PART IV

STORM

"Myself, arch-traitor to myself;

My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,

My clog whatever road I go."

XVII

"'Among the numerous daubs with which Tintoret, to his everlasting

shame, has covered this church--'"

"Good Heavens!--what does the man mean?--or is he talking of another

church?" said Ashe, raising his head and looking in bewilderment, first

at the magnificent Tintoret in front of him, and then at the lines he

had just been reading.

"William!" cried Kitty, "_do_ put that fool down and come here; one sees

it splendidly!"

She was standing in one of the choir-stalls of San Giorgio Maggiore,

somewhat raised above the point where Ashe had been studying his German

hand-book.

"My dear, if this man doesn't know, who does!" cried Ashe, flourishing

his volume in front of him as he obeyed her.

"'Dans le royaume des aveugles,'" said Kitty, contemptuously. "As if any

German could even begin to understand Tintoret! But--don't talk!"

And clasping both hands round Ashe's arm, she stood leaning heavily upon

him, her whole soul gazing from the eyes she turned upon the picture,

her lips quivering, as though, from some physical weakness, she could

only just hold back the tears with which, indeed, the face was charged.

She and Ashe were looking at that "Last Supper" of Tintoret's which

hangs in the choir of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice.

It is a picture dear to all lovers of Tintoret, breathing in every line

and group the passionate and mystical fancy of the master.

The scene passes, it will be remembered, in what seems to be the

spacious guest-chamber of an inn. The Lord and His disciples are

gathered round the last sacred meal of the Old Covenant, the first of

the New. On the left, a long table stretches from the spectator into the

depths of the picture; the disciples are ranged along one side of it;

and on the other sits Judas, solitary and accursed. The young Christ has

risen; He holds the bread in His lifted hands and is about to give it to

the beloved disciple, while Peter beyond, rising from his seat in his

eagerness, presses forward to claim his own part in the Lord's body.

The action of the Christ has in it a very ecstasy of giving; the bending

form, indeed, is love itself, yearning and triumphant. This is further

expressed in the light which streams from the head of the Lord, playing

upon the long line of faces, illuminating the vehement gesture of Peter,

the adoring and radiant silence of St. John--and striking even to the

farthest corners of the room, upon a woman, a child, a playing dog.

Meanwhile, from the hanging lamps above the supper-party there glows

another and more earthly light, mingled with fumes of smoke which darken

the upper air. But such is the power of the divine figure that from this

very darkness breaks adoration. The smoke-wreaths change under the

gazer's eye into hovering angels, who float round the head of the

Saviour, and look down with awe upon the first Eucharist; while the

lamp-light, interpenetrated by the glory which issues from the Lord,

searches every face and fold and surface, displays the figures of the

serving men and women in the background, shines on the household stuff,

the vases and plates, the black and white of the marble floor, the beams

of the old Venetian ceiling. Everywhere the double ray, the two-fold

magic! Steeped in these "majesties of light," the immortal scene lives

upon the quiet wall. Year after year the slender, thought-worn Christ

raises His hands of blessing; the disciples strain towards Him; the

angels issue from the darkness; the friendly domestic life, happy,

natural, unconscious, frames the divine mystery. And among those who

come to look there are, from time to time, men and women who draw from

it that restlessness of vague emotion which Kitty felt as she hung now,

gazing, on Ashe's arm.

For there is in it an appeal which torments them--like the winding of a

mystic horn, on purple heights, by some approaching and unseen

messenger. Ineffable beauty, offering itself--and in the human soul, the

eternal human discord: what else makes the poignancy of art--the passion

of poetry?

* * * * *

"That's enough!" said Kitty, at last, turning abruptly away.

"You like it?" said Ashe, softly, detaining her, while he pressed the

little hand upon his arm. His heart was filled with a great pity for his

wife in these days.

"Oh, I don't know!" was Kitty's impatient reply.

"It haunts me. There's still another to see--in a chapel. The

sacristan's making signs to us."

"Is there?" Ashe stifled a yawn. He asked Margaret French, who had come

up with them, whether Kitty had not had quite enough sight-seeing. He

himself must go to the Piazza, and get the news before dinner. As an

English cabinet minister, he had been admitted to the best club of the

Venice residents. Telegrams were to be seen there; and there was anxious

news from the Balkans.

Kitty merely insisted that she could not and would not go without her

remaining Tintoret, and the others yielded to her at once, with that

indulgent tenderness one shows to the wilfulness of a sick child. She

and Margaret followed the sacristan. Ashe lingered behind in a passage

of the church, surreptitiously reading an Italian newspaper. He had the

ordinary cultivated pleasure in pictures; but this ardor which Kitty was

throwing into her pursuit of Tintoret--the Wagner of painting--left him

cold. He did not attempt to keep up with her.

Two ladies were already in the cloister chapel, with a gentleman. As

Kitty and her friend entered, these persons had just finished their

inspection of the damaged but most beautiful "Pietà" which hangs over

the altar, and their faces were towards the entrance.

"Maman!" cried Kitty, in amazement.

The lady addressed started, put up a gold-rimmed eye-glass, exclaimed,

and hurried forward.

Kitty and she embraced, amid a torrent of laughter and interjections

from the elder lady, and then Kitty, whose pale cheeks had put on

scarlet, turned to Margaret French.

"Margaret!--my mother, Madame d'Estrées."

Miss French, who found herself greeted with effusion by the strange

lady, saw before her a woman of fifty, marvellously preserved. Madame

d'Estrées had grown stout; so much time had claimed; but the elegant

gray dress with its floating chiffon and lace skilfully concealed the

fact; and for the rest, complexion, eyes, lips were still defiant of the

years. If it were art that had achieved it, nature still took the

credit; it was so finely done, the spectator could only lend himself and

admire. Under the pretty hat of gray tulle, whereof the strings were

tied bonnet-fashion under the plump chin, there looked out, indeed, a

face gay, happy, unconcerned, proof one might have thought of an

innocent past and a good conscience.

Kitty, who had drawn back a little, eyed her mother oddly.

"I thought you were in Paris. Your letter said you wouldn't be able to

move for weeks--"

"_Ma chère!_--_un miracle!_" cried Madame d'Estrées, blushing, however,

under her thin white veil. "When I wrote to you, I was at death's

door--wasn't I?" She appealed to her companion, without waiting for an

answer. "Then some one told me of a new doctor, and in ten days, _me

voici_! They insisted on my going away--this dear woman--Donna Laura

Vercelli--my daughter, Lady Kitty Ashe!--knew of an apartment here

belonging to some relations of hers. And here we are--charmingly

_installées_!--and really _nothing_ to pay!"--Madame d'Estrées

whispered, smiling, in Kitty's ear--"nothing, compared to the hotels.

I'm economizing splendidly. Laura looks after every sou. Ah! my dear

William!"

For Ashe, puzzled by the voices within, had entered the chapel, and

stood in his turn, open-mouthed.

"Why, we thought you were an invalid."

For, some three weeks before, a letter had reached him at Haggart, so

full of melancholy details as to Madame d'Estrées' health and

circumstances that even Kitty had been moved. Money had been sent;

inquiries had been made by telegraph; and but for a hasty message of a

more cheerful character, received just before they started, the Ashes,

instead of journeying by Brussels and Cologne, would have gone by Paris

that Kitty might see her mother. They had intended to stop there on

their way back. Ashe was not minded that Kitty should see more of Madame

d'Estrées than necessity demanded; but on this occasion he would have

felt it positively brutal to make difficulties.

And now here was this moribund lady, this forsaken of gods and men,

disporting herself at Venice, evidently in the pink of health and

attired in the freshest of Paris toilettes! As he coldly shook hands,

Ashe registered an inner vow that Madame d'Estrées' letters henceforward

should receive the attention they deserved.

And beside her was her somewhat mysterious friend of London days, the

Colonel Warington who had been so familiar a figure in the gatherings of

St. James's Place--grown much older, almost white-haired, and as

gentlemanly as ever. Who was the lady? Ashe was introduced, was aware of

a somewhat dark and Jewish cast of face, noticed some fine jewels, and

could only suppose that his mother-in-law had picked up some one to

finance her, and provide her with creature comforts in return for the

social talents that Madame d'Estrées still possessed in some abundance.

He had more than once noticed her skill in similar devices; but, indeed,

they were indispensable, for while he allowed Madame d'Estrées one

thousand a year, she was, it seemed, firmly determined to spend a

minimum of three.

He and Warington looked at each other with curiosity. The bronzed face

and honest eyes of the soldier betrayed nothing. "Are you going to marry

her at last?" thought Ashe. "Poor devil!"

Meanwhile Madame d'Estrées chattered away as though nothing could be

more natural than their meeting, or more perfect than the relations

between herself and her daughter and son-in-law.

As they all strolled down the church she looked keenly at Kitty.

"My dear child, how ill you look!--and your mourning! Ah, yes, of

course!"--she bit her lip--"I remember--the poor, poor boy--"

"Thank you!" said Kitty, hastily. "I got your letter--thank you very

much. Where are you staying? We've got rooms on the Grand Canal."

"Oh, but, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées--"I was so sorry for you!"

"Were you?" said Kitty, under her breath. "Then, please, never speak of

him to me again!"

Startled and offended, Madame d'Estrées looked at her daughter. But what

she saw disarmed her. For once even she felt something like the pang of

a mother. "You're _dreadfully_ thin, Kitty!"

Kitty frowned with annoyance.

"It's not my fault," she said, pettishly. "I live on cream, and it's no

good. Of course, I know I'm an object and a scarecrow; but I'd rather

people didn't tell me."

"What nonsense, _chére enfant!_ You're much prettier than you ever

were."

A wild and fugitive radiance swept across the face beside her.

"Am I?" said Kitty, smiling. "That's all right! If I had died it

wouldn't matter, of course. But--"

"Died! What do you mean, Kitty?" said Madame d'Estrées, in bewilderment.

"When William wrote to me I thought he meant you had overtired

yourself."

"Oh, well, the doctors said it was touch and go," said Kitty,

indifferently. "But, of course, it wasn't. I'm much too tough. And then

they fussed about one's heart. And that's all nonsense, too. I couldn't

die if I tried."

But Madame d'Estrées pondered--the bright, intermittent color, the

emaciation, the hollowness of the eyes. The effect, so far, was to add

to Kitty's natural distinction, to give, rather, a touch of pathos to a

face which even in its wildest mirth had in it something alien and

remote. But she, too, reflected that a little more, a very little more,

and--in a night--the face would have dropped its beauty, as a rose its

petals.

The group stood talking awhile on the steps outside the church. Kitty

and her mother exchanged addresses, Donna Laura opened her mouth once or

twice, and produced a few contorted smiles for Kitty's benefit, while

Colonel Warington tipped the sacristan, found the gondolier, and studied

the guide-book.

As Madame d'Estrées stepped into her gondola, assisted by him, she

tapped him on the arm.

"Are you coming, Markham?"

The low voice was pitched in a very intimate note. Kitty turned with a

start.

* * * * *

"A casa!" said Madame d'Estrées, and she and her friend made for one of

the canals that pierce the Zattere, while Colonel Warington went off for

a walk along the Giudecca.

