanche, looking up; "your ladyship had never ordered it."

"I did--I did! But never mind. Two of my friends have wanted to copy it,

Blanche. They wouldn't believe it was done by a maid. They said it had

such style. One of them would engage you to-morrow if you really want to

go--"

A silence.

"But you won't go, Blanchie, will you?" said Kitty's silver voice. "I'm

a horrid fiend, but I did get Mr. Ashe to help your young man--and I did

care about your poor brother--and--and--" she stroked the girl's arm--"I

do look rather nice when I'm dressed, don't I? You wouldn't like a great

gawk to dress, would you?"

"I'm sure I don't want to leave your ladyship," said the girl, choking.

"But I can't have no more--"

"No more ructions?" said Kitty, meditating. "H'm, of course that's

serious, because I'm made so. Well, now, look here, Blanchie, you won't

give me warning again for a fortnight, whatever I do, mind. And if by

then I'm past praying for, you may. And I'll import a Russian--or a

Choctaw--who won't understand when I call her names. Is that a bargain,

Blanchie?"

The maid hesitated.

"Just a fortnight!" said Kitty, in her most seductive tones.

"Very well, my lady."

Kitty jumped up, waltzed round the room, the white silk skirts of her

dressing-gown floating far and wide, then thrust her feet into her

slippers, and began to dress as though nothing had happened.

* * * * *

But when her toilette was accomplished, Kitty having dismissed her maid,

sat for some time in front of her mirror in a brown study.

"What _is_ the matter with me?" she thought. "William is an angel, and I

love him. And I can't do what he wants--I _can't_!" She drew a long,

troubled breath. The lips of the face reflected in the glass were dry

and colorless, the eyes had a strange, shrinking expression. "People

_are_ possessed--I know they are. They can't help themselves. I began

this to punish Mary--and now--when I don't see Geoffrey, everything is

odious and dreary. I can't care for anything. Of course, I ought to care

for William's politics. I expect I've done him harm--I know I have.

What's wrong with me?"

But suddenly, in the very midst of her self-examination, the emotion and

excitement that she had felt of late in her long conversations with

Cliffe returned upon her, filling her at once with poignant memory and a

keen expectation to which she yielded herself as a wild sea-bird to the

rocking of the sea. They had started--those conversations--from her

attempt to penetrate the secret history of the man whose poems had

filled her with a thrilling sense of feelings and passions beyond her

ken--untrodden regions, full, no doubt, of shadow and of poison, but

infinitely alluring to one whose nature was best summed up in the two

words, curiosity and daring. She had not found it quite easy. Cliffe, as

we know, had resented the levity of her first attempt. But when she

renewed it, more seriously and sweetly, combining with it a number of

subtle flatteries, the flattery of her beauty and her position, of the

private interest she could not help showing in the man who was her

husband's public antagonist, and of an admiration for his poems which

was not so much mere praise as an actual covetous sharing in them, a

making their ideas and their music her own--Cliffe could not in the end

resist her. After all, so far, she only asked him to talk of himself,

and for a man of his type the process is the very breath of his being,

the stimulus and liberation of all his powers.

So that before they knew they were in the midst of the most burning

subjects of human discussion--at first in a manner comparatively veiled

and general, then with the sharpest personal reference to Cliffe's own

story, as the intimacy between them grew. Jealousy, suffering, the "hard

cases" of passion--why men are selfish and exacting, why women mislead

and torment--the ugly waste and crudity of death--it was among these

great themes they found themselves. Death above all--it was to a thought

of death that Cliffe's harsh face owed its chief spell perhaps in

Kitty's eyes. A woman had died for love of him, crushed by his jealousy

and her own self-scorn. So Kitty had been told; and Cliffe's tortured

vanity would not deny it. How could she have cared so much? That was the

puzzle.

But this vicarious relation had now passed into a relation of her own.

Cliffe was to Kitty a problem--and a problem which, beyond a certain

point, defied her. The element of sex, of course, entered in, but only

as intensifying the contrasts and mysteries of imagination. And he made

her feel these contrasts and mysteries as she had never yet felt them;

and so he enlarged the world for her, he plunged her, if only by

contact with his own bitter and irritable genius, into new regions of

sentiment and feeling. For in spite of the vulgar elements in him there

were also elements of genius. The man was a poet and a thinker, though

he were at the same time, in some sense, an adventurer. His mind was

stored with eloquent and beautiful imagery, the poetry of others, and

poetry of his own. He could pursue the meanest personal objects in an

unscrupulous way; but he had none the less passed through a wealth of

tragic circumstance; he had been face to face with his own soul in the

wilds of the earth; he had met every sort of physical danger with

contempt; and his arrogant, imperious temper was of the kind which

attracts many women, especially, perhaps, women physically small and

intellectually fearless, like Kitty, who feel in it a challenge to their

power and their charm.

His society, then, had in these six weeks become, for Kitty, a

passion--a passion of the imagination. For the man himself, she would

probably have said that she felt more repulsion than anything else. But

it was a repulsion that held her, because of the constant sense of

reaction, of on-rushing life, which it excited in herself.

Add to these the elements of mischief and defiance in the situation, the

snatching him from Mary, her enemy and slanderer, the defiance of Lady

Grosville and all other hypocritical tyrants, the pride of dragging at

her chariot wheels a man whom most people courted even when they loathed

him, who enjoyed, moreover, an astonishing reputation abroad, especially

in that France which Kitty adored, as a kind of modern Byron, the only

Englishman who could still display in public the "pageant of a bleeding

heart," without making himself ridiculous, and perhaps enough has been

heaped together to explain the infatuation that now, like a wild spring

gust on a shining lake, was threatening to bring Kitty's light bark into

dangerous waters.

"I don't care for him," she said to herself, as she sat thinking alone,

"but I must see him--I _will_! And I will talk to him as I please, and

where I please!"

Her small frame stiffened under the obstinacy of her resolution. Kitty's

will at a moment of this kind was a fatality--so strong was it, and so

irrational.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, down-stairs, Ashe himself was wrestling with another phase of

the same situation. Lady Tranmore's note had said: "I shall be with you

almost immediately after you receive this, as I want to catch you before

you go to the Foreign Office."

Accordingly, they were in the library, Ashe on the defensive, Lady

Tranmore nervous, embarrassed, and starting at a sound. Both of them

watched the door. Both looked for and dreaded the advent of Kitty.

"Dear William," said his mother at last, stretching her hand across a

small table which stood between them and laying it on her son's, "you'll

forgive me, won't you?--even if I do seem to you prudish and absurd. But

I am afraid you _ought_ to tell Kitty some of the unkind things people

are saying! You know I've tried, and she wouldn't listen to me. And you

ought to beg her--yes, William, indeed you ought!--not to give any

further occasion for them."

She looked at him anxiously, full Of that timidity which haunts the

deepest and tenderest affections. She had just given him to read a

letter from Lady Grosville to herself. Ashe ran through it, then laid it

down with a gesture of scorn.

