Chapter 2

ACQUAINTANCE

"Just oblige me and touch With your scourge that minx Chloe, but don't hurt her much."

The Marriage of William Ashe

I

"He ought to be here," said Lady Tranmore, as she turned away from the window.

Mary Lyster laid down her work. It was a fine piece of church embroidery, which, seeing that it had been designed for her by no less a person than young Mr. Burne Jones himself, made her the envy of her pre-Raphaelite friends.

"Yes, indeed. You made out there was a train about twelve."

"Certainly. They can't have taken more than an hour to speechify after the declaration of the poll. And I know William meant to catch that train if he possibly could."

"And take his seat this evening?"

Lady Tranmore nodded. She moved restlessly about the room, fidgeting with a book here and there, and evidently full of thoughts. Mary Lyster watched her a little longer, then quietly took up her work again. Her air of well-bred sympathy, the measured ease of her movements, contrasted with Lady Tranmore's impatience. Yet in truth she was listening no less sharply than her companion to the sounds in the street outside.

Lady Tranmore made her way to the window, and stood there looking out on the park. It was the week before Easter, and the plane-trees were not yet in leaf. But a few thorns inside the park railings were already lavishly green and there was a glitter of spring flowers beside the park walks, not showing, however, in such glorious abundance as became the fashion a few years later. It was a mild afternoon and the drive was full of carriages. From the bow-window of the old irregular house in which she stood, Lady Tranmore could watch the throng passing and repassing, could see also the traffic in Park Lane on either side. London, from this point of sight, wore a cheerful, friendly air. The dim sunshine, the white-clouded sky, the touches of reviving green and flowers, the soft air blowing in from a farther window which was open, brought with them impressions of spring, of promise, and rebirth, which insensibly affected Lady Tranmore.

"Well, I wonder what William will do, this time, in Parliament!" she said, as she dropped again into her seat by the fire and began to cut the pages of a new book.

"He is sure to do extremely well," said Miss Lyster.

Lady Tranmore shrugged her shoulders. "My dear--do you know that William has been for eight years--since he left Trinity--one of the idlest young men alive?"

"He had one brief!"

"Yes--somewhere in the country, where all the juniors get one in turn," said Lady Tranmore. "That was the year he was so keen and went on circuit, and never missed a sessions. Next year nothing would induce him to stir out of town. What has he done with himself all these eight years? I can't imagine."

"He has grown--uncommonly handsome," said Mary Lyster, with a momentary hesitation as she threaded her needle afresh.

"I never remember him anything else," said Lady Tranmore. "All the artists who came here and to Narroways wanted to paint him. I used to think it would make him a spoiled little ape. But nothing spoiled him."

Miss Lyster smiled. "You know, Cousin Elizabeth--and you may as well confess it at once!--that you think him the ablest, handsomest, and charmingest of men!"

"Of course I do," said Lady Tranmore, calmly. "I am certain, moreover--now--that he will be Prime Minister. And as for idleness, that, of course, is only a _façon de parler_. He has worked hard enough at the things which please him."

"There--you see!" said Mary Lyster, laughing.

"Not politics, anyway," said the elder lady, reflectively. "He went into the House to please me, because I was a fool and wanted to see him there. But I must say when his constituents turned him out last year I thought they would have been a mean-spirited set if they hadn't. They knew very well he'd never done a stroke for them. Attendances--divisions--perfectly scandalous!"

"Well, here he is, in triumphantly for somewhere else--with all sorts of delightful prospects!"

Lady Tranmore sighed. Her white fingers paused in their task.

"That, of course, is because--now--he's a personage. Everything'll be made easy for him now. My dear Mary, they talk of England's being a democracy!"

The speaker raised her handsome shoulders; then, as though to shake off thoughts of loss and grief which had suddenly assailed her, she abruptly changed the subject.

"Well--work or no work--the first thing we've got to do is to marry him."

She looked up sharply. But not the smallest tremor could she detect in Mary Lyster's gently moving hand. There was, however, no reply to her remark.

"Don't you agree, Polly?" said Lady Tranmore, smiling.

Her smile--which still gave great beauty to her face--was charming, but a little sly, as she observed her companion.

"Why, of course," said Miss Lyster, inclining her head to one side that she might judge the effect of some green shades she had just put in. "But that surely will be made easy for him, too."

"Well, after all, the girls can't propose! And I never saw him take any interest in a girl yet--outside his own family, of course," added Lady Tranmore, hastily.

"No--he does certainly devote himself to the married women," replied Miss Lyster, in the half-absent tone of one more truly interested in her embroidery than in the conversation.

"He would sooner have an hour with Madame d'Estrées than a week with the prettiest miss in London. That's quite true, but I vow it's the girls' own fault! They should stand on their dignity--snub the creatures more! In my young days--"

"Ah, there wasn't a glut of us then," said Mary, calmly. "Listen!"--she held up her hand.

"Yes," said Lady Tranmore, springing up. "There he is."

She stood waiting. The door flew open, and in came a tall young man.

"William, how late you are!" said Lady Tranmore, as she flew into his arms.

"Well, mother, are you pleased?"

Her son held her at arm's-length, smiling kindly upon her.

"Of course I am," said Lady Tranmore. "And you--are you horribly tired?"

"Not a bit. Ah, Mary!--how do you do?"

Miss Lyster had risen, and the cousins shook hands.

"But I don't deny it's very jolly to come back--out of all that beastly scrimmage," said the new member, as he threw himself into an arm-chair by the fire with his hands behind his head, while Lady Tranmore prepared him a cup of tea.

"I expect you've enjoyed it," said Miss Lyster, also moving towards the fire.

"Well, when you're in it there's a certain excitement in wondering how you're going to come out of it! But one might say that, of course, of the infernal regions."

"Not quite," said Mary Lyster, smiling demurely.

"Polly! you _are_ a Tory. Everybody else's hell has moved--but yours! Thank you, mother," as Lady Tranmore gave him tea. Then, stretching out his great frame in lazy satisfaction, he turned his brown eyes from one lady to the other. "I say, mother, I haven't seen anything as good-looking as you--or Polly there, if she'll forgive me--for weeks."

"Hold your tongue, goose," said his mother, as she replenished the teapot. "What--there were no pretty girls--not one?"

"Well, they didn't come my way," said William, contentedly munching at bread-and-butter. "I have gone through all the usual humbug--and perjured my soul in all the usual ways--without any consolation worth speaking of."

"Don't talk nonsense, sir," said Lady Tranmore. "You know you like speaking--and you like compliments--and you've had plenty of both."

"You didn't read me, mother!"

"Didn't I?" she said, smiling. He groaned, and took another piece of tea-cake.

"My own family at least, don't you think, might omit that?"

"H'm, sir--So you didn't believe a word of your own speeches?" said Lady Tranmore, as she stood behind him and smoothed his hair back from his forehead.

"Well, who does?" He looked up gayly and kissed the tips of her fingers.

"And it's in that spirit you're going back into the House?" Mary Lyster threw him the question--with a slight pinching of the lips--as she resumed her work.

"Spirit? What do you mean, Polly? One plays the game, of course--and it has its moments--its hot corners, so to speak--or I suppose no one would play it!"

"And the goal?" She lifted a gently disapproving face, in a movement which showed anew the large comeliness of head and neck.

"Why--to keep the other fellows out, of course!" He lifted an arm and drew his mother down to sit on the edge of his chair.

"William, you're not to talk like that," said Lady Tranmore, decidedly, laying her cheek, however, against his hand the while. "It was all very well when you were quite a free-lance--but now--Oh! never mind Mary--she's discreet--and she knows all about it."

"What--that they're thinking of giving me Hickson's place? Parham has just written to me--I found the letter down-stairs--to ask me to go and see him."

"Oh! it's come?" said Lady Tranmore, with a start of pleasure. Lord Parham was the Prime Minister. "Now don't be a humbug, William, and pretend you're not pleased. But you'll have to work, mind!" She held up an admonishing finger. "You'll have to answer letters, mind!--you'll have to keep appointments, mind!"

"Shall I?... Ah!--Hudson--"

He turned. The butler was in the room.

"His lordship, my lady, would like to see Mr. William before dinner if he could make it convenient."

"Certainly, Hudson, certainly," said the young man. "Tell his lordship I'll be with him in ten minutes."

Then, as the butler departed--"How's father, mother?"

"Oh! much as usual," said Lady Tranmore, sadly.

"And you?"

He laid his arm boyishly round her waist, and looked up at her, his handsome face all affection and life. Mary Lyster, observing them, thought them a remarkable pair--he in the very prime and heyday of brilliant youth, she so beautiful still, in spite of the filling-out of middle life--which, indeed, was at the moment somewhat toned and disguised by the deep mourning, the sweeping crape and dull silk in which she was dressed.

"I'm all right, dear," she said, quietly, putting her hand on his shoulder. "Now, go on with your tea. Mary--feed him! I'll go and talk to father till you come."

She disappeared, and William Ashe approached his cousin.

"She _is_ better?" he said, with an anxiety that became him.

"Oh yes! Your election has been everything to her--and your letters. You know how she adores you, William."

Ashe drew a long breath.

"Yes--isn't it bad luck?"

"William!"

"For her, I mean. Because, you know--I can't live up to it. I know it's her doing--bless her!--that old Parham's going to give me this thing. And it's a perfect scandal!"

"What nonsense, William!"

"It is!" he maintained, springing up and standing before her, with his hands in his pockets. "They're going to offer me the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, and I shall take it, I suppose, and be thankful. And do you know"--he dropped out the words with emphasis--"that I don't know a word of German--and I can't talk to a Frenchman for half an hour without disgracing myself. There--that's how we're governed!"

He stood staring at her with his bright large eyes--amused, yet strangely detached--as though he had very little to do with what he was talking about.

Mary Lyster met his look in some bewilderment, conscious all the time that his neighborhood was very agreeable and stirring.

"But every one says--you speak so well on foreign subjects."

"Well, any fool can get up a Blue Book. Only--luckily for me--all the fools don't. That's how I've scored sometimes. Oh! I don't deny that--I've scored!" He thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, his whole tall frame vibrant, as it seemed to her, with will and good-humor.

"And you'll score again," she said, smiling. "You've got a wonderful opportunity, William. That's what the Bishop says."

"Much obliged to him!"

Ashe looked down upon her rather oddly.

"He told me he had never believed you were such an idler as other people thought you--that he felt sure you had great endowments, and that you would use them for the good of your country, and"--she hesitated slightly--"of the Church. I wish you'd talk to him sometimes, William. He sees so clearly."

"Oh! does he?" said Ashe.

Mary had dropped her work, and her face--a little too broad, with features a trifle too strongly marked--was raised towards him. Its pale color had passed into a slight blush. But the more strenuous expression had somehow not added to her charm, and her voice had taken a slightly nasal tone.