Kitty and Ashe bade their gondoliers take them to the Piazzetta, and

presently they were gliding across waters of flame and silver, where the

white front and red campanile of San Giorgio--now blazing under the

sunset--mirrored themselves in the lagoon. The autumn evening was fresh

and gay. A light breeze was on the water; lights that only Venice knows

shone on the tawny sails of fishing-boats making for the Lido, on the

white sides of an English yacht, on the burnished prows of the gondolas,

on the warm reddish-white of the Ducal Palace. The air blowing from the

Adriatic breathed into their faces the strength of the sea; and in the

far distance, above that line of buildings where lies the heart of

Venice, the high ghosts of the Friulian Alps glimmered amid the sweeping

regiments and purple shadows of the land-hurrying clouds.

"This does you good, darling!" said Ashe, stooping down to look into his

wife's face, as she nestled beside him on the soft cushions of the

gondola.

Kitty gave him a slight smile, then said, with a furrowed brow:

"Who could ever have thought we should find maman here!"

"Don't have her on your mind!" said Ashe, with some sharpness. "I can't

have anything worrying you."

She slipped her hand into his.

"Is that man going to marry her--at last? She called him 'Markham.'

That's new."

"Looks rather like it," said Ashe. "Then _he'll_ have to look after the

debts!"

They began to piece together what they knew of Colonel Warington and his

relation to Madame d'Estrées. It was not much. But Ashe believed that

originally Warington had not been in love with her at all. There had

been a love-affair between her and Warington's younger brother, a smart

artillery officer, when she was the widowed Lady Blackwater. She had

behaved with more heart and scruple than she had generally been known to

do in these matters, and the young officer adored her--hoped, indeed, to

marry her. But he was called on--in Paris--to fight a duel on her

account, and was killed. Before fighting, he had commended Lady

Blackwater to the care of his much older brother, also a soldier,

between whom and himself there existed a rare and passionate devotion;

and ever since the poor lad's death, Markham Warington had been the

friend and quasi-guardian of the lady--through her second marriage,

through the checkered years of her existence in London, and now through

the later years of her residence on the Continent, a residence forced

upon her by her agreement with the Tranmores. Again and again he had

saved her from bankruptcy, or from some worse scandal which would have

wrecked the last remnants of her fame.

But, all the time, he was himself bound by strong ties of gratitude and

affection to an elder sister who had brought him up, with whom he lived

in Scotland during half the year. And this stout Puritan lady detested

the very name of Madame d'Estrées.

"But she's dead," said Ashe. "I remember noticing her death in the

_Times_ some three months ago. That, of course, explains it. Now he's

free to marry."

"And so maman will settle down, and be happy ever afterwards!" said

Kitty, with a sarcastic lifting of the brow. "Why should anybody be

good?"

The bitterness of her look struck Ashe disagreeably. That any child

should speak so of a mother was a tragic and sinister thing. But he was

well aware of the causes.

"Were you very unhappy when you were a child, Kitty?" He pressed the

hand he held.

"No," said Kitty, shortly. "I'm too like maman. I suppose, really, at

bottom, I liked all the debts, and the excitement, and the shady

people!"

"That wasn't the impression you gave me, in the first days of our

acquaintance!" said Ashe, laughing.

"Oh, then I was grown up--and there were drawbacks. But I'm made of the

same stuff as maman," she said, obstinately--"except that I can't tell

so many fibs. That's really why we didn't get on."

Her brown eyes held him with that strange, unspoken defiance it seemed

so often beyond her power to hide. It was like the fluttering of some

caged thing hungering for it knows not what. Then, as they scanned the

patient good-temper of his face, they melted; and her little fingers

squeezed his; while Margaret French kept her eyes fixed on the two

columns of the Piazzetta.

"How strange to find her here!" said Kitty, under her breath. "Now, if

it had been Alice--my sister Alice!"

William nodded. It had been known to them for some time that Lady Alice

Wensleydale, to whom Italy had become a second country, had settled in a

villa near Treviso, where she occupied herself with a lace school for

women and girls.

The mention of her sister threw Kitty into what seemed to be a

disagreeable reverie. The flush brought by the sea-wind faded. Ashe

looked at her with anxiety.

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

His voice was almost angry.

She shrugged her shoulders.

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

if--"

"If what?"

"If I followed Harry." The words were just breathed, and her eyes shrank

from meeting his. Ashe, on the other hand, turned and looked at her

steadily.

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

She shook her head uncertainly. Then, almost immediately, she began to

chatter to Margaret French about the sights of the lagoon, with her

natural trenchancy and fun. But her hand, hidden under the folds of her

black cloak, still clung to William's.

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

And at the remembrance of his little son, a wave of sore yearning filled

his own heart. Deep under the occupations and interests of the mind lay

this passionate regret, and at any moment of pause or silence its

"buried life" arose and seized him. But he was a busy politician,

absorbed even in these days of holiday by the questions and problems of

the hour. And Kitty was a delicate woman--with no defence against the

torture of grief.

He thought of those first days after the child's death, when in spite of

the urgency of the doctors it had been impossible to keep the news from

Kitty; of the ghastly effect of it upon nerves and brain already

imperilled by causes only half intelligible; of those sudden flights

from her nurses, when the days of convalescence began, to the child's

room, and, later, to his grave. There was stinging pain in these

recollections. Nor was he, in truth, much reassured by his wife's more

recent state. It was impossible, indeed, that he should give it the same

constant thought as a woman might--or a man of another and more

emotional type. At this moment, perhaps, he had literally no _time_ for

the subtleties of introspective feeling, even had his temperament

inclined him to them, which was, in truth, not the case. He knew that

Kitty had suddenly and resolutely ceased to talk about the boy, had

thrown herself with the old energy into new pursuits, and, since she

came to Venice in particular, had shown a feverish desire to fill every

hour with movement and sight-seeing.

But was she, in truth, much better--in body or soul?--poor child! The

doctors had explained her illness as nervous collapse, pointing back to

a long preceding period of overstrain and excitement. There had been

suspicions of tubercular mischief, but no precise test was then at

command; and as Kitty had improved with rest and feeding the idea had

been abandoned. But Ashe was still haunted by it, though quite

ready--being a natural optimist--to escape from it, and all other

incurable anxieties, as soon as Kitty herself should give the signal.

As to the moral difficulties and worries of those months at Haggart,

Ashe remembered them as little as might be. Kitty's illness, indeed, had

shown itself in more directions than one, as an amending and appeasing

fact. Even Lord Parham had been moved to compassion and kindness by the

immediate results of that horrible scene on the terrace. His

leave-taking from Ashe on the morning afterwards had been almost

cordial--almost intimate. And as to Lady Tranmore, whenever she had been

able to leave her paralyzed husband she had been with Kitty, nursing her

with affectionate wisdom night and day. While on the other members of

the Haggart party the sheer pity of Kitty's condition had worked with

surprising force. Lord Grosville had actually made his wife offer

Grosville Park for Kitty's convalescence--Kitty got her first laugh out

of the proposal. The Dean had journeyed several times from his distant

cathedral town, to see and sit with Kitty; Eddie Helston's flowers had

been almost a nuisance; Mrs. Alcot had shown herself quite soft and

human.

The effect, indeed, of this general sympathy on Lord Parham's relations

to the chief member of his cabinet had been but small and passing. Ashe

disliked and distrusted him more than ever; and whatever might have

happened to the Premier's resentment of a particular offence, there

could be no doubt that a visit from which Ashe had hoped much had ended

in complete failure, that Parham was disposed to cross his powerful

henchman where he could, and that intrigue was busy in the cabinet

itself against the reforming party of which Ashe was the head Ashe,

indeed, felt his own official position, outwardly so strong, by no means

secure. But the game of politics was none the less exhilarating for

that.

As to Kitty's relation to himself--and life's most intimate and tender

things--in these days, did he probe his own consciousness much

concerning them? Probably not. Was he aware that, when all was said and

done, in spite of her misdoings, in spite of his passion of anxiety

during her illness, in spite of the pity and affection of his daily

attitude, Kitty occupied, in truth, much less of his mind than she had

ever yet occupied?--that a certain magic--primal, incommunicable--had

ceased to clothe her image in his thoughts?

Again--probably not. For these slow changes in a man's inmost

personality are like the ebb and flow of summer tides over estuary

sands. Silent, the main creeps in, or out; and while we dream, the great

basin fills, and the fishing-boats come in--or the gentle, pitiless

waters draw back into the bosom of ocean, and the sea-birds run over the

wide, untenanted flats.

* * * * *

They landed at the Piazzetta as the lamps were being lit. The soft

October darkness was falling fast, and on the ledges of St. Mark's and

the Ducal Palace the pigeons had begun to roost. An animated crowd was

walking up and down in the Piazza where a band was playing; and on the

golden horses of St. Mark's there shone a pale and mystical light, the

last reflection from the western sky. Under the colonnades the jewellers

and glass-shops blazed and sparkled, and the warm sea-wind fluttered

the Italian flags on the great flag-staffs that but so recently had

borne the Austrian eagle.

Ashe walked with his head thrown back, thinking absently, in this centre

of Venice, of English politics, and of a phrase of Metternich's he had

come across in a volume of memoirs he had been lately reading on the

journey:

"Le jour qui court n'a aucune valeur pour moi, excepté comme la veille

du lendemain. C'est toujours avec le lendemain que mon esprit lutte."

The phrase pleased him particularly.

He, too, was wrestling with the morrow, though in another sense than

Metternich's. His mind was alive with projects; an exultant

consciousness both of capacity and opportunity possessed him.

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

Ashe awoke with a start, smiled at her, and with a wave of the hand

disappeared in a stairway to the right.

Margaret French lingered in a bead-shop to make some purchases. Kitty

walked home alone, and Margaret, whose watchful affection never failed,

knew that she preferred it, and let her go her way.

The Ashes had rooms on the first bend of the Grand Canal looking south.

To reach them by land from the Piazza, Kitty had to pass through a

series of narrow streets, or _calles_, broken by _campos_, or small

squares, in which stood churches. As she passed one of these churches

she was attracted by the sound of gay music and by the crowd about the

entrance. Pushing aside the leathern curtain over the door, she found

herself in a great rococo nave, which blazed with lights and

decorations. Lines of huge wax candles were fixed in temporary holders

along the floor. The pillars were swathed in rose-colored damask, and

the choir was ablaze with flowers, and even more brilliantly lit, if

possible, than the rest of the church.

Kitty's Catholic training told her that an exposition of the Blessed

Sacrament was going on. Mechanically she dipped her fingers into the

holy water, she made her genuflection to the altar, and knelt down in

one of the back rows.

How rich and sparkling it was--the lights, the bright colors, the

dancing music! "_Dolce Sacramento! Santo Sacramento!_" these words of an

Italian hymn or litany recurred again and again, with endless iteration.

Kitty's sensuous, excitable nature was stirred with delight. Then,

suddenly, she remembered her child, and the little face she had seen for

the last time in the coffin. She began to cry softly, hiding her face in

her black veil. An unbearable longing possessed her. "I shall never have

another child," she thought. "_That's_ all over."