"Kitty apparently enjoyed a moonlight walk with Cliffe. Why shouldn't

she? Lady Grosville thinks the moon was made to sleep by--other people

don't."

"But, William!--at night--when everybody had gone to bed--escaping from

the house--they two alone!"

Lady Tranmore looked at him entreatingly, as though driven to protest,

and yet hating the sound of her own words.

Ashe laughed. He was smoking with an air so nonchalant that his mother's

heart sank. For she divined that criticism in the society around her

which she was never allowed to hear. Was it true, indeed, that his

natural indolence could not rouse itself even to the defence of a young

wife's reputation?

"All the fault of the Grosvilles," said Ashe, after a moment, lighting

another cigarette, "in shutting up their great heavy house, and drawing

their great heavy curtains on a May night, when all reasonable people

want to be out-of-doors. My dear mother, what's the good of paying any

attention to what people like Lady Grosville say of people like Kitty?

You might as well expect Deborah to hit it off with Ariel!"

"William, don't laugh!" said his mother, in distress. "Geoffrey Cliffe

is not a man to be trusted. You and I know that of old. He is a boaster,

and--"

"And a liar!" said Ashe, quietly. "Oh! I know that."

"And yet he has this power over women--one ought to look it in the

face. William, dearest William!" she leaned over and clasped his hand

close in both hers, "do persuade Kitty to go away from London now--at

once!"

"Kitty won't go," said Ashe, quietly, "I am sorry, dear mother. I hate

that you should be worried. But there's the fact. Kitty won't go!"

"Then use your authority," said Lady Tranmore.

"I have none."

"William!" Ashe rose from his seat, and began to walk up and down. His

aspect of competence and dignity, as of a man already accustomed to

command and destined to a high experience, had never been more marked

than at the very moment of this helpless utterance. His mother looked at

him with mingled admiration and amazement.

Presently he paused beside her.

"I should like you to understand me, mother. I cannot fight with Kitty.

Before I asked her to marry me, I made up my mind to that. I knew then

and I know now that nothing but disaster could come of it. She must be

free, and I shall not attempt to coerce her."

"Or to protect her!" cried his mother.

"As to that, I shall do what I can. But I clearly foresaw when we

married that we should scandalize a good many of the weaker brethren."

He smiled, but, as it seemed to his mother, with some effort.

"William! as a public man--"

He interrupted her.

"If I can be both Kitty's husband and a public man, well and good. If

not, then I shall be--"

"Kitty's husband?" cried Lady Tranmore, with an accent of bitterness,

almost of sarcasm, of which she instantly repented her. She changed her

tone.

"It is, of course, Kitty, first and foremost, who is concerned in your

public position," she said, more gently. "Dearest William--she is so

young still--she probably doesn't quite understand, in spite of her

great cleverness. But she _does_ care--she _must_ care--and she ought to

know what slight things may sometimes affect a man's prospects and

future in this country."

Ashe said nothing. He turned on his heel and resumed his pacing. Lady

Tranmore looked at him in perplexity.

"William, I heard a rumor last night--"

He held his cigarette suspended.

"Lord Crashaw told me that the resignations would certainly be in the

papers this week, and that the ministry would go on--after a

rearrangement of posts. Is it true?"

Ashe resumed his cigarette.

"True--as to the facts--so far as I know. As to the date, Lord Crashaw

knows, I think, no more than I do. It may be this week, it may be next

month."

"Then I hear--thank goodness I never see her," Elizabeth went on,

reluctantly--"that that dreadful woman, Lady Parham, is more infuriated

than ever--"

"With Kitty? Let her be! It really doesn't matter an old shoe, either to

Kitty or me."

"She can be a most bitter enemy, William. And she certainly influences

Lord Parham."

Ashe smoked and smiled. Lady Tranmore saw that his pride, too, had been

aroused, and that here he was likely to prove as obstinate as Kitty.

"I wish I could get her out of my mind!" she sighed.

Ashe glanced at her kindly.

"I daresay we shall hold our own. Xanthippe is not beloved, and I don't

believe Parham will let her interfere with what he thinks best for the

party. Will it pay to put me in the cabinet or not?--that's what he'll

ask. I shall be strongly backed, too, by most of our papers."

A number of thoughts ran through Lady Tranmore's brain. With her long

experience of London, she knew well what the sudden lowering of a man's

"consideration"--to use a French word--at a critical moment may mean. A

cooling of the general regard--a breath of detraction coming no one

knows whence--and how soon new claims emerge, and the indispensable of

yesterday becomes the negligible of to-day!

But even if she could have brought herself to put any of these anxieties

into words, she had no opportunity. Kitty's voice was in the hall; the

handle turned, and she ran in.

"William! Ah!--I didn't know mother was here."

She went up to Elizabeth, and lightly kissed that lady's cheek.

"Good-morning. William, I just came to tell you that I may be late for

dinner, so perhaps you had better dine at the House. I am going on the

river."

"Are you?" said Ashe, gathering up his papers. "Wish I was."

"Are you going with the Crashaw's party?" asked Elizabeth. "I know they

have one."

"Oh, dear, no!" said Kitty. "I hate a crowd on the river. I am going

with Geoffrey Cliffe."

Ashe bent over his desk. Lady Tranmore's eyebrows went up, and she could

not restrain the word:

"Alone?"

"_Naturellement_!" laughed Kitty. "He reads me French poetry, and we

talk French. We let Madeleine Alcot come once, but her accent was so

shocking that Geoffrey wouldn't have her again!"

Lady Tranmore flushed deeply. The "Geoffrey" seemed to her intolerable.

Kitty, arrayed in the freshest of white gowns, walked away to the

farther end of the library to consult a _Bradshaw_. Elizabeth, looking

up, caught her son's eyes--and the mingled humor and vexation in them,

wherewith he appealed to her, as it were, to see the whole silly

business as he himself did. Lady Tranmore felt a moment's strong

reaction. Had she indeed been making a foolish fuss about nothing?

Yet the impression left by the miserable meditations of her night was

still deep enough to make her say--with just a signal from eye and lips,

so that Kitty neither saw nor heard--"Don't let her go!"

Ashe shook his head. He moved towards the door, and stood there

despatch-box in hand, throwing a last look at his wife.

"Don't be late, Kitty--or I shall be nervous. I don't trust Cliffe on

the river. And please make it a rule that, in locks, he stops quoting

French poetry."

Kitty turned round, startled and apparently annoyed by his tone.

"He is an excellent oar," she said, shortly.

"Is he? At Oxford we tried him for the Torpids--" Ashe's shrug completed

his remark. Then, still disregarding another imploring look from Lady

Tranmore, he left the room.

Kitty had flushed angrily. The belittling, malicious note in Ashe's

manner had been clear enough. She braced herself against it, and Lady

Tranmore's chance was lost. For when, summoning all her courage, and

quite uncertain whether her son would approve or blame her, Elizabeth

approached her daughter-in-law affectionately, trying in timid and

apologetic words to unburden her own heart and reach Kitty's, Kitty met

her with one of those outbursts of temper that women like Elizabeth

Tranmore cannot cope with. Their moral recoil is too great. It is the

recoil of the spiritual aristocrat; and between them and the children of

passion the links are few, the antagonism eternal.