Through the mind of William Ashe, as he stood looking down upon her, passed a multitude of flying impressions. He knew perfectly well that Mary Lyster was one of the maidens whom it would be possible for him to marry. His mother had never pressed her upon him, but she would certainly acquiesce. It would have been mere mock modesty on his part not to guess that Mary would probably not refuse him. And she was handsome, well provided, well connected--oppressively so, indeed; a man might quail a little before her relations. Moreover, she and he had always been good friends, even when as a boy he could not refrain from teasing her for a slow-coach. During his electoral weeks in the country the thought of "Polly" had often stolen kindly upon his rare moments of peace. He must marry, of course. There was no particular excitement or romance about it. Now that his elder brother was dead and he had become the heir, it simply had to be done. And Polly was very nice--quite sweet-tempered and intelligent. She looked well, moved well, would fill the position admirably.

Then, suddenly, as these half-thoughts rushed through his brain, a breath of something cold and distracting--a wind from the land of _ennui_--seemed to blow upon them and scatter them. Was it the mention of the Bishop--tiresome, pompous fellow--or her slightly pedantic tone--or the infinitesimal hint of "management" that her speech implied? Who knows? But in that moment perhaps the scales of life inclined.

"Much obliged to the Bishop," he repeated, walking up and down. "I am afraid, however, I don't take things as seriously as he does. Oh, I hope I shall behave decently--but, good Lord, what a comedy it is! You know the sort of articles"--he turned towards her--"our papers will be writing to-morrow on my appointment. They'll make me out no end of a fine fellow--you'll see! And, of course, the real truth is, as you and I know perfectly well, that if it hadn't been for poor Freddy's death--and mother--and her dinners--and the chaps who come here--I might have whistled for anything of the sort. And then I go down to Ledmenham and stand as a Liberal, and get all the pious Radicals to work for me! It's a humbugging world--isn't it?"

He returned to the fireplace, and stood looking down upon her--grinning.

Mary had resumed her embroidery. She, too, was dimly conscious of something disappointing.

"Of course, if you choose to take it like that, you can," she said, rather tartly. "Of course, everything can be made ridiculous."

"Well, that's a blessing, anyway!" said Ashe, with his merry laugh. "But look here, Mary, tell me about yourself. What have you been doing?--dancing--riding, eh?"

He threw himself down beside her, and began an elder-brotherly cross-examination, which lasted till Lady Tranmore returned and begged him to go at once to his father.

When he returned to the drawing-room, Ashe found his mother alone. It was growing dark, and she was sitting idle, her hands in her lap, waiting for him.

"I must be off, dear," he said to her. "You won't come down and see me take my seat?"

She shook her head.

"I think not. What did you think of your father?"

"I don't see much change," he said, hesitating.

"No, he's much the same."

"And you?" He slid down on the sofa beside her and threw his arm round her. "Have you been fretting?"

Lady Tranmore made no reply. She was a self-contained woman, not readily moved to tears. But he felt her hand tremble as he pressed it.

"I sha'n't fret now"--she said after a moment--"now that you've come back."

Ashe's face took a very soft and tender expression.

"Mother, you know--you think a great deal too much of me--you're too ambitious for me."

She gave a sound between a laugh and a sob, and, raising her hands, she smoothed back his curly hair and held his face between them.

"When do you see Lord Parham?" she asked.

"Eight o'clock--in his room at the House. I'll send you up a note."

"You'll be home early?"

"No--don't wait for me."

She dropped her hands, after giving him a kiss on the cheek.

"I know where you're going! It's Madame d'Estrées' evening."

"Well--you don't object?"

"Object?" She shrugged her shoulders. "So long as it amuses you--You won't find _one_ woman there to-night."

"Last time there were two," he said, smiling, as he rose from the sofa.

"I know--Lady Quantock--and Mrs. Mallory. Now they've deserted her, I hear. What fresh gossip has turned up I don't know. Of course," she sighed, "I've been out of the world. But I believe there have been developments."

"Well, I don't know anything about it--and I don't think I want to know. She's very agreeable, and one meets everybody there."

"_Everybody_. Ungallant creature!" she said, giving a little pull to his collar, the set of which did not please her.

"Sorry! Mother!"--his laughing eyes pursued her--"Do you want to marry me off directly?--I know you do!"

"I want nothing but what you yourself should want. Of course, you must marry."

"The young women don't care twopence about me!"

"William!--be a bear if you like, but not an idiot!"

"Perfectly true," he declared; "not the dazzlers and the high-fliers, anyway--the only ones it would be an excitement to carry off."

"You know very well," she said, slowly, "that now you might marry anybody."

He threw his head back rather haughtily.

"Oh! I wasn't thinking about money, and that kind of thing. Well, give me time, mother--don't hurry me! And now I'd better stop talking nonsense, change my clothes, and be off. Good-bye, dear--you shall hear when the job's perpetrated!"

"William, really!--don't say these things--at least to anybody but me. You understand very well"--she drew herself up rather finely--"that if I hadn't known, in spite of your apparent idleness, you would do any work they _set_ you to do, to your own credit and the country's, I'd never have lifted a finger for you!"

William Ashe laughed out.

"Oh! intriguing mother!" he said, stooping again to kiss her. "So you admit you did it?"

He went off gayly, and she heard him flying up-stairs three steps at a time, as though he were still an untamed Eton boy, and there were no three weeks' hard political fighting behind him, and no interview which might decide his life before him.

He entered his own sitting-room on the second floor, shut the door behind him, and glanced round him with delight. It was a large room looking on a side street, and obliquely to the park. Its walls were covered with books--books which almost at first sight betrayed to the accustomed eye that they were the familiar companions of a student. Almost every volume had long paper slips inside it, and when opened would have been found to contain notes and underlinings in a somewhat reckless and destructive abundance. A large table, also loaded untidily with books and papers, stood in the centre of the room; many of them were note-books, stored with evidences of the most laborious and patient work; a Cambridge text lay beside them face downward, as he had left it on departure. His mother's housekeeper, who had been one of his best friends from babyhood, was the only person allowed to dust his room--but on the strict condition that she replaced everything as she found it.

He took up the volume, and plunged a moment headlong into the Greek chorus that met his eye. "_Jolly!_" he said, putting it down with a sigh of regret. "These beastly politics!"

And he went muttering to his dressing-room, summoning his valet almost with ill-temper. Yet half his library was the library of a politician, admirably chosen and exhaustively read.

The footman who answered his call understood his moods and served him at a look. Ashe complained hotly of the brushing of his dress-clothes, and worked himself into a fever over the set of his tie. Nevertheless, before he left he had managed to get from the young man the whole story of his engagement to the under-housemaid, giving him thereupon some bits of advice, jocular but trenchant, which James accepted with a readiness quite unlike his normal behavior in the circles of his class.

II

Ashe took his seat, dined, and saw the Prime Minister. These things took time, and it was not till past eleven that he presented himself in the hall of Madame d'Estrées' house in St. James's Place. Most of her guests were already gathered, but he mounted the stairs together with an old friend and an old acquaintance, Philip Darrell, one of the ablest writers of the moment, and Louis Harman, artist and man of fashion, the friend of duchesses and painter of portraits, a person much in request in many worlds.

"What a _cachet_ they have, these houses!" said Harman, looking round him. "St. James's Place is the top!"

"Where else would you expect to find Madame d'Estrées?" asked Darrell, smiling.

"Yes--what taste she has! However, it was I really who advised her to take the house."

"Naturally," said Darrell.

Harman threw a dubious look at him, then stopped a moment, and with a complacent proprietary air straightened an engraving on the staircase wall.

"I suppose the dear lady has a hundred slaves of the lamp, as usual," said Ashe. "You advise her about her house--somebody else helps her to buy her wine--"

"Not at all, my dear fellow," said Harman, offended--"as if I couldn't do that!"

"Hullo!" said Darrell, as they neared the drawing-room door. "What a crowd there is!"

For as the butler announced them, the din of talk which burst through the door implied indeed a multitude--much at their ease.

They made their way in with difficulty, shaping their course towards that corner in the room where they knew they should find their hostess. Ashe was greeted on all sides with friendly words and congratulations, and a passage was opened for him to the famous "blue sofa" where Madame d'Estrées sat enthroned.

She looked up with animation, broke off her talk with two elderly diplomats who seemed to have taken possession of her, and beckoned Ashe to a seat beside her.

"So you're in? Was it a hard fight?"

"A hard fight? Oh no! One would have had to be a great fool not to get in."

"They say you spoke very well. I suppose you promised them everything they wanted--from the crown downward?"

"Yes--all the usual harmless things," said Ashe.

Madame d'Estrées laughed; then looked at him across the top of her fan.

"Well!--and what else?"

"You can't wait for your newspaper?" he said, smiling, after a moment's pause.

She shrugged her shoulders good-humoredly.

"Oh! I _know_--of course I know. Is it as good as you expected?"

"As good as--" The young man opened his mouth in wonder. "What right had I to expect anything?"

"How modest! All the same, they want you--and they're very glad to get you. But you can't save them."

"That's not generally expected of Under-Secretaries, is it?"

"A good deal's expected of _you_. I talked to Lord Parham about you last night."

William Ashe flushed a little.

"Did you? Very kind of you."

"Not at all. I didn't flatter you in the least. Nor did he. But they're going to give you your chance!"

She bent forward and lightly patted the sleeve of his coat with the fingers of a very delicate hand. In this sympathetic aspect, Madame d'Estrées was no doubt exceedingly attractive. There were, of course, many people who were not moved by it; to whom it was the conjuring of an arch pretender. But these were generally of the female sex. Men, at any rate, lent themselves to the illusion. Ashe, certainly, had always done so. And to-night the spell still worked; though as her action drew his particular attention to her face and expression, he was aware of slight changes in her which recalled his mother's words of the afternoon. The eyes were tired; at last he perceived in them some slight signs of years and harass. Up till now her dominating charm had been a kind of timeless softness and sensuousness, which breathed from her whole personality--from her fair skin and hair, her large, smiling eyes. She put, as it were, the question of age aside. It was difficult to think of her as a child; it had been impossible to imagine her as an old woman.

"Well, this is all very surprising," said Ashe, "considering that four months ago I did not matter an old shoe to anybody."

"That was your own fault. You took no trouble. And besides--there was your poor brother in the way."

Ashe's brow contracted.

"No, that he never was," he said, with energy. "Freddy was never in anybody's way--least of all in mine."

"You know what I mean," she said, hastily. "And you know what friends he and I were--poor Freddy! But, after all, the world's the world."

"Yes--we all grow on somebody's grave," said Ashe. Then, just as she became conscious that she had jarred upon him, and must find a new opening, he himself found it. "Tell me!" he said, bending forward with a sudden alertness--"who is that lady?"

He pointed out a little figure in white, sitting in the opening of the second drawing-room; a very young girl apparently, surrounded by a group of men.

"Ah!" said Madame d'Estrées--"I was coming to that--that's my girl Kitty--"

"Lady Kitty!" said Ashe, in amazement. "She's left school? I thought she was quite a little thing."