Then her thoughts wandered back to the party at Haggart, to the scene on

the terrace, and to that rush of excitement which had mastered her, she

scarcely knew how or why. She could still hear the Dean's voice--see the

lamp wavering above her head. "What possessed me! I didn't care a straw

whether the lamp set me on fire--whether I lived or died. I wanted to

die."

Was it because of that short conversation with William in the

afternoon?--because of the calmness with which he had taken that word

"separation," which she had thrown at him merely as a child boasts and

threatens, never expecting for one moment to be taken at its word? She

had proposed it to him before, after the night at Hamel Weir; she had

been serious then, it had been an impulse of remorse, and he had laughed

at her. But at Haggart it had been an impulse of temper, and he had

taken it seriously. How the wound had rankled, all the afternoon, while

she was chattering to the Royalties! And as she jumped on the pedestal,

and saw his face of horror, there was the typical womanish triumph that

she had made him _feel_--would make him feel yet more.

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

"He cares for politics, for his plans--not for me. He will never trust

me again--as he did once. He'll never ask me to help him--he'll find

ways not to--though he'll be very sweet to me all the time."

And the thought of her nullity with him in the future, her

insignificance in his life, tortured her.

Why had she treated Lord Parham so? "I can be a lady when I choose," she

said, mockingly, to herself. "I wasn't even a lady."

Then suddenly there flashed on her memory a little picture of Lord

Parham, standing spectacled and bewildered, peering into her slip of

paper. She bent her head on her hands and laughed, a stifled, hysterical

laugh, which scandalized the woman kneeling beside her.

But the laugh was soon quenched again in restless pain. William's

affection had been her only refuge in those weeks of moral and physical

misery she had just passed through.

"But it's only because he's so terribly sorry for me. It's all quite

different. And I can't ever make him love me again in the old way.... It

wasn't my fault. It's something born in me--that catches me by the

throat."

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

possessing force.

"_Dolce Sacramento! Santo Sacramento!_"... The music swayed and echoed

through the church. Kitty uncovered her eyes and felt a sudden

exhilaration in the blaze of light. It reminded her of the bending

Christ in the picture of San Giorgio. Awe and beauty flowed in upon her,

in spite of the poor music and the tawdry church. What if she tried

religion?--recalled what she had been taught in the convent?--gave

herself up to a director?

She shivered and recoiled. How would she ever maintain her faith against

William--William, who knew so much more than she?

Then, into the emptiness of her heart there stole the inevitable

temptations of memory. Where was Geoffrey? She knew well that he was a

violent and selfish man; but he understood much in her that William

would never understand. With a morbid eagerness she recalled the play of

feeling between them, before that mad evening at Hamel Weir. What

perpetual excitement--no time to think--or regret!

During her weeks of illness she had lost all count of his movements. Had

he been still writing during the summer for the newspaper which had sent

him out? Had there not been rumors of his being wounded--or attacked by

fever? Her memory, still vague and weak, struggled painfully with

memories it could not recapture.

The Italian paper of that morning--she had spelled it out for herself at

breakfast--had spoken of a defeat of the insurrectionary forces, and of

their withdrawal into the highlands of Bosnia. There would be a lull in

the fighting. Would he come home? And all this time had he been the mere

spectator and reporter, or fighting, himself? Her pulses leaped as she

thought of him leading down-trodden peasants against the Turk.

But she knew nothing. Surely during the last few months he had purposely

made a mystery of his doings and his whereabouts. The only sign of him

which seemed to have reached England had been that volume of poems--with

those hateful lines! Her lip quivered. She was like a weak child--unable

to bear the thought of anything hostile and unkind.

If he had already turned homeward? Perhaps he would come through Venice!

Anyway, he was not far off. The day before she and Margaret had made

their first visit to the Lido. And as Kitty stood fronting the Adriatic

waves, she had dreamed that somewhere, beyond the farther coast, were

those Bosnian mountains in which Geoffrey had passed the winter.

Then she started at her own thoughts, rose--loathing herself--drew down

her veil, and moved towards the door.

* * * * *

As she reached the leathern curtain which hung over the doorway, a lady

in front who was passing through held the curtain aside that Kitty might

follow. Kitty stepped into the street and looked up to say a mechanical

"Thank you."

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

by the woman before her.

Both stood motionless, staring at each other.

Kitty recovered herself first.

"It's not my fault that we've met," she said, panting a little. "Don't

look at me so--so unkindly. I know you don't want to see me. Why--why

should we speak at all? I'm going away." And she turned with a gesture

of farewell.

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

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

Kitty turned towards her. They had moved on instinctively into the

shelter of one of the narrow streets.

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

Lady Alice started.

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

"Three years old."

"Poor baby!" The words were very low and soft. "My boy--was fourteen.

But you have other children?"

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

Lady Alice paused. She still held her half-sister by the arm, towering

above her. She was quite as thin as Kitty, but much taller and more

largely built; and, beside the elaborate elegance of Kitty's mourning,

Alice's black veil and dress had a severe, conventual air. They were

almost the dress of a religious.

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

your marriage?"

Kitty laughed.

"We're such a happy lot, aren't we? We understand it so well. Oh, don't

trouble about me. You know you said you couldn't have anything to do

with me. Are you staying in Venice?"

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

"You had better not stay," said Kitty, hastily. "Maman is here. At

least, if you don't want to run across her."

Lady Alice let go her hold.

"I shall go home to-morrow morning."

They moved on a few steps in silence, then Alice paused. Kitty's

delicate face and cloud of hair made a pale, luminous spot in the

darkness of the _calle_. Alice looked at her with emotion.

"I want to say something to you."

"Yes?"

"If you are ever in trouble--if you ever want me, send for me. Address

Treviso, and it will always find me."

Kitty made no reply. They had reached a bridge over a side canal, and

she stopped, leaning on the parapet.

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

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

with yourself?"

"I have two orphan children I bring up. And there is my lace-school. It

doesn't get on much; but it occupies me."

"Are you a Catholic?"

"Yes."

"Wish I was!" said Kitty. She hung over the marble balustrade in

silence, looking at the crescent moon that was just peering over the

eastern palaces of the canal. "My husband is in politics, you know. He's

Home Secretary."

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

"No--just the other thing."

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

"I don't know what you mean by that," said Alice Wensleydale, coldly.

"If you don't help him you'll be sorry--when it's too late to be sorry."

"Oh, I know!" said Kitty. Then she moved restlessly. "I must go in.

Good-night." She held out her hand.

Lady Alice took it.

"Good-night. And remember!"

"I sha'n't want anybody," said Kitty. "_Addio!_" She waved her hand, and

Alice Wensleydale, whose way lay towards the Piazza, saw her disappear,

a small tripping shadow, between the high, close-piled houses.

Kitty was in so much excitement after this conversation that when she

reached the Campo San Maurizio, where she should have turned abruptly to

the left, she wandered awhile up and down the campo, looking at the

gondolas on the Traghetto between it and the Accademia, at the Church of

San Maurizio, at the rising moon, and the bright lights in some of the

shop windows of the small streets to the north. The sea-wind was still

warm and gusty, and the waves in the Grand Canal beat against the marble

feet of its palaces.

At last she found her way through narrow passages, past hidden and

historic buildings, to the back of the palace on the Grand Canal in

which their rooms were. A door in a small court opened to her ring. She

found herself in a dark ground-floor--empty except for the _felze_ or

black top of a gondola--of which the farther doors opened on the canal.

A cheerful Italian servant brought lights, and on the marble stairs was

her maid waiting for her. In a few minutes she was on her sofa by a

bright wood fire, while Blanche hovered round her with many small

attentions.

"Have you seen your letters, my lady?" and Blanche handed her a pile.

Upon a parcel lying uppermost Kitty pounced at once with avidity. She

tore it open--pausing once, with scarlet cheeks, to look round her at

the door, as though she were afraid of being seen.

A book--fresh and new--emerged. _Politics and the Country Houses_; so

ran the title on the back. Kitty looked at it frowning. "He might have

found a better name!" Then she opened it--looked at a page here and a

page there--laughed, shivered--and at last bethought her to read the

note from the publisher which accompanied it.

"'Much pleasure--the first printed copy--three more to follow--sure to

make a sensation'--hateful wretch!--'if your ladyship will let us

know how many presentation copies--' Goodness!--not _one_!

Oh--well!--Madeleine, perhaps--and, of course, Mr. Darrell."

She opened a little despatch-box in which she kept her letters, and

slipped the book in.

"I won't show it to William to-night--not--not till next week." The book

was to be out on the 20th, a week ahead--three months from the day when

she had given the MS. into Darrell's hands. She had been spared all the

trouble of correcting proofs, which had been done for her by the

publisher's reader, on the plea of her illness. She had received and

destroyed various letters from him--almost without reading them--during

a short absence of William's in the north.

Suddenly a start of terror ran through her. "No, no!" she said,

wrestling with herself--"he'll scold me, perhaps--at first; of course I

know he'll do that. And then, I'll make him laugh! He can't--he can't

help laughing. I _know_ it'll amuse him. He'll see how I meant it, too.

And nobody need ever find out."

She heard his step outside, hastily locked her despatch-box, threw a

shawl over it, and lay back languidly on her pillows, awaiting him.

XVIII

The following morning, early, a note was brought to Kitty from Madame

d'Estrées:

"Darling Kitty,--Will you join us to-night in an expedition? You

know that Princess Margherita is staying on the Grand Canal?--in

one of the Mocenigo palaces. There is to be a serenata in her honor

to-night--not one of those vulgar affairs which the hotels get up,

but really good music and fine voices--money to be given to some

hospital or other. Do come with us. I suppose you have your own

gondola, as we have. The gondolas who wish to follow meet at the

Piazzetta, weather permitting, eight o'clock. I know, of course,

that you are not going out. But this is _only_ music!--and for a

charity. One just sits in one's gondola, and follows the music up

the canal. Send word by bearer. Your fond mother,

"Marguerite d'Estrées."

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

to-night?"

Her voice was listless. And as Ashe lifted his head from the cabinet

papers which had just reached him by special messenger, his attention

was disagreeably recalled from high matters of state to the very evident

delicacy of his wife. He replied that he had promised to dine with

Prince S---- at Danieli's, in order to talk Italian politics. "But I can

throw it over in a moment, if you want me. I came to Venice for _you_,

darling," he said, as he rose and joined her on the balcony which

commanded a fine stretch of the canal.

"No, no! Go and dine with your prince. I'll go with maman--Margaret and

I. At least, Margaret must, of course, please herself!"

She shrugged her shoulders, and then added, "Maman's probably in the

pink of society here. Venice doesn't take its cue from people like Aunt

Lina!"

Ashe smiled uncomfortably. He was in truth by this time infinitely

better acquainted with the incidents of Madame d'Estrées's past career

than Kitty was. He had no mind whatever that Kitty should become less

ignorant, but his knowledge sometimes made conversation difficult.

Kitty was perfectly aware of his embarrassment.

"You never tell me--" she said, abruptly. "Did she really do such

dreadful things?"

"My dear Kitty!--why talk about it?"

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

gesture.

"What does it matter? It's all so long ago. I have nothing to do with

what I did ten years ago--nothing!"

"A convenient doctrine!" laughed Ashe. "But it cuts both ways. You get

neither the good of your good nor the bad of your bad."