She left the house, pale, dignified, the tears in her eyes. Kitty ran

up-stairs, humming an air from "Faust," as though she would tear it to

pieces, put on a flame-colored hat that gave a still further note of

extravagance to her costume, ordered a hansom, and drove away.

* * * * *

Whether Kitty got much joy out of the three weeks which followed must

remain uncertain. She had certainly routed Mary Lyster, if there were

any final satisfaction in that. Mary had left town early, and was now in

Somersetshire helping her father to entertain, in order, said the

malicious, to put the best face possible on a defeat which this time had

been serious. And instead of devoting himself to the wooing of a

northern constituency where he had been adopted as the candidate of a

new Tory group, Cliffe lingered obstinately in town, endangering his

chances and angering his supporters. Kitty's influence over his actions

was, indeed, patent and undenied, whatever might be the general opinion

as to her effect upon his heart. Some of Kitty's intimates at any rate

were convinced that his absorption in the matter was by now, to say the

least, no less eager and persistent than hers. At this point it was by

no means still a relation of flattery on Kitty's side and a pleased

self-love on his. It had become a duel of two personalities, or rather

two imaginations. In fact, as Kitty, learning the ways of his character,

became more proudly mistress of herself and him, his interest in her

visibly increased. It might almost be said that she was beginning to

hold back, and he for the first time pursued.

Once or twice he had the grace to ask himself where it was all to end.

Was he in love with her? An absurd question! He had paid his heavy

tribute to passion if any man ever had, and had already hung up his

votive tablet and his garments wet from shipwreck in the temple of the

god. But it seemed that, after all said and done, the society of a

woman, young, beautiful, and capricious, was still the best thing which

the day--the London day, at all events--had to bring. At Kitty's

suggestion he was collecting and revising a new volume of his poems. He

and she quarrelled over them perpetually. Sometimes there was not a line

which pleased her; and then, again, she would delight him with the

homage of sudden tears in her brown eyes, and a praise so ardent and so

refined that it almost compared--as Kitty meant it should--with that of

the dead. In the shaded drawing-room, where every detail pleased his

taste, Cliffe's harsh voice thundered or murmured verse which was

beyond dispute the verse of a poet, and thereby sensuous and

passionate. Ostensibly the verse concerned another woman; in truth, the

slight and lovely figure sitting on the farther side of the flowered

hearth, the delicate head bent, the finger-tips lightly joined, entered

day by day more directly into the consciousness of the poet. What harm?

All he asked was intelligence and response. As to her heart, he made no

claim upon it whatever. Ashe, by-the-way, was clearly not jealous--a

sensible attitude, considering Lady Kitty's strength of will.

Into Cliffe's feeling towards Ashe there entered, indeed, a number of

evil things, determined by quite other relations between the two

men--the relation of the man who wants to the man who has, of the man

beaten by the restlessness of ambition to the man who possesses all that

the other desires, and affects to care nothing about it--of the

combatant who fights with rage to the combatant who fights with a smile.

Cliffe could often lash himself into fury by the mere thought of Ashe's

opportunities and Ashe's future, combined with the belief that Ashe's

mood towards himself was either contemptuous or condescending. And it

was at such moments that he would fling himself with most resource into

the establishing of his ascendency over Kitty.

The two men met when they did meet--which was but seldom--on perfectly

civil terms. If Ashe arrived unexpectedly from the House in the late

afternoon to find Cliffe in the drawing-room reading aloud to Kitty, the

politics of the moment provided talk enough till Cliffe could decently

take his departure. He never dined with them alone, Kitty having no mind

whatever for the discomforts of such a party; and in the evenings when

he and Kitty met at a small number of houses, where the flirtation was

watched nightly with a growing excitement, Ashe's duties kept him at

Westminster, and there was nothing to hinder that flow of small and yet

significant incident by which situations of this kind are developed.

Ashe set his teeth. He had made up his mind finally that it was a plague

and a tyranny which would pass, and could only be magnified by

opposition. But his temper suffered. There were many small quarrels

during these weeks between himself and Kitty, quarrels which betrayed

the tension produced in him by what was--in essentials--an iron

self-control. But they made daily life a sordid, unlovely thing, and

they gave Kitty an excuse for saying that William was as violent as

herself, and for seeking refuge in the exaltations of feeling or of

fancy provided by Cliffe's companionship.

Perhaps of all the persons in the drama, Lady Tranmore was the most to

be pitied. She sat at home, having no heart to go to Hill Street, and

more tied indeed than usual by the helpless illness of her husband.

Never, in all these days, did Ashe miss his daily visit to his father.

He would come in, apparently his handsome, good-humored self, ready to

read aloud for twenty minutes, or merely to sit in silence by the sick

man, his eyes making affectionate answer every now and then to the dumb

looks of Lord Tranmore. Only his mother sought and found that slight

habitual contraction of the brow which bore witness to some equally

persistent disquiet of the mind. But he kept her at arm's-length on the

subject of Kitty. She dared not tell him any of the gossip which

reached her.

Meanwhile these weeks meant for her not only the dread of disgrace, but

the disappointment of a just ambition, the humiliation of her mother's

pride. The political crisis approached rapidly, and Ashe's name was less

and less to the front. Lady Parham was said to be taking an active part

in the consultations and intrigues that surrounded her husband, and it

was well known by now to the inner circle that her hostility to the

Ashes, and her insistence on the fact that cabinet ministers must be

beyond reproach, and their wives persons to whose houses the party can

go without demeaning themselves, were likely to be of importance.

Moreover, Ashe's success in the House of Commons was no longer what it

had been earlier in the session. The party papers had cooled. Elizabeth

Tranmore felt a blight in the air. Yet William, with his position in the

country, his high ability, and the social weight belonging to the heir

of the Tranmore peerage and estates, was surely not a person to be

lightly ignored! Would Lord Parham venture it?

* * * * *

At last the resignations of the two ministers were in the _Times_; there

were communications between the Queen and the Premier, and London

plunged with such ardor as is possible in late July into the throes of

cabinet-making. Kitty insisted petulantly that of course all would be

well; William's services were far too great to be ignored; though Lord

Parham would no doubt slight him if he dared. But the party and the

public would see to that. The days were gone by when vulgar old women

like Lady Parham could have any real influence on political

appointments. Otherwise, who would condescend to politics?

Ashe brought her amusing reports from the House or the clubs of the

various intrigues going on, and, as to his own chances, refused to

discuss them seriously. Once or twice when Kitty, in his presence,

insisted on speaking of them to some political intimate, only to provoke

an evident embarrassment, Ashe suffered the tortures which proud men

know. But he never lost his tone of light detachment, and the conclusion

of his friends was that, as usual, "Ashe didn't care a button."

The hours passed, however, and no sign came from the Prime Minister.