"She's eighteen. Isn't she a darling? Don't you think her very pretty?"

Ashe looked a moment.

"Extraordinarily bewitching!--unlike other people?" he said, turning to the mother.

Madame d'Estrées raised her eyebrows a little, in apparent amusement.

"I'm not going to describe Kitty. She's indescribable. Besides--you must find her out. Do go and talk to her. She's to be half with me, half with her aunt--Lady Grosville."

Ashe made some polite comment.

"Oh! don't let's be conventional!" said Madame d'Estrées, flirting her fan with a little air of weariness--"It's an odious arrangement. Lady Grosville and I, as you probably know, are not on terms. She says atrocious things of me--and I--" the fair head fell back a little, and the white shoulders rose, with the slightest air of languid disdain--"well, bear me witness that I don't retaliate! It's not worth while. But I know that Grosville House can help Kitty. So!--" Her gesture, half ironical, half resigned, completed the sentence.

"Does Lady Kitty like society?"

"Kitty likes anything that flatters or excites her."

"Then of course she likes society. Anybody as pretty as that--"

"Ah! how sweet of you!" said Madame d'Estrées, softly--"how sweet of you! I like you to think her pretty. I like you to say so."

Ashe felt and looked a trifle disconcerted, but his companion bent forward and added--"I don't know whether I want you to flirt with her! You must take care. Kitty's the most fantastic creature. Oh! my life now'll be very different. I find she takes all my thoughts and most of my time!"

There was something extravagant in the sweetness of the smile which emphasized the speech, and altogether, Madame d'Estrées, in this new maternal aspect, was not as agreeable as usual. Part of her charm perhaps had always lain in the fact that she had no domestic topics of her own, and so was endlessly ready for those of other people. Those, indeed, who came often to her house were accustomed to speak warmly of her "unselfishness"--by which they meant the easy patience with which she could listen, smile, and flatter.

Perhaps Ashe made this tacit demand upon her, no less than other people. At any rate, as she talked cooingly on about her daughter, he would have found her tiresome for once but for some arresting quality in that small, distant figure. As it was, he followed what she said with attention, and as soon as she had been recaptured by the impatient Italian Ambassador, he moved off, intending slowly to make his way to Lady Kitty. But he was caught in many congratulations by the road, and presently he saw that his friend Darrell was being introduced to her by the old habitué of the house, Colonel Warington, who generally divided with the hostess the "lead" of these social evenings.

Lady Kitty nodded carelessly to Mr. Darrell, and he sat down beside her.

"That's a cool hand for a girl of eighteen!" thought Ashe. "She has the airs of a princess--except for the chatter."

Chatter indeed! Wherever he moved, the sound of the light hurrying voice made itself persistently heard through the hum of male conversation.

Yet once, Ashe, looking round to see if Darrell could be dislodged, caught the chatterer silent, and found himself all at once invaded by a slight thrill, or shock.

What did the girl's expression mean?--what was she thinking of? She was looking intently at the crowded room, and it seemed to Ashe that Darrell's talk, though his lips moved quickly, was not reaching her at all. The dark brows were drawn together, and beneath them the eyes looked sorely out. The delicate lips were slightly, piteously open, and the whole girlish form in its young beauty appeared, as he watched, to shrink together. Suddenly the girl's look, so wide and searching, caught that of Ashe; and he moved impulsively forward.

"Present me, please, to Lady Kitty," he said, catching Warington's arm.

"Poor child!" said a low voice in his ear.

Ashe turned and saw Louis Harman. The tone, however--allusive, intimate, patronizing--in which Harman had spoken, annoyed him, and he passed on without taking any notice.

"Lady Kitty," said Warington, "Mr. Ashe wishes to be presented to you. He is an old friend of your mother's. Congratulate him--he has just got into Parliament."

Lady Kitty drew herself up, and all trace of the look which Ashe had observed disappeared. She bowed, not carelessly as she had bowed to Darrell, but with a kind of exaggerated stateliness, not less girlish.

"I never congratulate anybody," she said, shaking her head, "till I know them."

Ashe opened his eyes a little.

"How long must I wait?" he said, smiling, as he drew a chair beside her.

"That depends. Are you difficult to know?" She looked up at him audaciously, and he on his side could not take his eyes from her, so singular was the small, sparkling face. The hair and skin were very fair, like her mother's, the eyes dark and full of fire, the neck most daintily white and slender, the figure undeveloped, the feet and hands extremely small. But what arrested him was, so to speak, the embodied contradiction of the personality--as between the wild intelligence of the eyes and the extreme youth, almost childishness, of the rest.

He asked her if she had ever known any one confess to being easy, to know.

"Well, I'm easy to know," she said, carelessly, leaning back; "but, then, I'm not worth knowing."

"Is one allowed to find out?"

"Oh yes--of course! Do you know--when you were over there, I _willed_ that you should come and talk to me, and you came. Only," she sat up with animation, and began to tick off her sentences on her fingers--"Don't ask me how long I've been in town. Don't ask where I was in Paris. Don't inquire whether I like balls! You see, I warn you at once"--she looked up frankly--"that we mayn't lose time."

"Well, then, I don't see how I'm ever to find out," said Ashe, stoutly.

"Whether I'm worth knowing?" She considered, then bent forward eagerly. "Look here! I'll just tell you everything in a lump, and then that'll do--won't it? Listen. I'm just eighteen. I was sent to the Soeurs Blanches when I was thirteen--the year papa died. I _didn't_ like papa--I'm very sorry, but I didn't! However, that's by-the-way. In all those years I have only seen maman once--she doesn't like children. But my aunt Grosville has some French relations--very, _very_ 'comme il faut,' you understand--and I used to go and stay with them for the holidays. Tell me!--did you ever hunt in France?"

"Never," said Ashe, startled and amused by the sudden glance of enthusiasm that lit up the face and expressed itself in the clasped hands.

"Oh! it's such heaven," she said, lifting her shoulders with an extravagant gesture--"such _heaven_! First there are the old dresses--the men look such darlings!--and then the horns, and the old ways they have--_si noble!--si distingué!_--not like your stupid English hunting. And then the dogs! Ah! the _dogs_"--the shoulders went higher still; "do you know my cousin Henri actually gave me a puppy of the great breed--_the_ breed, you know--the Dogs of St. Hubert. Or at least he _would_ if maman would have let me bring it over. And she wouldn't! Just think of that! When there are thousands of people in France who'd give the eyes out of their head for one. I cried all one night--Allons!--faut pas y penser!"--she shook back the hair from her eyes with an impatient gesture. "My cousins have got a château, you know, in the Seine-et-Oise. They've promised to ask me next year--when the Grand-Duke Paul comes--if I'll promise to behave. You see, I'm not a bit like French girls--I had so many affairs!"

Her eyes flashed with laughter.

Ashe laughed too.

"Are you going to tell me about them also?"

She drew herself up.

"No! I play fair, always--ask anybody! Oh, I _do_ want to go back to France so badly!" Once more she was all appeal and childishness. "Anyway, I won't stay in England! I have made up my mind to that!"

"How long has it taken?"

"A fortnight," she said, slowly--"just a fortnight."

"That hardly seems time enough--does it?" said Ashe. "Give us a little longer."

"No--I--I hate you!" said Lady Kitty, with a strange drop in her voice. Her little fingers began to drum on the table near her, and to Ashe's intense astonishment he saw her eyes fill with tears.

Suddenly a movement towards the other room set in around them. Madame d'Estrées could be heard giving directions. A space was made in the large drawing-room--a little table appeared in it, and a footman placed thereon a glass of water.

Lady Kitty looked up.

"Oh, that _detestable_ man!" she said, drawing back. "No--I can't, I can't bear it. Come with me!" and beckoning to Ashe she fled with precipitation into the farther part of the inner drawing-room, out of her mother's sight. Ashe followed her, and she dropped panting and elate into a chair.

Meanwhile the outer room gathered to hear the recitation of some _vers de société_, fondly believed by their author to be of a very pretty and Praedian make. They certainly amused the company, who laughed and clapped as each neat personality emerged. Lady Kitty passed the time either in a running commentary on the reciter, which occasionally convulsed her companion, or else in holding her small hands over her ears.

When it was over, she drew a long breath.

"How maman _can!_ Oh! how _bête_ you English are to applaud such a man! You have only _one_ poet, haven't you--one living poet? Ah! I shouldn't have laughed if it had been he!"

"I suppose you mean Geoffrey Cliffe?" said Ashe, amused. "Nobody abroad seems ever to have heard of any one else."

"Well, of course, I just long to know him! Every one says he is so dangerous!--he makes all the women fall in love with him. That's _delicious_! He shouldn't make me! Do you know him?"

"I knew him at Eton. We were 'swished' together," said Ashe.

She inquired what the phrase might mean, and when informed, flushed hotly, denouncing the English school system as quite unfit for gentlemen and men of honor. Her French cousins would sooner die than suffer such a thing. Then in the midst of her tirade she suddenly paused, and fixing Ashe with her brilliant eyes, she asked him a surprising question, in a changed and steady voice:

"Is Lady Tranmore not well?"

Ashe was fairly startled.

"Thank you, I left her quite well. Have you--"

"Did maman ask her to come to-night?"

It was Ashe's turn to redden.

"I don't know. But--we are in mourning, you see, for my brother."

Her face changed and softened instantly.

"Are you? I'm so sorry. I--I always say something stupid. Then--Lady Tranmore used to come to maman's parties--before--"

She had grown quite pale; it seemed to him that her hand shook. Ashe felt an extraordinary pang of pity and concern.

"It's I, you see, to whom your mother has been kind," he said, gently. "We're an independent family; we each make our own friends."

"No--" she said, drawing a deep breath. "No, it's not that. Look at that room."

Following her slight gesture, Ashe looked. It was an old, low-ceiled room, panelled in white and gold, showing here and there an Italian picture--saint, or holy family, agreeable school-work--from which might be inferred the tastes if not the _expertise_ of Madame d'Estrées' first husband, Lord Blackwater. The floor was held by a plentiful collection of seats, neither too easy nor too stiff; arranged by one who understood to perfection the physical conditions at least which should surround the "great art" of conversation. At this moment every seat was full. A sea of black coats overflowed on the farther side, into the staircase landing, where through the open door several standing groups could be seen; and in the inner room, where they sat, there was but little space between its margin and themselves. It was a remarkable sight; and in his past visits to the house Ashe had often said to himself that the elements of which it was made up were still more remarkable. Ministers and Opposition; ambassadors, travellers, journalists; the men of fashion and the men of reform; here a French republican official, and beyond him, perhaps, a man whose ancestors were already of the most ancient _noblesse_ in Saint-Simon's day; artists, great and small, men of letters good and indifferent; all these had been among the guests of Madame d'Estrées, brought to the house, each of them, for some quality's sake, some power of keeping up the social game.