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

"What's the matter with you, miladi?" said Ashe, half scolding, half

tender. "You growl over my remarks as though you were your own small dog

with a bone. Come here and let me tell you the news."

And drawing the sofa up to the open window which commanded the

marvellous waterway outside, with its rows of palaces on either hand, he

made her lie down while he read her extracts from his letters.

Margaret French, who was writing at the farther side of the room,

glanced at them furtively from time to time. She saw that Ashe was

trying to charm away the languor of his companion by that talk of his,

shrewd, humorous, vehement, well informed, which made him so welcome to

the men of his own class and mode of life. And when he talked to a woman

as he was accustomed to talk to men, that woman felt it a compliment.

Under the stimulus of it, Kitty woke up, laughed, argued, teased, with

something of her natural animation.

Presently, indeed, the voices had sunk so much and the heads had drawn

so close together that Margaret French slipped away, under the

impression that they were discussing matters to which she was not meant

to listen.

She had hardly closed the door when Kitty drew herself away from Ashe,

and holding his arm with both hands looked strangely into his eyes.

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

secrets!"

"What do you mean, darling?"

"You don't tell me the real secrets--what Lord Palmerston used to tell

to Lady Palmerston!"

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

his forehead had reddened.

"One hears--and one guesses--from the letters that have been published.

Oh, I understand quite well! You can't trust me!"

Ashe turned aside and began to gather up his papers.

"Of course," said Kitty, a little hoarsely, "I know it's my own fault,

because you used to tell me much more. I suppose it was the way I

behaved to Lord Parham?"

She looked at him rather tremulously. It was the first time since her

illness began that she had referred to the incidents at Haggart.

"Look here!" said Ashe, in a tone of decision; "I shall _really_ give up

talking politics to you if it only reminds you of disagreeable things."

She took no notice.

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

Ashe colored hotly. As a matter of fact, in his own opinion, Lord Parham

was behaving vilely. A measure of first-rate importance for which he was

responsible was already in danger of being practically shelved, simply,

as it seemed to him, from a lack of elementary trustworthiness in Lord

Parham. But as to this he had naturally kept his own counsel with Kitty.

"He is not the most agreeable of customers," he said, gayly. "But I

shall get through. Pegging away does it."

"And then to see how our papers flatter him!" cried Kitty. "How little

people know, who think they know! It would be amusing to show the world

the real Lord Parham."

She looked at her husband with an expression that struck him

disagreeably. He threw away his cigarette, and his face changed.

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

Kitty sat up in some excitement.

"That man never hears the truth!"

Ashe shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to him incredible that she should

pursue this particular topic, after the incidents at Haggart.

"That's not the purpose for which Prime Ministers exist. Anyway, _we_

can't tell it him."

Undaunted, however, by his tone, and with what seemed to him

extraordinary excitability of manner, Kitty reminded him of an incident

in the life of a bygone administration, when the near relative of an

English statesman, staying at the time in the statesman's house, had

sent a communication to one of the quarterlies attacking his policy and

belittling his character, by means of information obtained in the

intimacy of a country-house party.

"One of the most treacherous things ever done!" said Ashe, indignantly.

"Fair fight, if you like! But if that kind of thing were to spread, I

for one should throw up politics to-morrow."

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

"A precious sort of good! Yes--I believe Parham in particular profited

by it--more shame to him! If anybody ever tried to help me in that sort

of way--anybody, that is, for whom I felt the smallest responsibility--I

know what I should do."

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

"Send in my resignation by the next post--and damn the fellow that did

it! Look here, Kitty!" He came to stand over her--a fine formidable

figure, his hands in his pockets. "Don't you ever try that kind of

thing--there's a darling."

"Would you damn me?"

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

He caught up her hand and kissed it. "Blow out my own brains, more

like," he said, laughing. Then he turned away. "What on earth have we

got into this beastly conversation for? Let's get out of it. The Parhams

are there--male and female--aren't they?--and we've got to put up with

them. Well, I'm going to the Piazza. Any commissions? Oh,

by-the-way"--he looked back at a letter in his hands--"mother says Polly

Lyster will probably be here before we go--she seems to be touring

around with her father."

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

her?"

Ashe laughed and went. As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang from the

sofa, and walked up and down the room in a passionate preoccupation. A

tremor of great fear was invading her; an agony of unavailing regret.

"What can I do?" she said to herself, as her upper lip twisted and

tortured the lower one.

Presently she caught up her purse, went to her room, where she put on

her walking things without summoning Blanche, and stealing down the

stairs, so as to be unheard by Margaret, she made her way to the back

gate of the Palazzo, and so to the streets leading to the Piazza.

William had taken the gondola to the Piazzetta, so she felt herself

safe.

She entered the telegraphic office at the western end of the Piazza, and

sent a telegram to England that nearly emptied her purse of francs. When

she came out she was as pale as she had been flushed before--a little,

terror-stricken figure, passing in a miserable abstraction through the

intricate backways which took her home.

"It won't be published for ten days. There's time. It's only a question

of money," she said to herself, feverishly--"only a question of money!"

* * * * *

All the rest of the day, Kitty was at once so restless and so languid

that to amuse her was difficult. Ashe was quite grateful to his amazing

mother-in-law for the plan of the evening.

As night fell, Kitty started at every sound in the old Palazzo. Once or

twice she went half-way to the door--eagerly--with hand

out-stretched--as though she expected a letter.

"No other English post to-night, Kitty!" said Ashe, at last, raising his

head from the finely printed _Poetæ Minores_ he had just purchased at

Ongania's. "You don't mean to say you're not thankful!"

* * * * *

The evening arrived--clear and mild, but moonless. Ashe went off to dine

with his prince, in the ordinary gondola of commerce, hired at the

Traghetto; while Margaret and Kitty followed a little later in one which

had already drawn the attention of Venice, owing to the two handsome

gondoliers, habited in black from head to foot, who were attached to it.

They turned towards the Piazzetta, where they were to meet with Madame

d'Estrées' party.

Kitty, in her deep mourning, sank listlessly into the black cushions of

the gondola. Yet almost as they started, as the first strokes carried

them past the famous palace which is now the Prefecture, the spell of

Venice began to work.

City of rest!--as it seems to our modern senses--how is it possible that

so busy, so pitiless, and covetous a life as history shows us should

have gone to the making and the fashioning of Venice! The easy passage

of the gondola through the soft, imprisoned wave; the silence of wheel

and hoof, of all that hurries and clatters; the tide that comes and

goes, noiseless, indispensable, bringing in the freshness of the sea,

carrying away the defilements of the land; the narrow winding ways, now

firm earth, now shifting sea, that bind the city into one social whole,

where the industrial and the noble alike are housed in palaces, equal

often in beauty as in decay; the marvellous quiet of the nights, save

when the northeast wind, Hadria's stormy leader, drives the furious

waves against the palace fronts in the darkness, with the clamor of an

attacking host; the languor of the hot afternoons, when life is a dream

of light and green water, when the play of mirage drowns the foundations

of the _lidi_ in the lagoon, so that trees and buildings rise out of the

sea as though some strong Amphion-music were but that moment calling

them from the deep; and when day departs, that magic of the swiftly

falling dusk, and that white foam and flower of St. Mark's upon the

purple intensity of the sky!--through each phase of the hours and the

seasons, _rest_ is still the message of Venice, rest enriched with

endless images, impressions, sensations, that cost no trouble and breed

no pain.

It was this spell of rest that descended for a while on Kitty as they

glided downward to the Piazzetta. The terror of the day relaxed. Her

telegram would be in time; or, if not, she would throw herself into

William's arms, and he _must_ forgive her!--because she was so foolish

and weak, so tired and sad. She slipped her hand into Margaret's; they

talked in low voices of the child, and Kitty was all appealing

melancholy and charm.

At the Piazzetta there was already a crowd of gondolas, and at their

head the _barca_, which carried the musicians.

"You are late, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées, waving to them. "Shall we

draw out and come to you?--or will you just join on where you are?"

For the Vercelli gondola was already wedged into a serried line of boats

in the wake of the _barca_.

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

And inwardly she was delighted to be thus separated from her mother and

the chattering crowd by which Madame d'Estrées seemed to be surrounded.

Kitty and Margaret bade their men fall in, and they presently found

themselves on the Salute side of the floating audience, their prow

pointing to the canal.

The _barca_ began to move, and the mass of gondolas followed. Round

them, and behind them, other boats were passing and repassing, each with

its slim black body, its swanlike motion, its poised oarsman, and its

twinkling light. The lagoon towards the Guidecca was alive with these

lights; and a magnificent white steamer adorned with flags and

lanterns--the yacht, indeed, of a German prince--shone in the

mid-channel.

On they floated. Here were the hotels, with other illuminated boats in

front of their steps, whence spoiled voices shouted, "Santa Lucia," till

even Venice and the Grand Canal became a vulgarity and a weariness.

These were the "serenate publiche," common and commercial affairs, which

the private serenata left behind in contempt, steering past their

flaring lights for the dark waters of romance which lay beyond.

Suddenly Kitty's sadness gave way; her starved senses clamored; she woke

to poetry and pleasure. All round her, stretching almost across the

canal, the noiseless flock of gondolas--dark, leaning figures impelling

them from behind, and in front the high prows and glow-worm lights; in

the boats, a multitude of dim, shrouded figures, with not a face

visible; and in their midst the _barca_, temple of light and music,

built up of flowers, and fluttering scarves, and many-colored lanterns,

a sparkling fantasy of color, rose and gold and green, shining on the

bosom of the night. To either side, the long, dark lines of

thrice-historic palaces; scarcely a poor light here and there at their

water-gates; and now and then the lamps of the Traghetti.... Otherwise,

darkness, soundless motion, and, overhead, dim stars.

"Margaret! Look!"

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

Some one for the amusement of the guests of Venice was experimenting on

the top of the campanile of St. Mark's with those electric lights which

were then the toys of science, and are now the eyes and tools of war. A

search-light was playing on the basin of St. Mark's and on the mouth of

the canal. Suddenly it caught the Church of the Salute--and the whole

vast building, from the Queen of Heaven on its topmost dome down to the

water's brim, the figures of saints and prophets and apostles which

crowd its steps and ledges, the white whorls, like huge sea-shells, that

make its buttresses, the curves and volutes of its cornices and

doorways, rushed upon the eye in a white and blinding splendor, making

the very darkness out of which the vision sprang alive and rich. Not a

Christian church, surely, but a palace of Poseidon! The bewildered gazer

saw naiads and bearded sea-gods in place of angels and saints, and must

needs imagine the champing of Poseidon's horses at the marble steps,

straining towards the sea.

The vision wavered, faded, reappeared, and finally died upon the night.

Then the wild beams began to play on the canal, following the serenata,

lighting up now the palaces on either hand, now some single gondola,

revealing every figure and gesture of the laughing English or Americans

who filled it, in a hard white flash.

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

faro.'"

Miss French was very musical, and she turned in a trance of pleasure

towards the _barca_ whence came the first bars of the accompaniment.