Everything was still uncertain; but Ashe had realized that at least he

was not to be taken into the inner counsels of the party. The hopes and

fears, the heartburnings and rivalries of such a state of things are

proverbial. Ashe wondered impatiently when the beastly business would be

over, and he could get off to Scotland for the air and sport of which he

was badly in need.

* * * * *

It was a Friday, in the first week of August. Ashe was leaving the

Athenæum with another member of the House when a newspaper boy rushing

along with a fresh bundle of papers passed them with the cry, "New

cabinet complete! Official list!" They caught him up, snatched a paper,

and read. Two men of middle age, conspicuous in Parliament, but not

hitherto in office, one of them of great importance as a lawyer, the

other as a military critic, were appointed, the one to the Home Office,

the other to the Ministry of War; there had been some shuffling in the

minor offices, and a new Privy Seal had dawned upon the world. For the

rest, all was as before, and in the formal list the name of the

Honorable William Travers Ashe still remained attached to the

Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs.

Ashe's friend shrugged his shoulders, and avoided looking at his

companion. "A bomb-shell, to begin with," he said; "otherwise the

flattest thing out."

"On the contrary," laughed Ashe. "Parham has shown a wonderful amount of

originality. If you and I are taken by surprise, what will the public

be? And they'll like him all the better--you'll see. He has shown

courage and gone for new men--that's what they'll say. _Vive_ Parham!

Well, good-bye. Now, please the Lord, we shall get off--and I may be

among the grouse this day week."

He stopped on his way out of the club to discuss the list with the men

coming in. He was conscious that some would have avoided him. But he had

no mind to be avoided, and his caustic, good-humored talk carried off

the situation. Presently he was walking homeward, swinging his stick

with the gayety of a school-boy expecting the holidays.

As he mounted St. James's Street a carriage descended. Ashe mechanically

took off his hat to the half-recognized face within, and as he did so

perceived the icy bow and triumphant eyes of Lady Parham.

He hurried along, fighting a curious sensation, as of a physical

bruising and beating. The streets were full of the news, and he was

stopped many times by mere acquaintances to talk of it. In Savile Row he

turned into a small literary club of which he was a member, and wrote a

letter to his mother. In very affectionate and amusing terms it begged

her not to take the disappointment too seriously. "I think I won't come

round to-night. But expect me first thing to-morrow."

He sent the note by messenger and walked home. When he reached Hill

Street it was close on eight. Outside the house he suddenly asked

himself what line he was going to take with Kitty.

Kitty, however, was not at home. As far as he could remember she had

gone coaching with the Alcots into Surrey, Geoffrey Cliffe, of course,

being of the party. Presently, indeed, he discovered a hasty line from

her on his study table, to say that they were to dine at Richmond, and

"Madeleine" supposed they would get home between ten and eleven. Not a

word more. Like all strong men, Ashe despised the meditations of

self-pity. But the involuntary reflection that on this evening of

humiliation Kitty was not with him--did not apparently care enough about

his affairs and his ambitions to be with him--brought with it a soreness

which had to be endured.

The next moment, he was inclined to be glad of her absence. Such things,

especially in the first shock of them, are best faced alone. If, indeed,

there were any shock in the matter. He had for some time had his own

shrewd previsions, and he was aware of a strong inner belief that his

defeat was but temporary.

Probably, when she had time to remember such trifles, Kitty would feel

the shock more than he did. Lady Parham had certainly won this round of

the rubber!

He settled to his solitary dinner, but in the middle of it put down

Kitty's Aberdeen terrier, which, for want of other company, he was

stuffing atrociously, and ran up to the nursery. The nurse was at her

supper, and Harry lay fast asleep, a pretty little fellow, flushed into

a semblance of health, and with a strong look of Kitty.

Ashe bent down and put his whiskered cheek to the boy's. "Never mind,

old man!" he murmured, "better luck next time!"

Then raising himself with a smile, he looked affectionately at the

child, noticed with satisfaction his bright color and even breathing,

and stole away.

He ran through the comments of the evening papers on the new cabinet

list, finding in only two or three any reference to himself, then threw

them aside, and seized upon a pile of books and reviews that were lying

on his table. He carried them up to the drawing-room, hesitated between

a theological review and a new edition of Horace, and finally plunged

with avidity into the theological review.

For some two hours he sat enthralled by an able summary of the chief

Tübingen positions; then suddenly threw himself back with a stretch and

a laugh.

"Wonder what the chap's doing that's got my post! Not reading theology,

I'll be bound."

The reflection followed that were he at that moment Home Secretary and

in the cabinet, he would not probably be reading it either--nor left to

a solitary evening. Friends would be dropping in to congratulate--the

modern equivalent of the old "turba clientium."

As his thoughts wandered, the drawing-room clock struck eleven. He rose,

astonished and impatient. Where was Kitty?

By midnight she had not arrived. Ashe heard the butler moving in the

hall and summoned him.

"There may have been some mishap to the coach, Wilson. Perhaps they have

stayed at Richmond. Anyway, go to bed. I'll wait for her ladyship."

He returned to his arm-chair and his books, but soon drew Kitty's

_couvre-pied_ over him and went to sleep.

When he awoke, daylight was in the room. "What has happened to them?" he

asked himself, in a sudden anxiety.

And amid the silence of the dawn he paced up and down, a prey for the

first time to black depression. He was besieged by memories of the last

two months, their anxieties and quarrels--the waste of time and

opportunity--the stabs to feeling and self-respect. Once he found

himself groaning aloud, "Kitty! Kitty!"

When this huge, distracting London was left behind, when he had her to

himself amid the Scotch heather and birch, should he find her

again--conquer her again--as in the exquisite days after their marriage?

He thought of Cliffe with a kind of proud torment, disdaining to be

jealous or afraid. Kitty had amused herself--had tested her freedom, his

patience, to the utmost. Might she now be content, and reward him a

little for a self-control, a philosophy, which had not been easy!

A French novel on Kitty's little table drew his attention. He thought

not without a discomfortable humor of what a French husband would have

made of a similar situation--recalling the remark of a French

acquaintance on some case illustrating the freedom of English wives. "Il

y a un élément turc dans le mari français, qui nous rendrait ces

moeurs-là impossibles!"

_À la bonne heure_! Let the Frenchman keep up his seraglio

standards as he pleased. An Englishman trusts both his wife and his

daughter--scorns, indeed, to consider whether he trusts them or no! And

who comes worst off? Not the Englishman--if, at least, we are to believe

the French novel on the French _ménage!_

He paced thus up and down for an hour, defying his unseen critics--his

mother--his own heart.

* * * * *

Then he went to bed and slept a little. But with the post next morning

there was no letter from Kitty. There might be a hundred explanations of

that. Yet he felt a sudden need of caution.

"Her ladyship comes up this morning by train," he said to Wilson, as

though reading from a note. "There seems to have been a mishap."

Then he took a hansom and drove to the Alcots.

"Is Mrs. Alcot at home?" he asked the butler. "Can I have an answer to

this note?"