But now, as he looked at the room, not to please himself but to obey Lady Kitty, Ashe became aware of a new impression. The crowd was no less, numerically, than he had seen it in the early winter; but it seemed to him less distinguished, made up of coarser and commoner items. He caught the face of a shady financier long since banished from Lady Tranmore's parties; beyond him a red-faced colonel, conspicuous alike for doubtful money-matters and matrimonial trouble; and in a farther corner the sallow profile of a writer whose books were apt to rouse even the man of the world to a healthy and contemptuous disgust. Surely these persons had never been there of old; he could not remember one of them.

He looked again, more closely. Was it fancy, or was the gathering itself aware of the change which had passed over it? As a whole, it was certainly noisier than of old; the shouting and laughter were incessant. But within the general uproar certain groups had separated from other groups, and were talking with a studied quiet. Most of the habitué's were still there; but they held themselves apart from their neighbors. Were the old intimacy and solidarity beginning to break up?--and with them the peculiar charm of these "evenings," a charm which had so far defied a social boycott that had been active from the first?

He glanced back uncertainly at Lady Kitty, and she looked at him.

"Why are there no ladies?" she said, abruptly.

He collected his thoughts.

"It--it has always been a men's gathering. Perhaps for some men here--I'm sorry there are such barbarians, Lady Kitty!--that makes the charm of it. Look at that old fellow there! He is a most famous old boy. Everybody invites him--but he never stirs out of his den but to come here. My mother can't get him--though she has tried often."

And he pointed to a dishevelled, gray-haired gentleman, short in stature, round in figure, something, in short, like an animated egg, who was addressing a group not far off.

Lady Kitty's face showed a variety of expressions.

"Are there many parties like this in London? Are the ladies asked, and don't come? I--I don't--understand!"

Ashe looked at her kindly.

"There is no other hostess in London as clever as your mother," he declared, and then tried to change the subject; but she paid no heed.

"The other day, at Aunt Grosville's," she said, slowly, "I asked if my two cousins might come to-night, and they looked at me as though I were mad! Oh, _do_ talk to me!" She came impulsively nearer, and Ashe noticed that Darrell, standing against the doorway of communication, looked round at them in amusement. "I liked your face--the very first moment when I saw you across the room. Do you know--you're--you're very handsome!" She drew back, her eyes fixed gravely, intently upon him.

For the first time Ashe was conscious of annoyance.

"I hope you won't mind my saying so"--his tone was a little short--"but in this country we don't say those things. They're not--quite polite."

"Aren't they?" Her eyebrows arched themselves and her lips fell in penitence. "I always called my French cousin, Henri la Fresnay, _beau!_ I am sure he liked it!" The accent was almost plaintive.

Ashe's natural impulse was to say that if so the French cousin must be an ass. But all in a moment he found himself seized with a desire to take her little hands in his own and press them--she looked such a child, so exquisite, and so forlorn. And he did in fact bend forward confidentially, forgetting Darrell.

"I want you to come and see my mother?" he said, smiling at her. "Ask Lady Grosville to bring you."

"May I? But--" She searched his face, eager still to pour out the impulsive, uncontrolled confidences that were in her mind. But his expression stopped her, and she gave a little, resentful sigh.

"Yes--I'll come. _We_--you and I--are a little bit cousins too--aren't we? We talked about you at the Grosvilles."

"Was our 'great-great' the same person?" he said, laughing. "Hope it was a decent 'great-great.' Some of mine aren't much to boast of. Well, at any rate, let's _be_ cousins--whether we are or no, shall we?"

She assented, her whole face lighting up.

"And we're going to meet--the week after next!" she said, triumphantly, "in the country."

"Are we?--at Grosville Park. That's delightful."

"And _then_ I'll ask your advice--I'll make you tell me--a hundred things! That's a bargain--mind!"

"Kitty! Come and help me with tea--there's a darling!"

Lady Kitty turned. A path had opened through the crowd, and Madame d'Estrées, much escorted, a vision of diamonds and pale-pink satin, appeared, leading the way to the supper-room, and the light "refection," accompanied by much champagne, which always closed these evenings.

The girl rose, as did her companion also. Madame d'Estrées threw a quick, half-satirical glance at Ashe, but he had eyes only for Lady Kitty, and her transformation at the touch of her mother's voice. She followed Madame d'Estrées with a singular and conscious dignity, her white skirts sweeping, her delicately fine head thrown back on her thin neck and shoulders. The black crowd closed about her; and Ashe's eyes pursued the slender figure till it disappeared.

Extreme youth--innocence--protest--pain--was it with these touching and pleading impressions, after all, that his first talk with Kitty Bristol had left him? Yet what a little _étourdie_! How lacking in the reserves, the natural instincts and shrinkings of the well-bred English girl!

* * * * *

Darrell and Ashe walked home together, through a windy night which was bringing out April scents even from the London grass and lilac-bushes.

"Well," said Darrell, as they stepped into the Green Park, "so you're safely in. Congratulate you, old fellow. Anything else?"

"Yes. They've offered me Hickson's place. More fools they, don't you think?"

"Good! Upon my word, Bill, you've got your foot in the stirrup now! Hope you'll continue to be civil to poor devils like me."

The speaker looked up smiling, but neither the tone nor the smile was really cordial. Ashe felt the embarrassment that he had once or twice felt before in telling Darrell news of good fortune. There seemed to be something in Darrell that resented it--under an outer show of felicitation.

However, they went on talking of the political moment and its prospects, and of Ashe's personal affairs. As to the last, Darrell questioned, and Ashe somewhat reluctantly replied. It appeared that his allowance was to be largely raised, that his paralyzed father, in fact, was anxious to put him in possession of a substantial share in the income of the estates, that one of the country-houses was to be made over to him, and so on.

"Which means, of course, that they want you to marry," said Darrell. "Well, you've only to throw the handkerchief."

They were passing a lamp as he spoke, and the light shone on his long, pale face--a face of discontent--with its large sunken eyes and hollow cheeks.

Ashe treated the remark as "rot," and endeavored to get away from his own affairs by discussing the party they had just left.

"How does she get all those people together? It's astonishing!"

"Well, I always liked Madame d'Estrées well enough," said Darrell, "but, upon my word, she has done a beastly mean thing in bringing that girl over."

"You mean?"--Ashe hesitated--"that her own position is too doubtful?"

"Doubtful, my dear fellow!" Darrell laughed unpleasantly. "I never really understood what it all meant till the other night when old Lady Grosville took and told me--more at any rate than I knew before. The Grosvilles are on the war-path, and they regard the coming of this poor child as the last straw."

"Why?" said Ashe.

Darrell gave a shrug. "Well, you know the story of Madame d'Estrées' step-daughter--old Blackwater's daughter?"

"Ah! by his first marriage? I knew it was something about the step-daughter," said Ashe, vaguely.

Darrell began to repeat his conversation with Lady Grosville. The tale threatened presently to become a black one indeed; and at last Ashe stood still in the broad walk crossing the Green Park.

"Look here," he said, resolutely, "don't tell me any more. I don't want to hear any more."

"Why?" asked Darrell, in amazement.

"Because"--Ashe hesitated a moment. "Well, I don't want it to be made impossible for me to go to Madame d'Estrées' again. Besides, we've just eaten her salt."

"You're a good friend!" said Darrell, not without something of a sneer.

Ashe was ruffled by the tone, but tried not to show it. He merely insisted that he knew Lady Grosville to be a bit of an old cat; that of course there was something up; but it seemed a shame for those at least who accepted Madame d'Estrées' hospitality to believe the worst. There was a curious mixture of carelessness and delicacy in his remarks, very characteristic of the man. It appeared as though he was at once too indolent to go into the matter, and too chivalrous to talk about it.

Darrell presently maintained a rather angry silence. No man likes to be checked in his story, especially when the check implies something like a snub from his best friend. Suddenly, memory brought before him the little picture of Ashe and Lady Kitty together--he bending over her, in his large, handsome geniality, and she looking up. Darrell felt a twinge of jealousy--then disgust. Really, men like Ashe had the world too easily their own way. That they should pose, besides, was too much.

III

Rather more than a fortnight after the evening at Madame d'Estrées', William Ashe found himself in a Midland train on his way to the Cambridgeshire house of Lady Grosville. While the April country slipped past him--like some blanched face to which life and color are returning--Ashe divided his time between an idle skimming of the Saturday papers and a no less idle dreaming of Kitty Bristol. He had seen her two or three times since his first introduction to her--once at a ball to which Lady Grosville had taken her, and once on the terrace of the House of Commons, where he had strolled up and down with her for a most amusing and stimulating hour, while her mother entertained a group of elderly politicians. And the following day she had come alone--her own choice--to take tea with Lady Tranmore, on that lady's invitation, as prompted by her son. Ashe himself had arrived towards the end of the visit, and had found a Lady Kitty in the height of the fashion, stiff mannered, and flushed to a deep red by her own consciousness that she could not possibly be making a good impression. At sight of him she relaxed, and talked a great deal, but not wisely; and when she was gone, Ashe could get very little opinion of any kind from his mother, who had, however, expressed a wish that she should come and visit them in the country.

Since then he frankly confessed to himself that in the intervals of his new official and administrative work he had been a good deal haunted by memories of this strange child, her eyes, her grace--even in her fits of proud shyness--and the way in which, as he had put her into her cab after the visit to Lady Tranmore, her tiny hand had lingered in his, a mute, astonishing appeal. Haunted, too, by what he heard of her fortunes and surroundings. What was the real truth of Madame d'Estrées' situation? During the preceding weeks some ugly rumors had reached Ashe of financial embarrassment in that quarter, of debts risen to mountainous height, of crisis and possible disappearance. Then these rumors were met by others, to the effect that Colonel Warington, the old friend and support of the d'Estrées' household, had come to the rescue, that the crisis had been averted, and that the three weekly evenings, so well known and so well attended, would go on; and with this phase of the story there mingled, as Ashe was well aware, not the slightest breath of scandal, in a case where, so to speak, all was scandal.

And meanwhile what new and dolorous truths had Lady Kitty been learning as to her mother's history and her mother's position? By Jove! it _was_ hard upon the girl. Darrell was right. Why not leave her to her French friends and relations?--or relinquish her to Lady Grosville? Madame d'Estrées had seen little or nothing of her for years. She could not, therefore, be necessary to her mother's happiness, and there was a real cruelty in thus claiming her, at the very moment of her entrance into society, where Madame d'Estrées could only stand in her way. For although many a man whom the girl might profitably marry was to be found among the mother's guests, the influences of Madame d'Estrées' "evenings" were certainly not matrimonial. Still the unforeseen was surely the probable in Lady Kitty's case. What sort of man ought she to marry--what sort of man could safely take the risks of marrying her--with that mother in the background?

He descended at the way-side station prescribed to him, and looked round him for fellow-guests--much as the card-player examines his hand. Mary Lyster, a cabinet minister--filling an ornamental office and handed on from ministry to ministry as a kind of necessary appendage, the public never knew why--the minister's second wife, an attaché from the Austrian embassy, two members of Parliament, and a well-known journalist--Ashe said to himself flippantly that so far the trumps were not many. But he was always reasonably glad to see Mary, and he went up to her, cared for her bag, and made her put on her cloak, with cousinly civility. In the omnibus on the way to the house he and Mary gossiped in a corner, while the cabinet minister and the editor went to sleep, and the two members of Parliament practised some courageous French on the Austrian attaché.