She did not see meanwhile that Kitty had made a hurried movement, and

was now leaning over the side of the gondola, peering with arrested

breath into the scattered group of boats on their left hand. The

search-light flashed here and there among them. A gondola at the very

edge of the serenata contained one figure beside the gondolier, a man in

a large cloak and slouch hat, sitting very still with folded arms. As

Kitty looked, hearing the beating of her heart, their own boat was

suddenly lit up. The light passed in a second, and while it lasted those

in the flash could see nothing outside it. When it withdrew all was in

darkness. The black mass of boats floated on, soundless again, save for

an occasional plash of water or the hoarse cry of a gondolier--and in

the distance the wail for Eurydice.

Kitty fell back in her seat. An excitement, from which she shrank in a

kind of terror, possessed her. Her thoughts were wholly absorbed by the

gondola and the figure she could no longer distinguish--for which,

whenever a group of lamps threw their reflections on the water, she

searched the canal in vain. If what she madly dreamed were true, had she

herself been seen--and recognized?

The serenata in honor of Italy's beautiful princess duly made its way to

the Grand Canal. The princess came to her balcony, while the "Jewel

Song" in "Faust" was being sung below, and there was a demonstration

which echoed from palace to palace and died away under the arch of the

Rialto. Then the gondolas dispersed. That of Lady Kitty Ashe had some

difficulty in making its way home against a force of wind and tide

coming from the lagoon.

* * * * *

Kitty was apparently asleep when Ashe returned. He had sat late with his

hosts--men prominent in the Risorgimento and in the politics of the new

kingdom--discussing the latest intricacies of the Roman situation and

the prospects of Italian finance. His mind was all alert and vigorous,

ranging over great questions and delighting in its own strength. To come

in contact with these able foreigners, not as the mere traveller but as

an important member of an English government, beginning to be spoken of

by the world as one of the two or three men of the future--this was a

new experience and a most agreeable one. Doors hitherto closed had

opened before him; information no casual Englishman could have commanded

had been freely poured out for him; last, but not least, he had at

length made himself talk French with some fluency, and he looked back on

his performance of the evening with a boy's complacency.

For the rest, Venice was a mere trial of his patience! As his gondola

brought him home, struggling with wind and wave, Ashe had no eye

whatever for the beauty of this Venice in storm. His mind was in

England, in London, wrestling with a hundred difficulties and

possibilities. The old literary and speculative habit was fast

disappearing in the stress of action and success. His well-worn Plato or

Horace still lay beside his bedside; but when he woke early, and lit a

candle carefully shaded from Kitty, it was not to the poets and

philosophers that he turned; it was to a heap of official documents and

reports, to the letters of political friends, or an unfinished letter of

his own, the phrases of which had perhaps been running through his

dreams. The measures for which he was wrestling against the intrigues of

Lord Parham and Lord Parham's clique filled all his mind with a lively

ardor of battle. They were the children--the darlings--of his thoughts.

Nevertheless, as he entered his wife's dim-lit room the eager arguments

and considerations that were running through his head died away. He

stood beside her, overwhelmed by a rush of feeling, alive through all

his being to the appeal of her frail sweetness, the helplessness of her

sleep, the dumb significance of the thin, blue-veined hand--eloquent at

once of character and of physical weakness--which lay beside her. Her

face was hidden, but the beautiful hair with its childish curls and

ripples drew him to her--touched all the springs of tenderness.

It was a loveliness so full, it seemed, of meaning and of promise. Hand,

brow, mouth--they were the signs of no mere empty and insipid beauty.

There was not a movement, not a feature, that did not speak of

intelligence and mind.

And yet, were he to wake her now and talk to her of the experience of

his evening, how little joy would either get out of it.

Was it because she had no intellectual disinterestedness? Well, what

woman had! But other women, even if they saw everything in terms of

personality, had the power of pursuing an aim, steadily, persistently,

for the sake of a person. He thought of Lady Palmerston--of Princess

Lieven fighting Guizot's battles--and sighed.

By Jove! the women could do most things, if they chose. He recalled

Kitty's triumph in the great party gathered to welcome Lord Parham,

contrasting it with her wilful and absurd behavior to the man himself.

There was something bewildering in such power--combined with such folly.

In a sense, it was perfectly true that she had insulted her husband's

chief, and jeopardized her husband's policy, because she could not put

up with Lord Parham's white eyelashes.

Well, let him make his account with it! How to love her, tend her, make

her happy--and yet carry on himself the life of high office--there was

the problem! Meanwhile he recognized, fully and humorously, that she had

married a political sceptic--and that it was hard for her to know what

to do with the enthusiast who had taken his place.

Poor, pretty, incalculable darling! He would coax her to stay abroad

part of the Parliamentary season--and then, perhaps, lure her into the

country, with the rebuilding and refurnishing of Haggart. She must be

managed and kept from harm--and afterwards indulged and spoiled and

_fêted_ to her heart's content.

If only the fates would give them another child!--a child brilliant and

lovely like herself, then surely this melancholy which overshadowed her

would disperse. That look--that tragic look--she had given him on the

day of the _fête_, when she spoke of "separation"! The wild adventure

with the lamp had been her revenge--her despair. He shuddered as he

thought of it.

He fell asleep, still pondering restlessly over her future and his own.

Amid all his anxieties he never stooped to recollect the man who had

endangered her name and peace. His optimism, his pride, the sanguine

perfunctoriness of much of his character were all shown in the omission.

* * * * *

Kitty, however, was not asleep while Ashe was beside her. And she slept

but little through the hours that followed. Between three and four she

was finally roused by the sounds of storm in the canal. It was as though

a fleet of gigantic steamers--in days when Venice knew but the

gondola--were passing outside, sending a mountainous "wash" against the

walls of the old palace in which they lodged. In this languid autumnal

Venice the sudden noise and crash were startling. Kitty sprang softly

out of bed, flung on a dressing-gown and fur cloak, and slipped through

the open window to the balcony.

A strange sight! Beneath, livid waves, lashing the marble walls; above,

a pale moonlight, obscured by scudding clouds. Not a sign of life on

the water or in the dark palaces opposite. Venice looked precisely as

she might have looked on some wild sixteenth-century night in the years

of her glorious decay, when her palaces were still building and her

state tottering. Opposite, at the Traghetto of the Accademia, there were

lamps, and a few lights in the gondolas; and through the storm-noises

one could hear the tossed boats grinding on their posts.

The riot of the air was not cold; there was still a recollection of

summer in the gusts that beat on Kitty's fair hair and wrestled with her

cloak. As she clung to the balcony she pictured to herself the tumbling

waves on the Lido; the piled storm-clouds parting like a curtain above a

dead Venice; and behind, the gleaming eternal Alps, sending their

challenge to the sea--the forces that make the land, to the forces that

engulf it.

Her wild fancy went out to meet the tumult of blast and wave. She felt

herself, as it were, anchored a moment at sea, in the midst of a war of

elements, physical and moral.

Yes, yes!--it was Geoffrey. Once, under the skipping light, she had seen

the face distinctly. Paler than of old--gaunt, unhappy, absent. It was

the face of one who had suffered--in body and mind. But--she trembled

through all her slight frame!--the old harsh power was there unchanged.

Had he seen and recognized her--slipping away afterwards into the mouth

of a side canal, or dropping behind in the darkness? Was he ashamed to

face her--or angered by the reminder of her existence? No doubt it

seemed to him now a monstrous absurdity that he should ever have said he

loved her! He despised her--thought her a base and coward soul. Very

likely he would make it up with Mary Lyster now, accept her nursing and

her money.

Her lip curled in scorn. No, _that_ she didn't believe! Well, then, what

would be his future? His name had been but little in the newspapers

during the preceding year; the big public seemed to have forgotten him.

A cloud had hung for months over the struggle of races and of faiths now

passing in the Balkans. Obscure fighting in obscure mountains; massacre

here, revolt there; and for some months now hardly an accredited voice

from Turk or Christian to tell the world what was going on.

But Geoffrey had now emerged--and at a moment when Europe was beginning

perforce to take notice of what she had so far wilfully ignored. _À lui

la parole!_ No doubt he was preparing it, the bloody, exciting story

which would bring him before the foot-lights again, and make him once

more the lion of a day. More social flatteries, more doubtful

love-affairs! Fools like herself would feel his spell, would cherish and

caress him, only to be stung and scathed as she had been. The bitter

lines of his "portrait" rung in her ears--blackening and discrowning her

in her own eyes.

She abhorred him!--but the thought that he was in Venice burned deep

into senses and imagination. Should she tell William she had seen him?

No, no! She would stand by herself, protect herself!

So she stole back to bed, and lay there wakeful, starting guiltily at

William's every movement. If he knew what had happened!--what she was

thinking of! Why on earth should he? It would be monstrous to harass

him on his holiday--with all these political affairs on his mind.

Then suddenly--by an association of ideas--she sat up shivering, her

hands pressed to her breast. The telegram--the book! Oh, but _of course_

she had been in time!--_of course_! Why, she had offered the man two

hundred pounds! She lay down laughing at herself--forcing herself to try

and sleep.

XIX

Sir Richard Lyster unfolded his _Times_ with a jerk.

"A beastly rheumatic hole I call this," he said, looking angrily at the

window of his hotel sitting-room, which showed drops from a light shower

then passing across the lagoon. "And the dilatoriness of these Italian

posts is, upon my soul, beyond bearing! This _Times_ is _three_ days

old."

Mary Lyster looked up from the letter she was writing.

"Why don't you read the French papers, papa? I saw a _Figaro_ of

yesterday in the Piazza this morning."

"Because I can't!" was the indignant reply. "There wasn't the same

amount of money squandered on _my_ education, my dear, that there has

been on yours."

Mary smiled a little, unseen. Her father had been, of course, at Eton.

She had been educated by a succession of small and hunted governesses,

mostly Swiss, whose remuneration had certainly counted among the

frugalities rather than the extravagances of the family budget.

Sir Richard read his _Times_ for a while. Mary continued to write checks

for the board wages of the servants left at home, and to give directions

for the beating of carpets and cleaning of curtains. It was dull work,

and she detested it.

Presently Sir Richard rose, with a stretch. He was a tall old man, with

a shock of white hair and very black eyes. A victim to certain obscure

forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid nor inhuman, but he

suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class--too much money and too

few ideas. He came abroad every year, reluctantly. He did not choose to

be left behind by county neighbors whose wives talked nonsense about

Botticelli. And Mary would have it. But Sir Richard's tours were

generally one prolonged course of battle between himself and all foreign

institutions; and if it was Mary who drove him forth, it was Mary also

who generally hurried him home.

"Who was it you saw last night in that ridiculous singing affair?" he

asked, as he put the fire together.

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

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

"They weren't in the same gondola."

"Ashe will be a great fool if he lets his wife see much of that woman!

By all accounts Lady Kitty is quite enough of a handful already.

By-the-way, have you found out where they are?"

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

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

harm."

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

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

abrupt.

"Why do you see so little now of Elizabeth Tranmore?" he asked her, with

a sharp look. "You used to be always there. And I don't believe you even

write to her much now."

"Does she see much of anybody?"

"Because, you mean, of Tranmore's condition? What good can she be to him

now? He knows nobody."