"Mrs. Alcot has been in her room since yesterday morning, sir. She was

taken ill just before the coach was coming round, and the horses had to

be sent back. But the doctor last night hoped it would be nothing

serious."

Ashe turned and went home. Then Kitty was not with Madeleine Alcot--not

on the coach! Where was she, and with whom?

He shut himself into his library and fell to wondering, in bewilderment,

what he had better do. A tide of rage and agony was mounting within him.

How to master it--and keep his brain clear!

He was sitting in front of his writing-table staring at the floor, his

hands hanging before him, when the door opened and shut. He turned.

There, with her back to the door, stood Kitty. Her aspect startled him

to his feet. She looked at him, trembling--her little face haggard and

white, with a touch of something in it which had blurred its youth.

"William!" She put both her hands to her breast, as though to support

herself. Then she flew forward. "William! I have done nothing

wrong--nothing--nothing! William--look at me!"

He sternly put out his hand, protecting himself.

"Where have you been?" he said, in a low voice--"and with whom?"

Kitty fell into a chair and burst into wild tears.

XIII

There was silence for a few moments except for Kitty's crying. Ashe

still stood beside his writing-table, his hand resting upon it, his eyes

on Kitty. Once or twice he began to speak, and stopped. At last he said,

with obvious difficulty:

"It's cruel to keep me waiting, Kitty."

"I sent you a telegram first thing this morning." The voice was choked

and passionate.

"I never got it."

"Horrid little fiend!" cried Kitty, sitting up and dashing back her hair

from her tear-stained cheeks. "I gave a boy half a crown this morning to

be at the station with it by eight o'clock. And I couldn't possibly

either write or telegraph last night--it was too late."

"Where were you?" said Ashe, slowly. "I went to the Alcots' this

morning, and--"

"--the butler told you Madeleine was in bed? So she is. She was ill

yesterday morning. There was no coach and no party. I went with

Geoffrey."

Kitty held herself erect; her eyes, from which the tears were

involuntarily dropping, were fixed on her husband.

"Of course I guessed that," said Ashe.

"It was Geoffrey brought me the news--here, just as I was starting to go

to the Alcots'. Then he said he had something to read me--and it would

be delicious to go to Pangbourne--spend the day on the river--and come

back from Windsor--at night--by train. And I had a horrid headache--and

it was so hot--and you were at the office"--her lip quivered--"and I

wanted to hear Geoffrey's poems--and so--"

She interrupted herself, and once more broke down--hiding her face

against the chair. But the next moment she felt herself roughly drawn

forward, as Ashe knelt beside her.

"Kitty!--look at me! That man behaved to you like a villain?"

She looked up--she saw the handsome, good-humored face transformed--and

wrenched herself away.

"He did," she said, bitterly--"like a villain." She began to twist and

torment her handkerchief as Ashe had seen her do once before, the small

white teeth pressed upon the lower lip--then suddenly she turned upon

him--

"I suppose you want me to tell you the story?"

All Kitty in the words! Her frankness, her daring, and the impatient,

realistic tone she was apt to impose upon emotion--they were all there.

Ashe rose and began to walk up and down.

"Tell me your part in it," he said, at last--"and as little of that

fellow as may be."

Kitty was silent. Ashe, looking at her, saw a curious shade of reverie,

a kind of dreamy excitement steal over her face.

"Go on, Kitty!" he said, sharply. Then, restraining himself, he added,

with all his natural courtesy--"I beg your pardon, Kitty, but the sooner

we get through with this the better."

The mist in which her expression had been for a moment wrapped fell

away. She flushed deeply.

"I told you I had done nothing vile!" she said, passionately. "Did you

believe me?"

Their eyes met in a shock of challenge and reply.

"Those things are not to be asked between you and me," he said, with

vehemence, and he held out his hand. She just touched it--proudly. Then

she drew a long breath.

"The day was--just like other days. He read me his poems--in a cool

place we found under the bank. I thought he was rather absurd now and

then--and different from what he had been. He talked of our going

away--and his not seeing me--and how lonely he was. And of course I was

awfully sorry for him. But it was all right till--"

She paused and looked at Ashe.

"You remember the inn near Hamel Weir--a few miles from Windsor--that

lonely little place."

Ashe nodded.

"We dined there. Afterwards we were to row to Windsor and come home by a

train about ten. We finished dinner early. By-the-way, there were two

other people there--Lady Edith Manley and her boy. They had rowed down

from somewhere--"

"Did Lady Edith--"

"Yes--she spoke to me. She was going back to town--to the Holland House

party--"

"Where she probably met mother?"

"She did meet her!" cried Kitty. She pointed to a letter which she had

thrown down as she entered. "Your mother sent round this note to me this

morning--to ask when I should be at home. And Wilson sent word--There!

Of course I know she thinks I'm capable of anything."

She looked at him, defiant, but very miserable and pale.

"Go on, please," said Ashe.

"We finished dinner early. There was a field behind the inn, and then a

wood. We strolled into the wood, and then Geoffrey--well, he went mad!

He--"

She bit her lip fiercely, struggling for composure--and words.

"He proposed to you to throw me over?" said Ashe, as white as she.

With a sudden gesture she held out her arms--like a piteous child.

"Oh! don't stand there--and look at me like that--I can't bear it."

Ashe came--unwillingly. She perceived the reluctance, and with a flaming

face she motioned him back, while she controlled herself enough to pour

out her story. Presently Ashe was able to reconstruct with tolerable

clearness what had occurred. Cliffe, intoxicated by the long day of

intimacy and of solitude, by Kitty's beauty and Kitty's folly, aware

that parting was near at hand, and trusting to the wildness of Kitty's

temperament, had suddenly assumed the language of the lover--and a lover

by no means uncertain of his ultimate answer. So long as they understood

each other--that, indeed, for the present, was all he asked. But she

must know that she had broken off his marriage with Mary Lyster, and

reopened in his nature all the old founts of passion and of storm. It

had been her sovereign will that he should love her; it had been

achieved. For her sake--knowing himself for the seared and criminal

being that he was--for Ashe's sake--he had tried to resist her spell. In

vain. A fatal fusion of their two natures--imaginations--sympathies--had

come about. Each was interpenetrated by the other; and retreat was

impossible.

A kind of sombre power, indeed--the power of the poet and the

dreamer--seemed to have spoken from Cliffe's strange wooing. He had

taken no particular pains to flatter her, or to conceal his original

hesitation. He put her own action in a hard, almost a brutal light. It

was plain that he thought she had treated her husband badly; that he

warned her of a future of treachery and remorse. At the same time he let

her see that he could not doubt but that she would face it. They still

had the last justifying cards in their hands--passion, and the courage

to go where passion leads. When those were played, they might look each

other and the world in the face. Till then they were but triflers--mean

souls--fit neither for heaven nor for hell.