"Is it to be a large party?" he asked of his companion.

"Oh! they always fill the house. A good many came down yesterday."

"Well, I'm not curious," said Ashe, "except as to one person."

"Who?"

"Lady Kitty Bristol."

Mary Lyster smiled.

"Yes, poor child, I heard from the Grosville girls that she was to be here."

"Why 'poor child'?"

"I don't know. Quite the wrong expression, I admit. It should be 'poor hostess.'"

"Oh!--the Grosvilles complain?"

"No. They're only on tenter-hooks. They never know what she will do next."

"How good for the Grosvilles!"

"You think society is the better for shocks?"

"Lady Grosville can do with them, anyway. What a masterful woman! But I'll back Lady Kitty."

"I haven't seen her yet," said Mary. "I hear she is a very odd-looking little thing."

"Extremely pretty," said Ashe.

"Really?" Mary lifted incredulous eyebrows. "Well, now I shall know what you admire."

"Oh, my tastes are horribly catholic--I admire so many people," said Ashe, with a glance at the well-dressed elegance beside him. Mary colored a little, unseen; and the rattle of the carriage as it entered the covered porch of Grosville Park cut short their conversation.

* * * * *

"Well, I'm glad you got in," said Lady Grosville, in her full, loud voice, "because we are connections. But of course I regard the loss of a seat to our side just now as a great disaster."

"Very grasping, on your part!" said Ashe. "You've had it all your own way lately. Think of Portsmouth!"

Lady Grosville, however, as she met his bantering look, did not find herself at all inclined to think of Portsmouth. She was much more inclined to think of William Ashe. What a good-looking fellow he had grown! She heaved an inward sigh, of mingled envy and appreciation, directed towards Lady Tranmore.

Poor Susan indeed had suffered terribly in the death of her eldest son. But the handsomer and abler of the two brothers still remained to her--and the estate was safe. Lady Grosville thought of her own three daughters, plain and almost dowerless; and of that conceited young man, the heir, whom she could hardly persuade her husband to invite, once a year, for appearance sake.

"Why are we so early?" said Ashe, looking at his watch. "I thought I should be disgracefully late."

For he and Lady Grosville had the library to themselves. It was a fine, book-walled room, with giallo antico columns and Adam decoration; and in its richly colored lamp-lit space, the seated figure--stiffly erect--of Lady Grosville, her profile, said by some to be like a horse and by others to resemble Savonarola, the cap of old Venice point that crowned her grizzled hair, her black velvet dress, and the long-fingered, ugly, yet distinguished hands which lay upon her lap, told significantly; especially when contrasted with the negligent ease and fresh-colored youth of her companion.

Grosville Park was rich in second-rate antiques; and there was a Greco-Roman head above the bookcase with which Ashe had been often compared. As he stood now leaning against the fireplace, the close-piled curls, and eyes--somewhat "à fleur de tête"--of the bust were undoubtedly repeated with some closeness in the living man. Those whom he had offended by some social carelessness or other said of him when they wished to run him down, that he was "floridly" handsome; and there was some truth in it.

"Didn't you get the message about dinner?" said Lady Grosville. Then, as he shook his head: "Very remiss of Parkin. I always tell him he loses his head directly the party goes into double figures. We had to put off dinner a quarter of an hour because of Kitty Bristol, who missed her train at St. Pancras, and only arrived half an hour ago. By-the-way, I suppose you have already seen her--at that woman's?"

"I met her a week or two ago, at Madame d'Estrées'," said Ashe, apparently preoccupied with something wrong in the set of his white waistcoat.

"What did you think of her?"

"A charming young lady," said Ashe, smiling. "What else should I think?"

"A lamb thrown to the wolves," said Lady Grosville, grimly. "How that woman _could_ do such a thing!"

"I saw nothing lamblike about Lady Kitty," said Ashe. "And do you include me among the wolves?"

Lady Grosville hesitated a moment, then stuck to her colors.

"You shouldn't go to such a house," she said, boldly--"I suppose I may say that without offence, William, as I've known you from a boy."

"Say anything you like, my dear Lady Grosville! So you--believe evil things--of Madame d'Estrées?"

His tone was light, but his eyes sought the distant door, as though invoking some fellow-guest to appear and protect him.

Lady Grosville did not answer. Ashe's look returned to her, and he was startled by the expression of her face. He had always known and unwillingly admired her for a fine Old Testament Christian, one from whom the language of the imprecatory Psalms with regard to her enemies, personal and political, might have flowed more naturally than from any other person he knew, of the same class and breeding. But this loathing--this passion of contempt--this heat of memory!--these were new indeed, and the fire of them transfigured the old, gray face.

"I have known a fair number of bad people," said Lady Grosville, in a low voice--"and a good many wicked women. But for meanness and vileness combined, the things I know of the woman who was Blackwater's wife have no equal in my experience!"

There was a moment's pause. Then Ashe said, in a voice as serious as her own:

"I am sorry to hear you say that, partly because I like Madame d'Estrées, and partly--because--I was particularly attracted by Lady Kitty."

Lady Grosville looked up sharply. "Don't marry her, William!--don't marry her! She comes of a bad stock."

Ashe recovered his gayety.

"She is your own niece. Mightn't a man dare--on that guarantee?"

"Not at all," said Lady Grosville, unappeased. "I was a hop out of kin. Besides--a Methodist governess saved me; she converted me, at eighteen, and I owe her everything. But my brothers--and all the rest of us!" She threw up her eyes and hands. "What's the good of being mealy mouthed about it? All the world knows it. A good many of us were mad--and I sometimes think I see more than eccentricity in Kitty."

"Who was Madame d'Estrées?" said Ashe. Why should he wince so at the girl's name?--in that hard mouth?

Lady Grosville smiled.

"Well, I can tell you a good deal about that," she said. "Ah!--another time!"

For the door opened, and in came a group of guests, with a gush of talk and a rustling of silks and satins.

* * * * *

Everybody was gathered; dinner had been announced; and the white-haired and gouty Lord Grosville was in a state of seething impatience that not even the mild-voiced Dean of the neighboring cathedral, engaged in complimenting him on his speech at the Diocesan Conference, could restrain.

"Adelina, need we wait any longer?" said the master of the house, turning an angry eye upon his wife.

"Certainly not--she has had ample time," said Lady Grosville, and rang the bell beside her.

Suddenly there was a whirlwind of noise in the hall, the angry barking of a small dog, the sound of a girl's voice laughing and scolding, the swish of silk skirts. A scandalized butler, obeying Lady Grosville's summons, threw the door open, and in burst Lady Kitty.

"Oh! I'm so sorry," said the new-comer, in a tone of despair. "But I couldn't leave him up-stairs, Aunt Lina! He'd eaten one of my shoes, and begun upon the other. And Julie's afraid of him. He bit her last week. _May_ he sit on my knee? I know I can keep him quiet!"

Every conversation in the library stopped. Twenty amazed persons turned to look. They beheld a slim girl in white at the far end of the large room struggling with a gray terrier puppy which she held under her left arm, and turning appealing eyes towards Lady Grosville. The dog, half frightened, half fierce, was barking furiously. Lady Kitty's voice could hardly be heard through the din, and she was crimson with the effort to control her charge. Her lips laughed; her eyes implored. And to add to the effect of the apparition, a marked strangeness of dress was at once perceived by all the English eyes turned upon her. Lady Kitty was robed in the extreme of French fashion, which at that moment was a fashion of flounces; she was much _décolletée;_ and her fair, abundant hair, carried to a great height, and arranged with a certain calculated wildness around her small face, was surmounted by a large scarlet butterfly which shone defiantly against the dark background of books.

"Kitty!" said Lady Grosville, advancing indignantly, "what a dreadful noise! Pray give the dog to Parkin at once."

Lady Kitty only held the struggling animal tighter.

"_Please_, Aunt Lina!--I'm afraid he'll bite! But he'll be quite good with me."

"Why _did_ you bring him, Kitty? We can't have such a creature at dinner!" said Lady Grosville, angrily.

Lord Grosville advanced behind his wife.

"How do you do, Kitty? Hadn't you better put down the dog and come and be introduced to Mr. Rankine, who is to take you in to dinner?"

Lady Kitty shook her fair head, but advanced, still clinging to the dog, gave a smile and a nod to Ashe, and a bow to the young Tory member presented to her.

"You don't mind him?" she said, a flash of laughter in her dark eyes. "We'll manage him between us, won't we?"

The young man, dazzled by her prettiness and her strangeness, murmured a hopeful assent. Lord Grosville, with the air of a man determined on dinner though the skies fall, offered his arm to Lady Edith Manley, the wife of the cabinet minister, and made for the dining-room. The stream of guests followed; when suddenly the puppy, perceiving on the floor a ball of wool which had rolled out of Lady Grosville's work-table, escaped in an ecstasy of mischief from his mistress's arm and flew upon the ball. Kitty rushed after him; the wool first unrolled, then caught; the table overturned and all its contents were flung pell-mell in the path of Lady Grosville, who, on the arm of the amused and astonished minister, was waiting in restrained fury till her guests should pass.

* * * * *

"I shall never get over this," said Lady Kitty, as she leaned back in her chair, still panting, and quite incapable of eating any of the foods that were being offered to her in quick succession.

"I don't know that you deserve to," said Ashe, turning a face upon her which was as grave as he could make it. The attention of every one else round the room was also in truth occupied with his companion. There was, indeed, a general buzz of conversation and a general pretence that Lady Kitty's proceedings might now be ignored. But in reality every guest, male or female, kept a stealthy watch on the red butterfly and the sparkling face beneath it; and Ashe was well aware of it.

"I vow it was not my fault," said Kitty, with dignity. "I was not allowed to have the dog I should have had. You'd never have found a dog of St. Hubert condescending to bedroom slippers! But as I had to have a dog--and Colonel Warington gave me this one three days ago--and he has already ruined half maman's things, and no one could manage him but me, I just had to bring him, and trust to Providence."

"I have been here a good many times," said Ashe, "and I never yet saw a dog in the sanctuary. Do you know that Pitt once wrote a speech in the library?"

"Did he? I'm sure it never made such a stir as Ponto did." Kitty's face suddenly broke into laughter, and she hid it a moment in her hands.

"You brazen it out," said Ashe; "but how are you going to appease Lady Grosville?"

Kitty ceased to laugh. She drew herself up, and looked seriously, observantly at her aunt.

"I don't know. But I must do it somehow. I don't want any more worries."

So changed were her tone and aspect that Ashe turned a friendly examining look upon her.

"Have you been worried?" he said, in a lower voice.

She shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. But presently she impatiently reclaimed his attention, snatching him from the lady he had taken in to dinner, with no scruple at all.

"Will you come a walk with me to-morrow morning?"

"Proud," said Ashe. "What time?"

"As soon as we can get rid of these people," she said, her eye running round the table. Then as it paused and lingered on the face of Mary Lyster opposite, she abruptly asked him who that lady might be.

Ashe informed her.

"Your cousin?" she said, looking at him with a slight frown. "Your cousin? I don't--well, I don't think I shall like her."

"That's a great pity," said Ashe.

"For me?" she said, distrustfully.

"For both, of course! My mother's very fond of Miss Lyster. She's often with us."

"Oh!" said Kitty, and looked again at the face opposite. Then he heard her say behind her fan, half to herself and half to him:

"She does not interest me in the least! She has no ideas! I'm sure she has no ideas. Has she?"

She turned abruptly to Ashe.

"Every one calls her very clever."

Kitty looked contempt.

"That's nothing to do with it. It's not the clever people who have ideas."

Ashe bantered her a little on the meaning of her words, till he presently found that she was too young and unpractised to be able to take his thrusts and return them, with equanimity. She could make a daring sally or reply; but it was still the raw material of conversation; it wanted ease and polish. And she was evidently conscious of it herself, for presently her cheek flushed and her manner wavered.

"I suppose you--everybody--thinks her very agreeable?" she said, sharply, her eyes returning to Miss Lyster.

"She is a most excellent gossip," said Ashe. "I always go to her for the news."

Kitty glanced again.

"I can see that already she detests me."

"In half an hour?"

The girl nodded.

"She has looked at me twice--about. But she has made up her mind--and she never changes." Then with an abrupt alteration of note she looked round the room. "I suppose your English dining-rooms are all like this? One might be sitting in a hearse. And the pictures--no! _Quelles horreurs_!"

She raised her shoulders again impetuously, frowning at a huge full-length opposite of Lord Grosville as M.F.H., a masterpiece indeed of early Victorian vulgarity.

Then suddenly, hastily, with that flashing softness which so often transformed her expression, she turned towards him, trying to make amends.

"But the library--that was _bien_--ah! _tr-rès, tr-rès_ bien_!"

Her r's rolled a little as she spoke, with a charming effect, and she looked at him radiantly, as though to strike and to make amends were equally her prerogative, and she asked no man's leave.

"You've not yet seen what there is to see here," said Ashe, smiling. "Look behind you."

The girl turned her slim neck and exclaimed. For behind Ashe's chair was the treasure of the house. It was a "Dance of Children," by one of the most famous of the eighteenth-century masters. From the dark wall it shone out with a flower-like brilliance, a vision of color and of grace. The children danced through a golden air, their bodies swaying to one of those "unheard melodies" of art, sweeter than all mortal tunes; their delicate faces alive with joy. The sky and grass and trees seemed to caress them; a soft sunlight clothed them; and flowers brushed their feet.

Kitty turned back again and was silent. Was it Ashe's fancy, or had she grown pale?

"Did you like it?" he asked her. She turned to him, and for the second time in their acquaintance he saw her eyes floating in tears.

"It is too beautiful!" she said, with an effort--almost an angry effort. "I don't want to see it again."

"I thought it would give you pleasure," said Ashe, gently, suddenly conscious of a hope that she was not aware of the slight look of amusement with which Mary Lyster was contemplating them both.

"So it did," said Kitty, furtively applying her lace handkerchief to her tears; "but"--her voice dropped--"when one's unhappy--very unhappy--things like that--things like _Heaven_--hurt! Oh, what a _fool_ I am!" And she sat straightly up, looking round her.

There was a pause; then Ashe said, in another voice:

"Look here, you know this won't do. I thought we were to be cousins."

"Well?" said Kitty, indifferently, not looking at him.

"And I understood that I was to be taken into respectable cousinly counsel?"

"Well?" said Kitty again, crumbling her bread. "I can't do it here, can I?"

Ashe laughed.

"Well, anyhow, we're going to sample the garden to-morrow morning, aren't we?"

"I suppose so," said Kitty. Then, after a moment, she looked at her right-hand neighbor, the young politician to whom as yet she had scarcely vouchsafed a word.

"What's his name?" she asked, under her breath. Ashe repeated it.

"Perhaps I ought to talk to him?"

"Of course you ought," said Ashe, with smiling decision, and turning to the lady whom he had brought in he left her free.

* * * * *

When the ladies rose, Lady Grosville led the way to the large drawing-room, a room which, like the library, had some character, and a thin elegance of style, not, however, warmed and harmonized by the delightful presence of books. The walls, blue and white in color, were panelled in stucco relief. A few family portraits, stiff handlings of stiff people, were placed each in the exact centre of its respective panel. There were a few cases of china and a few polished tables. A crimson Brussels carpet, chosen by Lady Grosville for its "cheerfulness," covered the floor, and there was a large white sheepskin rug before the fireplace. A few hyacinths in pots, and the bright fire supplied the only gay and living notes--before the ladies arrived.

Still, for an English eye, the room had a certain cold charm, was moreover full of _history_. It hardly deserved at any rate the shiver with which Kitty Bristol looked round it.

But she had little time to dwell upon the room and its meanings, for Lady Grosville approached her with a manner which still showed signs of the catastrophe before dinner.

"Kitty, I think you don't know Miss Lyster yet--Mary Lyster--she wants to be introduced to you."

Mary advanced smiling; Kitty held out a limp hand, and they exchanged a few words standing in the centre of the floor, while the other guests found seats.

"What a charming contrast!" said Lady Edith Manley in Lady Grosville's ear. She nodded smiling towards the standing pair--struck by the fine straight lines of Mary's satin dress, the roundness of her fine figure, the oval of her head and face, and then by the little, vibrating, tempestuous creature beside her, so distinguished, in spite of the billowing flounces and ribbons, so direct and significant, amid all the elaboration.

"Kitty is ridiculously overdressed," said Lady Grosville. "I hope we shall soon change that. My girls are going to take her to their woman."

Lady Edith put up her eye-glass slowly and looked at the two Grosville girls; then back at Kitty.

Meanwhile a few perfunctory questions and answers were passing between Miss Lyster and her companion. Mary's aspect as she talked was extremely amiable; one might have called it indulgent, perhaps even by an adjective that implied a yet further shade of delicate superiority. Kitty met it by the same "grand manner" that Ashe had several times observed in her, a manner caught perhaps from some French model, and caricatured in the taking. Her eyes meanwhile took note of Mary's face and dress, and while she listened her small teeth tormented her under-lip, as though she restrained impatience. All at once in the midst of some information that Miss Lyster was lucidly giving, Kitty made an impetuous turn. She had caught some words on the farther side of the room; and she looked hard, eagerly, at the speaker.

"Who is that?" she inquired.

Mary Lyster, with a sharp sense of interruption, replied that she believed the lady in question was the Grosville's French governess. But in the very midst of her sentence Kitty deserted her, left her standing in the centre of the drawing-room, while the deserter fled across it, and sinking down beside the astonished mademoiselle took the Frenchwoman's hand by assault and held it in both her own.

"Vous parlez Français?--vous êtes Française? Ah! ça me fait tant de bien! Voyons! voyons!--causons un peu!"

And bending forward, she broke into a cataract of French, all the elements of her strange, small beauty rushing, as it were, into flame and movement at the swift sound and cadence of the words, like a dancer kindled by music. The occasion was of the slightest; the Frenchwoman might well show a natural bewilderment. But into the slight occasion the girl threw an animation, a passion, that glorified it. It was like the leap of a wild rain-stream on the mountains, that pours into the first channel which presents itself.

"What beautiful French!" said Lady Edith, softly, to Mary Lyster, who had found a seat beside her.

Mary Lyster smiled.

"She has been at school, of course, in a French convent." Somehow the tone implied that the explanation disposed of all merit in the performance.

"I am afraid these French convent schools are not at all what they should be," said Lady Grosville.

And rising to a pyramidal height, her ample moiré dress swelling behind her, her gray head magnificently crowned by its lace cap and black velvet _bandeau_, she swept across the room to where the Dean's wife, Mrs. Winston, sat in fascinated silence observing Lady Kitty. The silence and the attention annoyed her hostess. The first thing to be done with girls of this type, it seemed to Lady Grosville, was to prove to them that they would _not_ be allowed to monopolize society.

* * * * *

There are natural monopolies, however, and they are not easy to deal with.

As soon as the gentlemen returned, Mr. Rankine, whom she had treated so badly at dinner, the young agent of the estate, the clergyman of the parish, the Austrian attaché, the cabinet minister, and the Dean, all showed a strong inclination to that side of the room which seemed to be held in force by Lady Kitty. The Dean especially was not to be gainsaid. He placed himself in the seat shyly vacated by the French governess, and crossed his thin, stockinged legs with the air of one who means to take his ease. There was even a certain curious resemblance between him and Kitty, as was noticed from a distance by Ashe. The Dean, who was very much a man of the world, and came of an historic family, was, in his masculine degree, planned on the same miniature scale and with the same fine finish as the girl of eighteen. And he carried his knee-breeches, his apron, and his exquisite white head with a natural charm and energy akin to hers--mellowed though it were by time, and dignified by office. He began eagerly to talk to her of Paris. His father had been ambassador for a time under Louis Philippe, and he had boyish memories of the great house in the Faubourg St. Honoré, and of the Orleanist ministers and men of letters. And lo! Kitty met him at once, in a glow and sparkle that enchanted the old man. Moreover, it appeared that this much-beflounced young lady could talk; that she had heard of the famous names and the great affairs to which the Dean made allusion; that she possessed indeed a native and surprising interest in matter of the sort; and a manner, above all, with the old, alternately soft and daring, calculated, as Lady Grosville would no doubt have put it, merely to make fools of them.

In her cousins' house, it seemed, she had talked with old people, survivors of the Orleanist and Bourbon régimes--even of the Empire; had sat at their feet, a small, excited hero-worshipper; and had then rushed blindly into the memoirs and books that concerned them. So, in this French world the child had found time for other things than hunting, and the flattery of her cousin Henri? Ashe was supposed to be devoting himself to the Dean's wife; but both he and she listened most of the time to the sallies and the laughter of the circle where Kitty presided.

"My dear young lady," cried the delighted Dean, "I never find anybody who can talk of these things--it is really astonishing. Ah, _now_, we English know nothing of France--nor they of us. Why, I was a mere school-boy then, and I had a passion for their society, and their books--for their _plays_--dare I confess it?"--he lowered his voice and glanced at his hostess--"their plays, above all!"

Kitty clapped her hands. The Dean looked at her, and ran on:

"My mother shared it. When I came over for my Eton holidays, she and I lived at the Théâtre-Français. Ah, those were days! _I_ remember Mademoiselle Mars in 'Hernani.'"