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

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

"No, the women don't," he said, half to himself, and fell into a little

reverie. He emerged from it with the remark--accompanied by a smile, a

little sly but not unkind:

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

"I'm sure I don't know why," said Mary, fastening up her envelopes. As

she did so it crossed her father's mind that she was still very

good-looking. Her dress of dark-blue cloth, the plain fashion of her

brown hair, her oval face and well-marked features, her plump and pretty

hands, were all pleasant to look upon. She had rather a hard way with

her, though, at times. The servants were always giving warning. And,

personally, he was much fonder of his younger daughter, whom Mary

considered foolish and improvident. But he was well aware that Mary made

his life easy.

"Well, you were always on excellent terms," he said, in answer to her

last remark. "I remember his saying to me once that you were very good

company. The Bishop, too, used to notice how he liked to talk to you."

When Mary and her father were together, "the Bishop" was Sir Richard's

property. He only fell to Mary's share in the old man's absence.

Mary colored slightly.

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

quick hand.

"Well, I hope that young woman whom he _did_ marry is now behaving

herself. It was that fellow Cliffe with whom the scandal was last year,

wasn't it?"

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

"A rum fellow, that Cliffe! A man at the club told me last week it is

believed he has been fighting for these Bosnian rebels for months.

Shocking bad form I call it. If the Turks catch him, they'll string him

up. And quite right, too. What's he got to do with other people's

quarrels?"

"If the Turks will be such brutes--"

"Nonsense, my dear! Don't you believe any of this radical stuff. The

Turks are awfully fine fellows--fight like bull-dogs. And as for the

'atrocities,' they make them up in London. Oh, of course, what Cliffe

wants is notoriety--we all know that. Well, I'm going out to see if I

can find another English paper. Beastly climate!"

But as Sir Richard turned again to the window, he was met by a burst of

sunshine, which hit him gayly in the face like a child's impertinence.

He grumbled something unintelligible as Mary put him into his Inverness

cape, took hat and stick, and departed.

Mary sat still beside the writing-table, her hands crossed on her lap,

her eyes absently bent upon them.

She was thinking of the serenata. She had followed it with an

acquaintance from the hotel, and she had seen not only Kitty and Madame

d'Estrées, but also--the solitary man in the heavy cloak. She knew quite

well that Cliffe was in Venice; though, true to her secretive temper,

she had not mentioned the fact to her father.

Of course he was in Venice on Kitty's account. It would be too absurd to

suppose that he was here by mere coincidence. Mary believed that nothing

but the intervention of Cliffe's mighty kinsman from the north had saved

the situation the year before. Kitty would certainly have betrayed her

husband but for the _force majeure_ arrayed against her. And now the

magnate who had played Providence slumbered in the family vault. He had

passed away in the spring, full of years and honors, leaving Cliffe some

money. The path was clear. As for the escapade in the Balkans, Geoffrey

was, of course, tired of it. A sensational book, hurried out to meet the

public appetite for horrors--and the pursuance of his intrigue with Lady

Kitty Ashe--Mary was calmly certain that these were now his objects. He

was, no doubt, writing his book and meeting Kitty where he could. Ashe

would soon have to go home. And then! As if that girl Margaret French

could stop it!

Well, William had only got his deserts! But as her thoughts passed from

Kitty or Cliffe to William Ashe, their quality changed. Hatred and

bitterness, scorn or wounded vanity, passed into something gentler. She

fell into recollections of Ashe as he had appeared on that bygone

afternoon in May when he came back triumphant from his election, with

the world before him. If he had never seen Kitty Bristol!--

"I should have made him a good wife," she said to herself. "_I_ should

have known how to be proud of him."

And there emerged also the tragic consciousness that if the fates had

given him to her she might have been another woman--taught by happiness,

by love, by motherhood.

It was that little, heartless creature who had snatched them both from

her--William and Geoffrey Cliffe--the higher and the lower--the man who

might have ennobled her--and the man, half charlatan, half genius, whom

she might have served and raised, by her fortune and her abilities. Her

life might have been so full, so interesting! And it was Kitty that had

made it flat, and cold, and futureless.

Poor William! Had he really liked her, in those boy-and-girl days? She

dreamed over their old cousinly relations--over the presents he had

sometimes given her.

Then a thought, like a burning arrow, pierced her. Her hands locked,

straining one against the other. If this intrigue were indeed

renewed--if Geoffrey succeeded in tempting Kitty from her husband--why

then--then--

She shivered before the images that were passing through her mind, and,

rising, she put away her letters and rang for the waiter, to order

dinner.

"Where shall we go?" said Kitty, languidly, putting down the French

novel she was reading.

* * * * *

"Mr. Ashe suggested San Lazzaro." Margaret looked up from her writing as

Kitty moved towards her. "The rain seems to have all cleared off."

"Well, I'm sure it doesn't matter where," said Kitty, and was turning

away; but Margaret caught her hand and caressed it.

"Naughty Kitty! why this sea air can't put some more color into your

cheeks I don't understand."

"I'm _not_ pale!" cried Kitty, pouting. "Margaret, you do croak about me

so! If you say any more I'll go and rouge till you'll be ashamed to go

out with me--there! Where's William?"

William opened the door as she spoke, the _Gazetta di Venezia_ in one

hand and a telegram in the other.

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

open it?"

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

"Ah--ha!" laughed Ashe. "Some extravagance you want to keep to yourself,

I'll be bound. I've a good mind to see!"

And he teasingly held it up above her head. But she gave a little jump,

caught it, and ran off with it to her room.

"Much regret impossible stop publication. Fifty copies distributed

already. Writing."

She dropped speechless on the edge of her bed, the crumpled telegram in

her hand. The minutes passed.

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

"Is the gondola there?"

"Waiting at the steps."

"Five minutes!" Ashe departed. She rose, tore the telegram into little

bits, and began with deliberation to put on her mantle and hat.

"You've got to go through with it," she said to the white face in the

glass, and she straightened her small shoulders defiantly.

* * * * *

They were bound for the Armenian convent. It was a misty day, with

shafts of light on the lagoon. The storm had passed, but the water was

still rough, and the clouds seemed to be withdrawing their forces only

to marshal them again with the darkness. A day of sudden bursts of

watery light, of bands of purple distance struck into enchanting beauty

by the red or orange of a sail, of a wild salt breath in air that seemed

to be still suffused with spray. The Alps were hidden; but what sun

there was played faintly on the Euganean hills.

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

to his wife.

Margaret started. Was it rouge?--or was it the strong air? Kitty's

languor had entirely disappeared; she was more cheerful and more

talkative than she had been at any time since their arrival. She

chattered about the current scandals of Venice--the mysterious contessa

who lived in the palace opposite their own, and only went out, in deep

mourning, at night, because she had been the love of a Russian

grand-duke, and the grand-duke was dead; of the Carlist pretender and

his wife, who had been very popular in Venice until they took it into

their heads to require royal honors, and Venice, taking time to think,

had lazily decided the game was not worth the candle--so now the sulky

pair went about alone in a fine gondola, turning glassy eyes on their

former acquaintance; of the needy marchese who had sold a Titian to the

Louvre, and had then found himself boycotted by all his kinsfolk in

Venice who were not needy and had no Titians to sell--all these tales

Kitty reeled out at length till the handsome gondoliers marvelled at the

little lady's vivacity and the queer brightness of her eyes.

"Gracious, Kitty, where do you get all these stories from?" cried Ashe,

when the chatter paused for a moment.

He looked at her with delight, rejoicing in her gayety, the slight

touches of white which to-day for the first time relieved the sombreness

of her dress, the return of her color. And Margaret wondered again how

much of it was rouge.

At the Armenian convent a handsome young monk took charge of them. As

George Sand and Lamennais had done before them, they looked at the

printing-press, the garden, the cloister, the church; they marvelled

lazily at the cleanliness and brightness of the place; and finally they

climbed to the library and museum, and the room close by where Byron

played at grammar-making. In this room Ashe fell suddenly into a

political talk with the young monk, who was an ardent and patriotic son

of the most unfortunate of nations, and they passed out and down the

stairs, followed by Margaret French, not noticing that Kitty had

lingered behind.

Kitty stood idly by the window of Byron's room, thinking restlessly of

verses that were not Byron's, though there was in them, clothed in forms

of the new age, the spirit of Byronic passion, and more than a touch of

Byronic affectation--thinking also of the morning's telegram. Supposing

Darrell's prophecy, which had seemed to her so absurd, came true, that

the book did William harm, not good--that he ceased to love her--that he

cast her off?...

... A plash of water outside, and a voice giving directions. From the

lagoon towards Malamocco a gondola approached. A gentleman and lady were

seated in it. The lady--a very handsome Italian, with a loud laugh and

brilliant eyes--carried a scarlet parasol. Kitty gave a stifled cry as

she drew back. She fled out of the room and overtook the other two.

"May we go back into the garden a little?" she said, hurriedly, to the

monk who was talking to William. "I should like to see the view towards

Venice."

William held up a watch, to show that there was but just time to get

back to the Piazza, for lunch. Kitty persisted, and the monk,

understanding what the impetuous young lady wished, good-naturedly

turned to obey her.

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

beyond the trees."

And she herself hurried through the garden to its farther side, where it

was bounded by the lagoon.

The others followed her, rather puzzled by her caprice.

"Not much to be seen, darling!" said Ashe, as they reached the

water--"and I think this good man wants to get rid of us!"

And, indeed, the monk was looking backward across the intervening trees

at a party which had just entered the garden.

"Ah, they have found another brother!" he said, politely, and he began

to point out to Kitty the various landmarks visible, the arsenal, the

two asylums, San Pietro di Castello.

The new-comers just glanced at the garden apparently, as the Ashes had

done on arrival, and promptly followed their guide back into the

convent.

Kitty asked a few more questions, then led the way in a hasty return to

the garden door, the entrance-hall, and the steps where their gondola

was waiting. Nothing was to be seen of the second party. They had passed

on into the cloisters.

* * * * *

Animation, oddity, inconsequence, all these things Margaret observed in

Kitty during luncheon in a restaurant of the Merceria, and various

incidents connected with it; animation above all. The Ashes fell in with

acquaintance--a fashionable and harassed mother, on the fringe of the

Archangels, accompanied by two daughters, one pretty and one plain, and

sore pressed by their demands, real or supposed. The parents were not

rich, but the girls had to be dressed, taken abroad, produced at

country-houses, at Ascot, and the opera, like all other girls. The

eldest girl, a considerable beauty, was an accomplished egotist at

nineteen, and regarded her mother as a rather inefficient _dame de

compagnie_. Kitty understood this young lady perfectly, and after

luncheon, over her cigarette, her little, sharp, probing questions gave

the beauty twenty minutes' annoyance. Then appeared a young man,

ill-dressed, red-haired, and shy. Carelessly as he greeted the mother

and daughters, his entrance, however, transformed them. The mother

forgot fatigue; the beauty ceased to yawn; the younger girl, who had

been making surreptitious notes of Kitty's costume in the last leaf of

her guide-book, developed a charming gush. He was the owner of the

Magellan estates and the historic Magellan Castle; a professed hater of

"absurd womankind," and, in general, a hunted and self-conscious person.

Kitty gave him one finger, looked him up and down, asked him whether he

was yet engaged, and when he laughed an embarrassed "No," told him that

he would certainly die in the arms of the Magellan housekeeper.