Ashe's whole being was soon in a tumult of rage under the sting of this

report, as he was able to piece it out from Kitty. But he kept his

self-command, and by dint of it he presently arrived at some notion of

her own share in the scene. Horror, recoil, disavowal--a wild resentment

of the charges heaped upon her, of the pitiless interpretation of her

behavior which broke from those harsh lips, of the incredulity passing

into something like contempt with which Cliffe had endured her wrath and

received her protestations--then a blind flight through the fields to

the little wayside station, where she hoped to catch the last train;

the arrival and departure of the train while she was still half a mile

from the line, and her shelter at a cottage for the night; these things

stood out plainly, whatever else remained in obscurity. How far she had

provoked her own fate, and how far even now she was delivered from the

morbid spell of Cliffe's personality, Ashe would not allow himself to

ask. As she neared the end of her story, it was as though the great

tempest wave in which she had been struggling died down, and with a

merciful rush bore him to a shore of deliverance. She was there beside

him; and she was still his own.

He had been leaning over the side of a chair, his chin on his hand, his

eyes fixed upon her, while she told her tale. It ended in a burst of

self-pity, as she remembered her collapse in the cottage, the

impossibility of finding any carriage in the small hamlet of which it

made part, the faint weariness of the night--

"I never slept," she said, piteously. "I got up at eight for the first

train, and now I feel"--she fell back in her chair, and whispered

desolately with shut eyes--"as if I should like to die!"

Ashe knelt down beside her.

"It's my fault, too, Kitty. I ought to have held you with a stronger

hand. I hated quarrelling with you. But--oh, my dear, my dear--"

She met the cry in silence, the tears running over her cheeks. Roughly,

impetuously, he gathered her in his arms and kissed her, as though he

would once more re-knit and reconsecrate the bond between them. She lay

passively against him, the tangle of her fair hair spread over his

shoulder--too frail and too exhausted for response.

"This won't do," he said, presently, disengaging himself; "you must have

some food and rest. Then we'll think what shall be done."

She roused herself suddenly as he went to the door.

"Why aren't you at the Foreign Office?"

"I sent a message early. Lawson came"--Lawson was his private

secretary--"but I must go down in an hour."

"William!"

Kitty had raised herself, and her eyes shone large and startled in the

small, tear-stained face.

"Yes." He paused a moment.

"William, is the list out?"

"Yes."

Kitty tottered to her feet.

"Is it all right?"

"I suppose so," he said, slowly. "It doesn't affect me."

And then, without waiting, he went into the hall and closed the door

behind him. He wrote a note to the Foreign Office to say that he should

not be at the office till the afternoon, and that important papers were

to be sent up to him. Then he told Wilson to bring wine and sandwiches

into the library for Lady Kitty, who had been detained by an accident on

the river the night before, and was much exhausted. No visitors were to

be admitted, except, of course, Lady Tranmore or Miss French.

When he returned to the library he found Kitty with crimson cheeks, her

hands locked behind her, walking up and down. As soon as she saw him she

motioned to him imperiously.

[Illustration: "HE GATHERED HER IN HIS ARMS"]

"Shut the door, William. I have something very important to say to you."

He obeyed her, and she walked up to him deliberately. He saw the

fluttering of her heart beneath her white dress--the crushed, bedraggled

dress, which still in its soft elegance, its small originalities, spoke

Kitty from head to foot. But her manner was quite calm and collected.

"William, we must separate! You must send me away."

He started.

"What do you mean?"

"What I say. It is--it is intolerable--that I should ruin your life like

this."

"Don't, please, exaggerate, Kitty! There is no question of ruin. I shall

make my way when the time comes, and Lady Parham will have nothing to

say to it!"

"No! Nothing will ever go well--while I'm there--like a millstone round

your neck. William"--she came closer to him--"take my advice--do it! I

Warned you when you married me. And now you see--it was true."

"You foolish child," he answered, slowly, "do you think I could forget

you for an hour, wherever you were?"

"Oh yes," she said, steadily, "I know you would forget me--- if I wasn't

here. I'm sure of it. You're very ambitious, William--more than you

know. You'll soon care--"

"More for politics than for you? Another of your delusions, Kitty.

Nothing of the sort. Moreover, if you will only let me advise you--trust

your husband a little--think both for him and yourself. I see nothing

either in politics or in our life together that cannot be retrieved."

He spoke with manly kindness and reasonableness. Not a trace of his

habitual indolence or indifference. Kitty, listening, was conscious of

the most tempestuous medley of feelings--love, remorse, shame, and a

strange gnawing desolation. What else, what better _could_ she have

asked of him? And yet, as she looked at him, she thought suddenly of the

moonlit garden at Grosville Park, and of that young, headlong chivalry

with which he had thrown himself at her feet. This man before her, so

much older and maturer, counting the cost of his marriage with her in

the light of experience, and magnanimously, resolutely paying it--Kitty,

in a flash, realized his personality as she had never yet done, his

moral independence of her, his separateness as a human being. Her

passionate self-love instinctively, unconsciously, had made of his life

the appendage of hers. And now--? His devotion had never been so plain,

so attested; and all the while bitter, terrifying voices rang upon the

inner ear, voices of fate, vague and irrevocable.

She dropped into a chair beside his table, trembling and white.

"No, no," she said, drawing her handkerchief across her eyes, with a

gesture of childish misery, "it's all been a--a horrid mistake. Your

mother was quite right. Of course she hated your marrying me--and

now--now she'll see what I've done. I guess perfectly what she's

thinking about me to-day! And I can't help it--I shall go on--if you let

me stay with you. There's a twist--a black drop in me. I'm not like

other people."

Her voice, which was very quiet, gave Ashe intolerable pain.

"You poor, tired, starved child," he said, kneeling down beside her.

"Put your arms round my neck. Let me carry you up-stairs."

With a sob she did as she was told. Ashe's library a comparatively late

addition to the rambling, old-fashioned house, communicated by a small

staircase at the back with his dressing-room above. He lifted the small

figure with ease, and half-way up-stairs he impetuously kissed the

delicate cheek.

"I'm glad you're not Polly Lyster, darling!"

Kitty laughed through her tears. Presently he deposited her on the large

sofa in her own room, and stood beside her, panting a little.

"It's all very well," said Kitty, as she nestled down among the pillows,

"but we're _none_ of us feathers!"

Her eyes were beginning to recover a little of their sparkle. She looked

at him with attention.

"You look horribly tired. What--what did you do--last night?" She turned

away from him.

"I sat up reading--then went to sleep down-stairs. I thought the coach

had come to grief, and you were somewhere with the Alcots."

"If I had known that," she murmured, "_I_ might have gone to sleep. Oh,

it was so horrible--the little stuffy room, and the dirty blankets." She

gave a shiver of disgust. "There was a poor baby, too, with

whooping-cough. Lucky I had some money. I gave the woman a sovereign.

But she wasn't at all nice--she never smiled once. I know she thought I

was a bad lot."

Then she sprang up.

"Sit there!" She pointed to the foot of the sofa. Ashe obeyed her.

"When did you know?"

"About the ministry? Between six and seven. I saw Lady Parham afterwards

driving in St. James's Street. She never enjoyed anything so much in her

life as the bow she gave me.'"