Kitty bounded in her seat. Whereupon it appeared that just before she left Paris she had been taken by a friend to see the reigning idol of the Comédie-Française, the young and astonishing actress, Sarah Bernhardt, as Doña Sol. And there began straightway an excited duet between her and the Dean; a comparison of old and new, a rivalry of heroines, a hot and critical debate that presently silenced all other conversation in the room, and brought Lord Grosville to stand gaping and astounded behind the Dean, reflecting no doubt that this was not precisely the Dean of the Diocesan Conference.

The old man indeed forgot his age, the girl her youth; they met as equals, on poetic ground, till suddenly Kitty, springing up, and to prove her point, began an imitation of Sarah in the great love-scene of the last act, before arresting fate, in the person of Don Ruy, breaks in upon the rapture of the lovers. She absolutely forgot the Grosville drawing-room, the staring Grosville girls, the other faces, astonished or severe, neutral or friendly. Out rolled the tide of tragic verse, fine poetry, and high passion; and though it be not very much to say, it must at least be said that never had such recitation, in such French, been heard before within the walls of Grosville Park. Nor had the lips of any English girl ever dealt there with a poetic diction so unchastened and unashamed. Lady Grosville might well feel as though the solid frame of things were melting and cracking round her.

Kitty ceased. She fell back upon her chair, smitten with a sudden perception.

"You made me!" she said, reproachfully, to the Dean.

The Dean said another "Brava!" and gave another clap. Then, becoming aware of Lord Grosville's open mouth and eye, he sat up, caught his wife's expression, and came back to prose and the present.

"My dear young lady," he began, "you have the most extraordinary talent--" when Lady Grosville advanced upon him. Standing before him, she majestically signalled to her husband across his small person.

"William, kindly order Mrs. Wilson's carriage."

Lord Grosville awoke from his stupor with a jerk, and did as he was told. Mrs. Wilson, the agent's timid wife, who was not at all aware that she had asked for her carriage, rose obediently. Then the mistress of the house turned to Lady Kitty.

"You recite very well, Kitty," she said, with cold and stately emphasis, "but another time I will ask you to confine yourself to Racine and Corneille. In England we have to be very careful about French writers. There are, however, if I remember right, some fine passages in 'Athalie.'"

Kitty said nothing. The Austrian attaché who had been following the little incident with the liveliest interest, retired to a close inspection of the china. But the Dean, whose temper was of the quick and chivalrous kind, was roused.

"She recites wonderfully! And Victor Hugo is a classic, please, my lady--just as much as the rest of them. Ah, well, no doubt, no doubt, there might be things more suitable." And the old man came wavering down to earth, as the enthusiasm which Kitty had breathed into him escaped, like the gas from a balloon. "But, do you know, Lady Kitty "--he struck into a new subject with eagerness, partly to cover the girl, partly to silence Lady Grosville--"you reminded me all the time so remarkably--in your voice--certain inflections--of your sister--your step-sister, isn't it?--Lady Alice? You know, of course, she is close to you to-day--just the other side the park--with the Sowerbys?"

The Dean's wife sprang to her feet in despair. In general it was to her a matter for fond complacency that her husband had no memory for gossip, and was in such matters as innocent and as dangerous as a child. But this was too much. At the same moment Ashe came quickly forward.

"My sister?" said Kitty. "My sister?"

She spoke low and uncertainly, her eyes fixed upon the Dean.

He looked at her with a sudden odd sense of something unusual, then went on, still floundering:

"We met her at St. Pancras on our way down. If I had only known we were to have had the pleasure of meeting you--Do you know, I think she is looking decidedly better?"

His kindly expression as he rose expected a word of sisterly assent. Meanwhile even Lady Grosville was paralyzed, and the words with which she had meant to interpose failed on her lips.

Kitty, too, rose, looking round for something, which she seemed to find in the face of William Ashe, for her eyes clung there.

"My sister," she repeated, in the same low, strained voice. "My sister Alice? I--I don't know. I have never seen her."

* * * * *

Ashe could not remember afterwards precisely how the incident closed. There was a bustle of departing guests, and from the midst of it Lady Kitty slipped away. But as he came down-stairs in smoking trim, ten minutes later, he overheard the injured Dean wrestling with his wife, as she lit a candle for him on the landing.

"My dear, what did you look at me like that for? What did the child mean? And what on _earth_ is the matter?"

IV

After the ladies had gone to bed, on the night of Lady Kitty's recitation, William Ashe stayed up till past midnight talking with old Lord Grosville. When relieved of the presence of his women-kind, who were apt either to oppress him, in the person of his wife, or to puzzle him, in the persons of his daughters, Lord Grosville was not by any means without value as a talker. He possessed that narrow but still most serviceable fund of human experience which the English land-owner, while our English tradition subsists, can hardly escape, if he will. As guardsman, volunteer, magistrate, lord-lieutenant, member--for the sake of his name and his acres--of various important commissions, as military _attaché_ even, for a short space, to an important embassy, he had acquired, by mere living, that for which his intellectual betters had often envied him--a certain shrewdness, a certain instinct, as to both men and affairs, which were often of more service to him than finer brains to other persons. But, like most accomplishments, these also brought their own conceit with them. Lord Grosville having, in his own opinion, done extremely well without much book education himself, had but little appreciation for it in others.

Nevertheless he rarely missed a chance of conversation with William Ashe, not because the younger man, in spite of his past indolence, was generally held to be both able and accomplished, but because the elder found in him an invincible taste for men and women, their fortunes, oddities, catastrophes--especially the latter--similar to his own.

Like Mary Lyster, both were good gossips; but of a much more disinterested type than she. Women indeed as gossips are too apt to pursue either the damnation of some one else or the apotheosis of themselves. But here the stupider no less than the abler man showed a certain broad detachment not very common in women--amused by the human comedy itself, making no profit out of it, either for themselves or morals, but asking only that the play should go on.

The incident, or rather the heroine of the evening, had given Lord Grosville a topic which in the case of William Ashe he saw no reason for avoiding; and in the peace of the smoking-room, when he was no longer either hungry for his dinner or worried by his responsibilities as host, he fell upon his wife's family, and, as though he had been the manager of a puppet-show, unpacked the whole box of them for Ashe's entertainment.

Figure after figure emerged, one more besmirched than another, till finally the most beflecked of all was shaken out and displayed--Lady Grosville's brother and Kitty's father, the late Lord Blackwater. And on this occasion Ashe did not try to escape the story which was thus a second time brought across him. Lord Grosville, if he pleased, had a right to tell it, and there was now a curious feeling in Ashe's mind which had been entirely absent before, that he had, in some sort, a right to hear it.

Briefly, the outlines of it fell into something like this shape: Henry, fifth Earl of Blackwater, had begun life as an Irish peer, with more money than the majority of his class; an initial advantage soon undone by an insane and unscrupulous extravagance. He was, however, a fine, handsome, voracious gentleman, born to prey upon his kind, and when he looked for an heiress he was not long in finding her. His first wife, a very rich woman, bore him one daughter. Before the daughter was three years old, Lord Blackwater had developed a sturdy hatred of the mother, chiefly because she failed to present him with a son; and he could not even appease himself by the free spending of her money, which, so far as the capital was concerned, was sharply looked after by a pair of trustees, Belfast manufacturers and Presbyterians, to whom the Blackwater type was not at all congenial.

These restrictions presently wore out Lord Blackwater's patience. He left his wife, with a small allowance, to bring up her daughter in one of his Irish houses, while he generously spent the rest of her large income, and his own, and a great deal besides, in London and on the Continent.

Lady Blackwater, however, was not long before she obliged him by dying. Her girl, then twelve years old, lived for a time with one of her mother's trustees. But when she had reached the age of seventeen her father suddenly commanded her presence in Paris, that she might make acquaintance with his second wife.

The new Lady Blackwater was an extremely beautiful woman, Irish, as the first had been, but like her in no other respect. Margaret Fitzgerald was the daughter of a cosmopolitan pair, who after many shifts for a living, had settled in Paris, where the father acted as correspondent for various English papers. Her beauty, her caprices, and her "affairs" were all well known in Paris. As to what the relations between her and Lord Blackwater might have been before the death of the wife, Lord Grosville took a frankly uncharitable view. But when that event occurred, Blackwater was beginning to get old, and Miss Fitzgerald had become necessary to him. She pressed all her advantages, and it ended in his marrying her. The new Lady Blackwater presented him with one child, a daughter; and about two years after its birth he sent for his elder daughter, Lady Alice, to join them in the sumptuous apartment in the Place Vendôme which he had furnished for his new wife, in defiance both of his English and Irish creditors.

Lady Alice arrived--a fair slip of a girl, possessed, it was plain to see, by a nervous terror both of her father and step-mother. But Lady Blackwater received her with effusion, caressed her in public, dressed her to perfection, and made all possible use of the girl's presence in the house for the advancement of her own social position. Within a year the Belfast trustees, watching uneasily from a distance, received a letter from Lord Blackwater, announcing Lady Alice's runaway marriage with a certain Colonel Wensleydale, formerly of the Grenadier Guards. Lord Blackwater professed himself vastly annoyed and displeased. The young people, furiously in love, had managed the affair, however, with a skill that baffled all vigilance. Married they were, and without any settlements, Colonel Wensleydale having nothing to settle, and Lady Alice, like a little fool, being only anxious to pour all that she possessed into the lap of her beloved. The father threw himself on the mercy of the trustees, reminding them that in little more than three years Lady Alice would become unfettered mistress of her own fortune, and begging them meanwhile to make proper provision for the rash but happy pair. Harry Wensleydale, after all, was a rattling good fellow, with whom all the young women were in love. The thing, though naughty, was natural; and the colonel would make an excellent husband.

One Presbyterian trustee left his business in Belfast and ventured himself among the abominations of Paris. He was much befooled and befeasted. He found a shy young wife tremulously in love; a handsome husband; an amiable step-mother. He knew no one in Paris who could enlighten him, and was not clever enough to invent means of getting information for himself. He was induced to promise a sufficient income for the moment on behalf of himself and his co-trustee; and for the rest was obliged to be content with vague assurances from Colonel Wensleydale that as soon as his wife came into her property fitting settlements should be made.

Four years passed by. The young people lived with the Blackwaters, and their income kept the establishment going. Lady Alice had a child, and was at first not altogether unhappy. She was little more than a timid child herself; and no doubt, to begin with, she was in love. Then came her majority. In defiance of all her trustees, she gave her whole fortune to her husband, and no power could prevent her from so doing.

The Blackwater ménage blazed up into a sudden splendor. Lady Blackwater's carriage and Lady Blackwater's jewels had never been finer; and amid the crowds who frequented the house, the slight figure, the sallow face, and absent eyes of her step-daughter attracted little remark. Lady Alice Wensleydale was said to be delicate and reserved; she made no friends, explained herself to no one; and it was supposed that she occupied herself with her little boy.