This got a smile out of him. He sat down beside her, and the two laughed

and talked with a freedom which presently drew the attention of the

neighboring tables, and made Ashe uncomfortable. He rose, paid the bill,

and succeeded in carrying the whole party off to the Piazza, in search

of coffee. But here again Kitty's extravagances, the provocation of her

light loveliness, as she sat toying with a fresh cigarette and

"chaffing" Lord Magellan, drew a disagreeable amount of notice from the

Italians passing by.

"Mother, let's go!" said the angry beauty, imperiously, in her mother's

ear. "I don't like to be seen with Lady Kitty! She's impossible!"

And with cold farewells the three ladies departed. Then Kitty sprang up

and threw away her cigarette.

"How those girls bully their mother!" she said, with scorn. "However, it

serves her right. I'm sure she bullied hers. Well, now we must go and do

something. Ta-ta!"

Lord Magellan, to whom she offered another casual finger, wanted to know

why he was dismissed. If they were going sight-seeing, might he not come

with them?"

"Oh no!" said Kitty, calmly. "Sight--seeing with people you don't really

know is too trying to the temper. Even with one's best friend it's

risky."

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

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

She considered--

"Would you like to see the Palazzo Vercelli?"

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

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

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

who lives there?"

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

Ashe followed her in discomfort. This young man was the son of a certain

Lady Magellan, an intimate friend of Lady Tranmore's--one of the noblest

women of her generation, pure, high-minded, spiritual, to whom neither

an ugly word nor thought was possible. It annoyed him that either he or

Kitty should be introducing _her_ son to Madame d'Estrées.

It was really tiresome of Kitty! Rich young men with characters yet

indeterminate were not to be lightly brought in contact with Madame

d'Estrées. Kitty could not be ignorant of it--poor child! It had been

one of her reckless strokes, and Ashe was conscious of a sharp

annoyance.

However, he said nothing. He followed his companions from church to

church, till pictures became an abomination to him. Then he pleaded

letters, and went to the club.

"Will you call on maman to-morrow?" said Kitty, as he turned away,

looking at him a little askance.

She knew that he had disapproved of her invitation to Lord Magellan. Why

had she given it? She didn't know. There seemed to be a kind of revived

mischief and fever in the blood, driving her to these foolish and

ill-considered things.

Ashe met her question with a shake of the head and the remark, in a

decided tone, that he should be too busy.

Privately he thought it a piece of impertinence that Madame d'Estrées

should expect either Kitty or himself to appear in her drawing-room at

all. That this implied a complete transformation of his earlier attitude

he was well aware; he accepted it with a curious philosophy. When he and

Kitty first met he had never troubled his head about such things. If a

woman amused or interested him in society, so long as his taste was

satisfied she might have as much or as little character as she pleased.

It stirred his mocking sense of English hypocrisy that the point should

be even raised. But now--how can any individual, he asked himself, with

political work to do, affect to despise the opinions and prejudices of

society? A politician with great reforms to put through will make no

friction round him that he can avoid--unless he is a fool. It weighed

sorely, therefore, on his present mind that Madame d'Estrées was in

Venice--that she was a person of blemished repute--that he must be and

was ashamed of her. It would have been altogether out of consonance with

his character to put any obstacle in the way of Kitty's seeing her

mother. But he chafed as he had never yet chafed under the humiliation

of his relationship to the notorious Margaret Fitzgerald of the forties,

who had been old Blackwater's _chère amie_ before she married him, and,

as Lady Blackwater, had sacrificed her innocent and defenceless

step-daughter to one of her own lovers, in order to secure for him the

step-daughter's fortune--black and dastardly deed!

Was it all part of the general growth and concentration that any shrewd

observer might have read in William Ashe?--the pressure--enormous,

unseen--of the traditional English ideals, English standards, asserting

itself at last in a brilliant and paradoxical nature? It had been

so--conspicuously--in the case of one of his political predecessors.

Lord Melbourne had begun his career as a person of idle habits and

imprudent adventures, much given to coarse conversation, and unable to

say the simplest thing without an oath. He ended it as the man of

scrupulous dignity, tact, and delicacy, who moulded the innocent youth

of a girl-queen, to his own lasting honor and England's gratitude. In

ways less striking, the same influence of vast responsibilities was

perhaps acting upon William Ashe. It had already made him a sterner,

tougher, and--no doubt--a greater man.

The defection of William only left Kitty, it seemed, still more greedy

of things to see and do. Innumerable sacristans opened all possible

doors and unveiled all possible pictures. Bellini succeeded Tintoret,

and Carpaccio Bellini. The two sable gondoliers wore themselves out in

Kitty's service, and Margaret's kind, round face grew more and more

puzzled and distressed. And whence this strange impression that the

whole experience was a _flight_ on Kitty's part?--or, rather, that

throughout it she was always eagerly expecting, or eagerly escaping from

some unknown, unseen pursuer? A glance behind her--a start--a sudden

shivering gesture in the shadows of dark churches--these things

suggested it, till Margaret herself was caught by the same suppressed

excitement that seemed to be alive in Kitty. Did it all point merely to

some mental state--to the nervous effects of her illness and her loss?

When they reached home about five o'clock, Kitty was naturally tired

out. Margaret put her on the sofa, gave her tea, and tended her, hoping

that she might drop asleep before dinner. But just as tea was over, and

Kitty was lying curled up, silent and white, with that brooding look

which kept Margaret's anxiety about her constantly alive, there was a

sudden sound of voices in the anteroom outside.

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

Too late! Their smiling Italian housemaid threw the door open, with the

air of one bringing good-fortune. And behind her appeared a tall lady,

and an old gentleman hat in hand.

"May we come in, Kitty?" said Mary Lyster, advancing. "Cousin Elizabeth

told us you were here."

Kitty had sprung up. The disorder of her fair hair, her white cheeks,

and the ghostly thinness of her small, black-robed form drew the curious

eyes of Sir Richard. And the oddness of her manner as she greeted them

only confirmed the old man's prejudice against her.

However, greeted they were, in some sort of fashion; and Miss French

gave them tea. She kept Sir Richard entertained, while Kitty and Mary

conversed. They talked perfunctorily of ordinary topics--Venice, its

sights, its hotels, and the people staying in them--of Lady Tranmore and

various Ashe relations. Meanwhile the inmost thought of each was busy

with the other.

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

"She looks much older. And she's not enjoying her life a bit. That's my

fault. I spoiled all her chances with Geoffrey--and she knows it. She

_hates_ me. Quite right, too."

"Oh, you mean that nonsensical thing last night?" Sir Richard was saying

to Margaret French. "Oh no, I didn't go. But Mary, of course, thought

she must go. Somebody invited her."

Kitty started.

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

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

Kitty looked at her. A sudden flush had touched her pale cheeks, and she

could not conceal the trembling of her hands.

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

"Wonderful!--and on the water, too. I saw two or three people I

knew--just caught their faces for a second."

"Did you?" said Kitty. And thoughts ran fast through her head. "Did she

see Geoffrey?--and does she mean me to understand that she did? How she

detests me! If she did see him, of course she supposes that I know all

about it, and that he's here for me. Why don't I ask her, straight out,

whether she saw him, and make her understand that I don't care

twopence?--that she's welcome to him--as far as I'm concerned?"

But some hidden feeling tied her tongue. Mary continued to talk about

the serenata, and Kitty was presently conscious that her every word and

gesture in reply was closely watched. "Yes, yes, she saw him. Perhaps

she'll tell William--or write home to mother?"

And in her excitement she began to chatter fast and loudly, mostly to

Sir Richard--repeating some of the Venice tales she had told in the

gondola--with much inconsequence and extravagance. The old man listened,

his hands on his stick, his eyes on the ground, the expression on his

strong mouth hostile or sarcastic. It was a relief to everybody when

Ashe's step was heard stumbling up the dark stairs, and the door opened

on his friendly and courteous presence.

"Why, Polly!--and Cousin Richard! I wondered where you had hidden

yourselves."

Mary's bright, involuntary smile transformed her. Ashe sat down beside

her, and they were soon deep in all sorts of gossip--relations,

acquaintance, politics, and what not. All Mary's stiffness disappeared.

She became the elegant, agreeable woman, of whom dinner-parties were

glad. Ashe plunged into the pleasant malice of her talk, which ranged

through the good and evil fortunes--mostly the latter--of half his

acquaintance; discussed the debts, the love-affairs, and the follies of

his political colleagues or Parliamentary foes; how the Foreign

Secretary had been getting on at Balmoral--how so-and-so had been ruined

at the Derby and restored to sanity and solvency by the Oaks--how Lady

Parham, at Hatfield, had been made to know her place by the French

Ambassador--and the like; passing thereby a charming half-hour.

Meanwhile Kitty, Margaret French, and Sir Richard kept up intermittent

remarks, pausing at every other phrase to gather the crumbs that fell

from the table of the other two.

Kitty was very weary, and a dead weight had fallen on her spirits. If

Sir Richard had thought her bad form ten minutes before, his unspoken

mind now declared her stupid. Meanwhile Kitty was saying to herself, as

she watched her husband and Mary:

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

When the door closed on them, Kitty fell back on her cushions with an

"ouf!" of relief. William came back in a few minutes from showing the

visitors the back way to their hotel, and stood beside his wife with an

anxious face.

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

"How you and Mary chattered!" said Kitty, with a little pout. But at the

same moment she slipped an appealing hand into his.

Ashe clasped the hand, and laughed.

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

* * * * *

Sir Richard and Mary pursued their way through the narrow _calles_ that

led to the Piazza. Sir Richard was expatiating on Ashe's folly in

marrying such a wife.

"She looks like an actress!--and as to her conversation, she began by

telling me outrageous stories and ended by not having a word to say

about anything. The bad blood of the Bristols, it seems to me, without

their brains."

"Oh no, papa! Kitty is very clever. You haven't heard her recite. She

was tired to-night."

"Well, I don't want to flatter you, my dear!" said the old man,

testily, "but I thought it was pathetic--the way in which Ashe enjoyed

your conversation. It showed he didn't get much of it at home."

Mary smiled uncertainly. Her whole nature was still aglow from that

contact with Ashe's delightful personality. After months of depression

and humiliation, her success with him had somehow restored those

illusions on which cheerfulness depends.

How ill Kitty looked--and how conscious! Mary was impetuously certain

that Kitty had betrayed her knowledge of Cliffe's presence in Venice;

and equally certain that William knew nothing. Poor William!

Well, what can you expect of such a temperament--such a race? Mary's

thoughts travelled confusedly towards--and through--some big and

dreadful catastrophe.

And then? After it?

It seemed to her that she was once more in the Park Lane drawing-room;

the familiar Morris papers and Burne-Jones drawings surrounded her; and

she and Elizabeth Tranmore sat, hand in hand, talking of William--a

William once more free, after much folly and suffering, to reconstruct

his life....

"Here we are," said Sir Richard Lyster, moving down a dark passage

towards the brightly lit doorway of their hotel.