Kitty groaned, and subsided again, a little crumpled form among her

cushions.

"Tell me the names."

Ashe gave her the list of the ministry. She made one or two shrewd or

bitter comments upon it. He fully understood that in her inmost mind she

was registering a vow of vengeance against the Parhams; but she made no

spoken threat. Meanwhile, in the background of each mind there lay that

darker and more humiliating fact, to which both shrank from returning,

while yet both knew that it must be faced.

There was a knock at the door, and Blanche appeared with the tray which

had been ordered down-stairs. She glanced in astonishment at her

mistress.

"We had an accident on the river last night, Blanche," said Kitty. "Come

back in half an hour. I'm too tired to change just yet."

She kept her face hidden from the maid, but when Blanche had departed,

Ashe saw that her cheeks were flaming.

"I hate lying!" she said, with a kind of physical disgust--"and now I

suppose it will be my chief occupation for weeks."

It was true that she hated lying, and Ashe was well aware of it. Of such

a battle-stroke, indeed, as she had played at the ball, when her prompt

falsehood snatched Cliffe from Mary Lyster, she was always capable. But

in general her pride, her very egotism and quick temper kept her true.

Perhaps the fact represented one of those deep sources whence the well

of Ashe's tenderness was fed. At any rate, consciously or not, it was at

this moment one of his chief motives for not finding the past

intolerable or the future without hope. He took some wine and a sandwich

from the tray, and began to feed her. In the middle, she pushed his

hands away, and her eyes brimmed again with tears.

"Put it down," she commanded. And when he had done so, she raised his

hands deliberately, one after the other, and kissed them, crying:

"William!--I have been a horrible wife to you!"

"Don't be a goose, Kitty. You know very well that--till this last

business--And don't imagine that I feel myself a model, either!"

"No," she said, with a long sigh. "Of course, you ought to have beaten

me."

He smiled, with an unsteady lip.

"Perhaps I might still try it."

She shook her head.

"Too late. I am not a child any more."

Then throwing her soft arms round his neck, she clung to him, saying the

most adorable and poignant things, dissolved, indeed, in a murmuring

anguish of remorse; until, with the same unexpectedness as before, she

again disengaged herself--urging, insisting that he should send her

away.

"Let me go and live at Haggart, baby and I." (Haggart was one of the

Tranmore "places," recently handed over to the young people.) "You can

come and see me sometimes. I'll garden--and write books. Half the smart

women I know write stories--or plays. Why shouldn't I?"

"Why, indeed? Meanwhile, madam, I take you to Scotland--next week."

"Scotland?" She pressed her hands over her eyes.

"'Anywhere--anywhere--out of the world!'"

"Kitty!" Startled by the abandonment of her words, Ashe caught her hands

and held them. "Kitty!--- you regret--"

"That man? Do I?" She opened her eyes, frowning. "I loathe him! When I

think of yesterday, I could drown myself. If I could pile the whole

world between him and me--I would. But"--she shivered--"but yet--if he

were sitting there--"

"You would be once more under the spell?" said Ashe, bitterly.

"Spell!" she repeated, with scorn. Then snatching her hands from his,

she threw back the hair from her temples with a wild gesture. "I warned

you," she said--"I warned you."

"A man doesn't pay much attention to those warnings, Kitty."

"Then it is not my fault. I don't know what's wrong with me," she said,

sombrely; "but I remember saying to you that sometimes my brain was on

fire. I seem to be always in a hurry--in a desperate, desperate

hurry!--to know or to feel something--while there is still time--before

one dies. There is always a passion--always an effort. More life--_more

life_!--even if it lead to pain--and agony--and tears."

She raised her strange, beautiful eyes, which had at the moment almost a

look of delirium, and fixed them on his face. But Ashe's impression was

that she did not see him.

He was conscious of the same pang, the same sudden terror that he had

felt on that never-to-be-forgotten evening when she had talked to him of

the mask in the "Tempest." He thought of the Blackwater stories he had

heard from Lord Grosville. "_Mad, my dear fellow, mad!_"--the old man's

frequent comment ran through his memory. Was there, indeed, some unsound

spot in Kitty?

He sat dumb and paralyzed for a moment; then, recovering himself, he

said, as he recaptured the cold little hands:

"'More _light_,' Kitty, was what Goethe said, in dying. A better prayer,

don't you think?"

There was a strong, even a stern insistence in his manner which quieted

Kitty. Her face as it came back to full consciousness was exquisitely

sweet and mournful.

"That's the prayer of the _calm_," she said, in a whisper, "and my

nature is hunger and storm. And Geoffrey Cliffe is the same. That's why

I couldn't help being--"

She sprang up.

"William, don't let's talk nonsense. I can't ever see that man again.

How's it to be done?"

She moved up and down--all practical energy and impatience--her mood

wholly altered. His own adapted itself to hers.

"For the present, fear nothing," he said, dryly. "For his own sake

Cliffe will hold his tongue and leave London. And as to the future--I

can get some message conveyed to him--by a man he won't disregard. Leave

it to me."

"You can't write to him, William!" cried Kitty, passionately.

"Leave it to me," he repeated. "Then suppose you take the boy--and

Margaret French--to Haggart till I can join you?"

"And your mother?" she said, timidly, coming to stand beside him and

laying a hand on each shoulder.

"Leave that also to me."

"How she'll hate the sight of me," she said, under her breath. Then,

with another tone of voice--"How long, William, do you give the

government?"

"Six months, perhaps--perhaps less. I don't see how they can last beyond

February."

"And then--we'll _fight_!" said Kitty, with a long breath, smoothing

back the hair from his brow.

"Allow me, please, to command the forces! Well, now then, I must be

off!" He tried to rise, but she still held him.

"Did you have any breakfast, William?"

"I don't remember."

"Sit still and eat one of my sandwiches." She divided one into strips,

and standing over him began to feed him. A knock at the door arrested

her.

"Don't move!" she said, peremptorily, before she ran to open the door.

"Please, my lady," said Blanche, "Lady Tranmore would like to see you."

Kitty started and flushed. She looked round uncertainly at Ashe.

"Ask her ladyship to come up," said Ashe, quietly.

The maid departed.

"Feed me if you want to, Kitty," said Ashe, still seated.

Kitty returned, her breath hurried, her step wavering. She looked

doubtfully at Ashe--then her eyes sparkled--as she understood. She

dropped on her knees beside him, kissing the sleeve of his coat, against

which her cheek was pressed--in a passion of repentance.

He bent towards her, touching her hair, murmuring over her. His mind

meanwhile was torn with feelings which, so to speak, observed each

other. This thing which had happened was horribly serious--important. It

might easily have wrecked two lives. Had he dealt with it as he

ought--made Kitty feel the gravity of it?

Then the optimist in him asked impatiently what was "the good of

exaggerating the damned business"? That fellow has got his lesson--could

be driven headlong out of his life and Kitty's henceforward. And how

could _he_ doubt the love shown in this clinging penitence, these soft

kisses? How would the Turk theory of marriage, please, have done any

better? Kitty had had her own wild way. No fiat from without had bound

her; but love had brought her to his feet. There was something in him

which triumphed alike in her revolt and her submission.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in the cool drawing-room to which the green _persiennes_ gave

a pleasant foreign look, Lady Tranmore had been waiting for the maid's

return. She shrank from every sound in the house; from her own

reflection in Kitty's French mirrors; from her own thoughts most of all.

Lady Edith Manley--at Holland House--had been the most innocent of

gossips. A little lady who did no wrong herself--and thought no wrong of

others; as white-minded and unsuspicious as a convent child. "Poor Lady

Kitty! Something seemed to have gone wrong with the Alcots' coach, and

they were somehow divided from all their party. I can't remember exactly

what it was they said, but Mr. Cliffe was confident they would catch

their train. Though my boy--you remember my boy? they've just put him in

the eight!--thought they were running it _rather_ fine."

Then, five minutes later, in the supper-room, Lady Tranmore had run

across Madeleine Alcot's husband, who had given her in passing the whole

story of the frustrated expedition--Mrs. Alcot's chill, and the despatch

of Cliffe to Hill Street. "Horrid bore to have to put it off! Hope he

got there in time to stop Lady Kitty getting ready. Oh, thanks,

Madeleine's all right."

And then no more, as the rush of the crowd swept them apart.

After that, sleep had wholly deserted Lady Tranmore--if, indeed, after

the publication of the cabinet list in the afternoon, and William's

letter following upon it, any had been still possible. And in the early

morning she had sent her note to Kitty--a _ballon d'essai_, despatched

in a horror of great fear.

"Her ladyship has not yet returned." The message from Hill Street,

delivered by the footman's indifferent mouth, struck Lady Tranmore with

trembling.

"Where is William?" she said to herself, in anguish. "I must find

him--but--what shall I say to him?" Then she went up-stairs, and,

without calling for her maid, put on her walking things with shaking

hands.

She slipped out unobserved by her household, and took a hansom from the

corner of Grosvenor Street. In the hansom she carefully drew down her

veil, with the shrinking of one on whom disgrace--the long pursuing,

long expected--has seized at last. All the various facts, statements,

indications as to Kitty's behavior, which through the most diverse

channels had been flowing steadily towards her for weeks past, were now

surging through her mind and memory--a grievous, damning host. And every

now and then, as she caught the placards in the streets, her heart

contracted anew. Her son, her William, in what should have been the

heyday of his gifts and powers, baffled, tripped up, defeated!--by his

own wife, the selfish, ungrateful, reckless child on whom he had

lavished the undeserved treasures of the most generous and untiring

love. And had she not only checked or ruined his career--was he to be

also dishonored, struck to the heart?

She could scarcely stand as she rang the bell at Hill Street, and it was

only with a great effort that she could ask her question:

"Is Mr. Ashe at home?"

"Mr. Ashe, my lady, is, I believe, just going out," said Wilson. "Her

ladyship arrived just about an hour ago, and that detained him."

Elizabeth betrayed nothing. The training of her class held good.

"Are they in the library?" she asked--"or up-stairs?"

Wilson replied that he believed her ladyship was in her room, and Mr.

Ashe with her.

"Please ask Mr. Ashe if I can see him for a few minutes."

Wilson disappeared, and Lady Tranmore stood motionless, looking round at

William's books and tables. She loved everything that his hand had

touched, every sign of his character--the prize books of his college

days, the pictures on the wall, many of which had descended from his

Eton study, the photographs of his favorite hunter, the drawing she

herself had made for him of his first pony.

On his writing-table lay a despatch-box from the Foreign Office. Lady

Tranmore turned away from it. It reminded her intolerably of the shock

and defeat of the day before. During the past six months she had become

more rejoicingly conscious than ever before of his secret, deepening

ambition, and her own heart burned with the smart of his disappointment.

No one else, however, should guess at it through her. No sooner had she

received his letter from the club than, after many weeks of withdrawal

from society, she had forced herself to go to the Holland House party,

that no one might say she hid herself, that no one might for an instant

suppose that any hostile act of such a man as Lord Parham, or any malice

of that low-minded woman, could humiliate her son or herself.

Suddenly she saw Kitty's gloves--Kitty's torn and soiled gloves--lying

on the floor. She clasped her trembling hands, trying to steady herself.

Husband and wife were together. What tragedy was passing between them?

Of course there _might_ have been an accident; her thoughts might be all

mistake and illusion. But Lady Tranmore hardly allowed herself to

encourage the alternative of hope. It was like Kitty's audacity to have

come back. Incredible!--unfathomable!--like all she did.

"Her ladyship says, my lady, would you please go up to her room?"

The message was given in Blanche's timid voice. Lady Tranmore started,

looked at the girl, longed to question her, and had not the courage. She

followed mechanically, and in silence. Could she, must she face it?

Yes--for her son's sake. She prayed inwardly that she might meet the

ordeal before her with Christian strength and courage.

* * * * *

The door opened. She saw two figures in the pretty, bright-colored room,

William sat astride upon a chair in front of Kitty, who, like some small

mother-bird, hovered above him, holding what seemed to be a tiny strip

of bread-and-butter, which she was dropping with dainty deliberation

into his mouth. Her face, in spite of the red and swollen eyes, was

alive with fun, and Ashe's laugh reflected hers. The domesticity, the

intimate affection of the scene--before these things Elizabeth Tranmore

stood gasping.

"Dearest mother!" cried Ashe, starting up.

Kitty turned. At sight of Lady Tranmore she hung back; her smiles

departed; her lip quivered.

"William!"--she pursued him and touched him on the shoulder. "I--I

can't--I'm afraid. If mother ever means to speak to me again--come and

tell me."

And, hiding her face, Kitty escaped like a whirlwind. The dressing-room

door closed behind her, and mother and son were left alone.

"Mother!" said Ashe, coming up to her gayly, both hands out-stretched.

"Ask me nothing, dear. Kitty has been a silly child--but things will go

better now. And as for the Parhams--what does it matter?--come and help

me send them to the deuce!"

Lady Tranmore recoiled. For once the good-humor of that handsome

face--pale as the face was--seemed to her an offence--nay, a disgrace.

That what had happened had been no mere _contretemps_, no mere accident

of trains and coaches, was plain enough from Kitty's eyes--from all that

William did _not_ say, no less than from what he said. And still this

levity!--this inconceivable levity! Was it true, as she knew was said,

that William had no high sense of honor, that he failed in delicacy and

dignity?

In reality, it was the same cry as the Dean's--upon another and smaller

occasion. But in this case it was unspoken. Lady Tranmore dropped into a

chair, one hand abandoned to her son, the other hiding her face. He

talked fast and tenderly, asking her help--neither of them quite knew

for what--her advice as to the move to Haggart--and so forth. Lady

Tranmore said little. But it was a bitter silence; and if Ashe himself

failed in indignation, his mother's protesting heart supplied it amply.