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

XX

Madame d'Estrées and her friend, Donna Laura, occupied the _mezzanin_ of

the vast Vercelli palace. The palace itself belonged to the head of the

Vercelli family. It was a magnificent erection of the late seventeenth

century, at this moment half furnished, dilapidated, and forsaken. But

the _entresol_ on the eastern side of the _cortile_ was in good

condition, and comfortably fitted up for the occasional use of the

Principe. As he was wintering in Paris, he had let his rooms at an

ordinary commercial rent to his kinswoman, Donna Laura. She, a soured

and melancholy woman, unmarried in a Latin society which has small use

or kindness for spinsters, had seized on Marguerite d'Estrées--whose

acquaintance she had made in a Mont d'Or hotel--and was now keeping her

like a caged canary that sings for its food.

Madame d'Estrées was quite willing. So long as she had a sofa on which

to sit enthroned, a sufficiency of new gowns, a maid, cigarettes,

breakfast in bed, and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most

harmless and engaging of mortals. Her youth had been cruel, disorderly,

and vicious. It had lasted long; but now, when middle age stood at last

confessed, she was lapsing, it seemed, into amiability and good

behavior. She was, indeed, fast forgetting her own history, and soon the

recital of it would surprise no one so much as herself.

It was five o'clock. Madame d'Estrées had just established herself in

the silk-panelled drawing-room of Donna Laura's apartment, expectant of

visitors, and, in particular, of her daughter.

In begging Kitty to come on this particular afternoon, she had not

thought fit to mention that it would be Donna Laura's "day." Had she

done so, Kitty, in consideration of her mourning, would perhaps have

cried off. Whereas, really--poor, dear child!--what she wanted was

distraction and amusement.

And what Madame d'Estrées wanted was the presence beside her, in public,

of Lady Kitty Ashe. Kitty had already visited her mother privately, and

had explored the antiquities of the Vercelli palace. But Madame

d'Estrées was now intent on something more and different.

For in the four years which had now elapsed since the Ashe's marriage

this lively lady had known adversity. She had been forced to leave

London, as we have seen, by the pressure of certain facts in her past

history so ancient and far removed when their true punishment began that

she no doubt felt it highly unjust that she should be punished for them

at all. Her London debts had swallowed up what then remained to her of

fortune; and, afterwards, the allowance from the Ashes was all she had

to depend on. Banished to Paris, she fell into a lower stratum of life,

at a moment when her faithful and mysterious friend, Markham Warington,

was held in Scotland by the first painful symptoms of his sister's last

illness, and could do but little for her. She had, in fact, known the

sordid shifts and straits of poverty, though the smallest moral effort

would have saved her from them. She had kept disreputable company, she

had been miserable, and base; and although shame is not easy to persons

of her temperament, it may perhaps be said that she was ashamed of this

period of her existence. Appeals to the Ashes yielded less and less, and

Warington seemed to have forsaken her. She awoke at last to a

panic-stricken fear of darker possibilities and more real suffering than

any she had yet known, and under the stress of this fear she collapsed

physically, writing both to Warington and to the Ashes in a tone of

mingled reproach and despair.

The Ashes sent money, and, though Kitty was at the moment not fit to

travel, prepared to come. Warington, who had just closed the eyes of his

sister, went at once. He was now the last of his family, without any

ties that he could not lawfully break. Within two days of his arrival in

Paris, Madame d'Estrées had promised to marry him in three months, to

break off all her Paris associations, and to give her life henceforward

into his somewhat stern hands. The visit to Venice was part of the price

that he had had to pay for her decision. Marguerite pleaded, with a

shudder, that she must have a little amusement before she went to live

in Dumfriesshire; and he had been obliged to acquiesce in her

arrangement with Donna Laura--stipulating only that he should be their

escort and guardian.

What had moved him to such an act? His reasons can only be guessed at.

Warington was a man of religion, a Calvinist by education and

inheritance, and of a silent and dreamy temperament. He had been

intimate with very few women in his life. His sister had been a second

mother to him, and both of them had been the guardians of their younger

brother. When this adored brother fell shot through the lungs in the

hopeless defence of Lady Blackwater's reputation, it would have been

natural enough that Markham should hate the woman who had been the

occasion of such a calamity. The sister, a pious and devoted Christian,

had indeed hated her, properly and duly, thenceforward. Markham, on the

contrary, accepted his brother's last commission without reluctance. In

this matter at least Lady Blackwater had not been directly to blame; his

mind acquitted her; and her soft, distressed beauty touched his heart.

Before he knew where he was she had made an impression upon him that was

to be life-long.

Then gradually he awoke to a full knowledge of her character. He

suffered, but otherwise it made no difference. Finding it was then

impossible to persuade her to marry him, he watched over her as best he

could for some years, passing through phases of alternate hope and

disgust. His sister's affection for him was clouded by his strange

relation to the Jezebel who in her opinion had destroyed their brother.

He could not help it; he could only do his best to meet both claims upon

him. During her lingering passage to the grave, his sister had nearly

severed him from Marguerite d'Estrées. She died, however, just in time,

and now here he was in Venice, passing through what seemed to him one of

the ante-rooms of life, leading to no very radiant beyond. But, radiant

or no, his path lay thither. And at the same time he saw that although

Marguerite felt him to be her only refuge from poverty and disgrace, she

was painfully afraid of him, and afraid of the life into which he was

leading her.

* * * * *

The first guest of the afternoon proved to be Louis Harman, the painter

and dilettante, who had been in former days one of the _habitués_ of the

house in St. James's Place. This perfectly correct yet tolerant

gentleman was wintering in Venice in order to copy the Carpaccios in San

Giorgio dei Schiavoni. His copies were not good, but they were all

promised to artistic fair ladies, and the days which the painter spent

upon them were happy and harmless.

He came in gayly, delighted to see Madame d'Estrées in flourishing

circumstances again, delivered apparently from the abyss into which he

had found her sliding on the occasion of various chance visits of his

own to Paris. Warington's doing, apparently--queer fellow!

"Well!--I saw Lady Kitty in the Piazza this afternoon," he said, as he

sat down beside his hostess. Donna Laura had not yet appeared. "Very

thin and fragile! But, by Jove! how these English beauties hold their

own."

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

Harman bowed to her correction, admiring at the same time both the

toilette and the good looks of his companion. Dropping his voice, he

asked, with a gingerly and sympathetic air, whether all was now well

with the Ashe ménage. He had been sorry to hear certain gossip of the

year before.

Madame d'Estrées laughed. Yes, she understood that Kitty had behaved

like a little goose with that _poseur_ Cliffe. But that was all

over--long ago.

"Why, the silly child has everything she wants! William is devoted to

her--and it can't be long before he succeeds."

"No need to go trifling with poets," said Harman, smiling. "By-the-way,

do you know that Geoffrey Cliffe is in Venice?"

Madame d'Estrées opened her eyes. "Est-il possible? Oh! but Kitty has

forgotten all about him."

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

Madame d'Estrées raised her shoulders this time in addition to her eyes.

Then her face clouded.

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

afternoon."

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

"I knew her in Paris," said Madame d'Estrées, with some hesitation,

"when she was a student at the Conservatoire. She and I had some common

acquaintance. And now--frankly, I daren't offend her. She has the most

appalling temper!--and she sticks at nothing."

Harman wondered what the exact truth of this might be, but did not

inquire. And as guests--including Colonel Warington--began to arrive,

and Donna Laura appeared and began to dispense tea, the _tête-à-tête_

was interrupted.

Donna Laura's _salon_ was soon well filled, and Harman watched the

gathering with curiosity. As far as it concerned Madame d'Estrées--and

she was clearly the main attraction which had brought it together--it

represented, he saw, a phase of social recovery. A few prominent

Englishmen, passing through Venice, came in without their wives, making

perfunctory excuse for the absence of these ladies. But the

cosmopolitans of all kinds, who crowded in--Anglo-Italians, foreign

diplomats, travellers of many sorts, and a few restless Venetians,

bearing the great names of old, to whom their own Venice was little more

than a place of occasional sojourn--made satisfactory amends for these

persons of too long memories. In all these travellers' towns, Venice,

Rome, and Florence, there is indeed a society, and a very agreeable

society, which is wholly irresponsible, and asks few or no questions.

The elements of it meet as strangers, and as strangers they mostly part.

But between the meeting and the parting there lies a moment, all the

gayer, perhaps, because of its social uncertainty and freedom.

Madame d'Estrées was profiting by it to the full. She was in excellent

spirits and talk; bright-rose carnations shone in the bosom of her

dress; one white arm, bared to the elbow, lay stretched carelessly on

the fine cut-velvet which covered the gilt sofa--part of a suite of

Venetian Louis Quinze, clumsily gorgeous--on which she sat; the other

hand pulled the ears of a toy spaniel. On the ceiling above her, Tiepolo

had painted a headlong group of sensuous forms, alive with vulgar

movement and passion; the _putti_ and the goddesses, peering through

aërial balustrades, looked down complacently on Madame d'Estrées.

Meanwhile there stood behind her--a silent, distinguished figure--the

man of whom Harman saw that she was always nervously and sometimes

timidly conscious. Harman had been reading Molière's _Don Juan_. The

sentinel figure of Warington mingled in his imagination with the statue

of the Commander.

Or, again, he was tickled by a vision of Madame d'Estrées grown old,

living in a Scotch house, turreted and severe, tended by servants of the

"Auld Licht," or shivering under a faithful minister on Sundays. Had she

any idea of the sort of fold towards which Warington--at once Covenanter

and man of the world--was carrying his lost sheep?

The sheep, however, was still gambolling at large. Occasionally a guest

appeared who proved it. For instance, at a certain tumultuous entrance,

billowing skirts, vast hat, and high-pitched voice all combining in the

effect, Madame d'Estrées flushed violently, and Warington's stiffness

redoubled. On the threshold stood the young actress, Mademoiselle Ricci,

a Marseillaise, half French, half Italian, who was at the moment the

talk of Venice. Why, would take too long to tell. It was by no means

mostly due to her talent, which, however, was displayed at the Apollo

theatre two or three times a week, and was no doubt considerable. She

was a flamboyant lady, with astonishing black eyes, a too transparent

white dress, over which was slung a small black mantilla, a scarlet hat

and parasol, and a startling fan of the same color. Both before and

after her greeting of Madame d'Estrées--whom she called her "chérie" and

her "belle Marguerite"--she created a whirlwind in the _salon_. She was

noisy, rude, and false; it could only be said on the other side that she

was handsome--for those who admired the kind of thing; and famous--more

or less. The intimacy of the party was broken up by her, for wherever

she was she brought uproar, and it was impossible to forget her. And

this uneasy attention which she compelled was at its height when the

door was once more thrown open for the entrance of Lady Kitty Ashe.

"Ah, my darling Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrées, rising in a soft

enthusiasm.

Kitty came in slowly, holding herself very erect, a delicate and

distinguished figure, in her deep mourning. She frowned as she saw the

crowd in the room.

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

retreat.

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

At that moment Harman, who was watching them both with keenness, saw

that Kitty had perceived Mademoiselle Ricci. The actress had paused in

her chatter to stare at the new-comer. She sat fronting the entrance,

her head insolently thrown back, knees crossed, a cigarette poised in

the plump and dimpled hand.

A start ran through Kitty's small person. She allowed her mother to lead

her in and introduce her to Donna Laura.