Then one December she disappeared from the apartment in the Place Vendôme. It was said that she and the boy found the climate of Paris too cold in winter, and had gone for a time to Italy. Colonel Wensleydale continued to live with the Blackwaters, and their apartment was no less sumptuous, their dinners no less talked of, their extravagance no less noisy than before. But Lady Alice did not come back with the spring; and some ugly rumors began to creep about. They were checked, however, by the death of Lord Blackwater, which occurred within a year of his daughter's departure; by the monstrous debts he left behind him; and by the sale of the contents of the famous apartment, matters, all of them, sufficiently ugly or scandalous in themselves to keep the tongues of fame busy. Lady Blackwater left Paris, and when she reappeared, it was in Rome as the Comtesse d'Estrées, the wife of yet another old man, whose health obliged them to winter in the south and to spend the summer in yachting. Her _salon_ in Rome under Pio Nono became a great rendezvous for English and Americans, attracted by the historic names and titles that M. d'Estrées' connections among the Black nobility, his wealth, and his interest in several of the Catholic banking-houses of Rome and Naples enabled his wife to command.

Colonel Wensleydale did not appear. Madame d'Estrées let it be understood that her step-daughter was of a difficult temper, and now spent most of her time in Ireland. Her own daughter, her "darling Kitty," was being educated in Paris by the Soeurs Blanches, and she pined for the day when the "little sweet" should join her, ready to spread her wings in the great world. But mothers must not be impatient, Kitty must have all the advantages that befitted her rank; and to what better hands could the most anxious mother intrust her than to those charming, aristocratic, accomplished nuns of the Soeurs Blanches?

Then one January day M. d'Estrées drove out to San Paolo fuori le Mura, and caught a blast from the snowy Sabines coming back. In three days he was dead, and his well-provided widow had snatched the bulk of his fortune from the hands of his needy and embittered kindred.

Within six months of his death she had bought a house in St. James's Place, and her London career had begun.

* * * * *

"It is here that we come in," said Lord Grosville, when, with more digressions and more plainness of speech with regard to his quondam sister-in-law than can be here reproduced, he had brought his story to this point. "Blackwater--the old ruffian--when he was dying had a moment of remorse. He wrote to my wife and asked her to look after his girls, 'For God's sake, Lina, see if you can help Alice--Wensleydale's a perfect brute.' That was the first light we had on the situation, for Adelina had long before washed her hands of him; and we knew that _she_ hated us. Well, we tried; of course we tried. But so long as her husband lived Alice would have nothing to say to any of us. I suppose she thought that for her boy's sake she'd better keep a bad business to herself as much as possible--"

"Wensleydale--Wensleydale?" said Ashe, who had been smoking hard and silently beside his host. "You mean the man who distinguished himself in the Crimea? He died last year--at Naples, wasn't it?"

Lord Grosville assented.

It appeared that during the last year of his life Lady Alice had nursed her husband faithfully through disease and poverty; for scarcely a vestige of her fortune remained, and an application for money made by Wensleydale to Madame d'Estrées, unknown to his wife, had been peremptorily refused. The colonel died, and within three months of his death Lady Alice had also lost her son and only child, of blood-poisoning developed in Naples, whither he had been summoned from school that his father might see him for the last time.

Then, after seventeen years, Lady Alice came back to her kindred, who had last seen her as a young girl--gentle, undeveloped, easily led, and rather stupid. She returned a gray-haired woman of thirty-four, who had lost youth, fortune, child, and husband; whose aspect, moreover, suggested losses still deeper and more drear. At first she wrapped herself in what seemed to some a dull and to others a tragic silence. But suddenly a flame leaped up in her. She became aware of the position of Madame d'Estrées in London; and one day, at a private view of the Academy, her former step-mother went up to her smiling, with out-stretched hand. Lady Alice turned very pale; the hand dropped, and Alice Wensleydale walked rapidly away. But that night, in the Grosville house, she spoke out.

"She told Lina and myself the whole story. You'd have thought the woman was possessed. My wife--she's not of the crying sort, nor am I. But she cried, and I believe--well, I can tell you it was enough to move a stone. And when she'd done, she just went away, and locked her door, and let no one say a word to her. She has told one or two other relations and friends, and--"

"And the relations and friends have told others?"

"Well, I can answer for myself," said Grosville after a pause. "This happened three months ago. I never have told, and never shall tell, all the details as she told them to us. But we have let enough be known--"

"Enough?--enough to damn Madame d'Estrées?"

"Oh, well, as far as the women were concerned, she was mostly that already. There are other tales going about. I expect you know them."

"No, I don't know them," said Ashe.

Lord Grosville's face expressed surprise. "Well, this finished it," he said.

"Poor child!" said Ashe, slowly, putting down his cigarette and turning a thoughtful look on the carpet.

"Alice?" said Lord Grosville.

"No."

"Oh! you mean Kitty? Yes, I had forgotten her for the moment. Yes, poor child."

There was silence a moment, then Lord Grosville inquired:

"What do you think of her?"

"I?" said Ashe, with a laugh. "I don't know. She's obviously very pretty--"

"And a handful!" said Lord Grosville.

"Oh, quite plainly a handful," said Ashe, rather absently. Then the memory of Kitty's entry recurred to them both, and they laughed.

"Not much shyness left in that young woman--eh?" said the old man. "She tells my girls such stories of her French doings--my wife's had to stop it. She seems to have had all sorts of love-affairs already. And, of course, she'll have any number over here--sure to. Some unscrupulous fellow'll get hold of her, for naturally the right sort won't marry her. I don't know what we can do. Adelina offered to take her altogether. But that woman wouldn't hear of it. She wrote Lina rather a good letter--on her dignity--and that kind of thing. We gave her an opening, and, by Jove! she took it."

"And meanwhile Lady Kitty has no dealings with her step-sister?"

"You heard what she said. Extraordinary girl! to let the thing out plump like that. Just like the blood. They say anything that comes into their heads. If we had known that Alice was to be with the Sowerbys this week-end, my wife would certainly have put Kitty off. It would be uncommonly awkward if they were to meet--here for instance. Hullo! Is it getting late?"

For the whist-players at the end of the library had pushed back their chairs, and men were strolling back from the billiard-room.

"I am afraid Lady Kitty understands there is something wrong with her mother's position," said Ashe, as they rose.

"I dare say. Brought up in Paris, you see," said the white-haired Englishman, with a shrug. "Of course, she knows everything she shouldn't."

"Brought up in a convent, please," said Ashe, smiling. "And I thought the French _girl_ was the most innocent and ignorant thing alive."

Lord Grosville received the remark with derision.

"You ask my wife what she thinks about French convents. She knows--she's had lots of Catholic relations. She'll tell you tales."

Ashe thought, however, that he could trust himself to see that she did nothing of the sort.

* * * * *

The smoking-room broke up late, but the new Under-secretary sat up still later, reading and smoking in his bedroom. A box of Foreign Office papers lay on his table. He went through them with a keen sense of pleasure, enjoying his new work and his own competence to do it, of which, notwithstanding his remarks to Mary Lyster, he was not really at all in doubt. Then when his comments were done, and the papers replaced in the order in which they would now go up to the Secretary of State, he felt the spring night oppressively mild, and walking to the window, he threw it wide open.

He looked out upon a Dutch garden, full of spring flowers in bloom. In the midst was a small fountain, which murmured to itself through the night. An orangery or conservatory, of a charming eighteenth-century design, ran round the garden in a semicircle, its flat pilasters and mouldings of yellow stone taking under the moonlight the color and the delicacy of ivory. Beyond the terrace which bordered the garden, the ground fell to a river, of which the reaches, now dazzling, now sombre, now slipping secret under woods, and now silverly open to the gentle slopes of the park, brought wildness and romance into a scene that had else been tame. Beyond the river on a rising ground was a village church with a spire. The formal garden, the Georgian conservatory, the park, the river, the church--they breathed England and the traditional English life. All that they implied, of custom and inheritance, of strength and narrowness, of cramping prejudice and stubborn force, was very familiar to Ashe, and on the whole very congenial. He was glad to be an Englishman and a member of an English government. The ironic mood which was tolerably constant in him did not in the least interfere with his normal enjoyment of normal goods. He saw himself often as a shade among shadows, as an actor among actors; but the play was good all the same. That a man should know himself to be a fool was in his eyes, as it was in Lord Melbourne's, the first of necessities. But fool or no fool, let him find the occupations that suited him, and pursue them. On those terms life was still amply worth living, and ginger was still hot in the mouth.

This was his usual philosophy. Religiously he was a sceptic, enormously interested in religion. Should he ever become Prime Minister, as Lady Tranmore prophesied, he would know much more theology than the bishops he might be called on to appoint. Politically, at the same time, he was an aristocrat, enormously interested in liberty. The absurdities of his own class were still more plain to him perhaps than the absurdities of the populace. But had he lived a couple of generations earlier he would have gone with passion for Catholic emancipation, and boggled at the Reform Bill. And if fate had thrown him on earlier days still, he would not, like Falkland, have died ingeminating peace; he would have fought; but on which side, no friend of his--up till now--could have been quite sure. To have the reputation of an idler, and to be in truth a plodding and unwearied student; this, at any rate, pleased him. To avow an enthusiasm, or an affection, generally seemed to him an indelicacy; only two or three people in the world knew what was the real quality of his heart. Yet no man feigns shirking without in some measure learning to shirk; and there were certain true indolences and sybaritisms in Ashe of which he was fully and contemptuously aware, without either wishing or feeling himself able to break the yoke of them.

At the present moment, however, he was rather conscious of much unusual stirring and exaltation of personality. As he stood looking out into the English night the currents of his blood ran free and fast. Never had he felt the natural appetite for living so strong in him, combined with what seemed to be at once a divination of coming change, and a thirst for it. Was it the mere advancement of his fortunes--or something infinitely subtler and sweeter? It was as though waves of softness and of yearning welled up from some unknown source, seeking an object and an outlet.

As he stood there dreaming, he suddenly became conscious of sounds in the room overhead. Or rather in the now absolute stillness of the rest of the house he realized that the movements and voices above him, which had really been going on since he entered his room, persisted when everything else had died away.

Two people were talking; or rather one voice ran on perpetually, broken at intervals by the other. He began to suspect to whom the voice belonged; and as he did so, the window above his own was thrown open. He stepped back involuntarily, but not before he had caught a few words in French, spoken apparently by Lady Kitty.

"Ciel! what a night!--and how the flowers smell! And the stars--I adore the stars! Mademoiselle--come here! Mademoiselle! answer me--I won't tell tales--now do you--_really and truly_--believe in God?"

A laugh, which was a laugh of pleasure, ran through Ashe, as he hurriedly put out his lights.

"Tormentor!" he said to himself--"must you put a woman through her theological paces at this time of night? Can't you go to sleep, you little whirlwind?--What's to be done? If I shut my window the noise will scare her. But I can't stand eavesdropping here."

He withdrew softly from the window and began to undress. But Lady Kitty was leaning out, and her voice carried amazingly. Heard in this way also, apart from form and face, it became a separate living thing. Ashe stood arrested, his watch that he was winding up in his hand. He had known the voice till now as something sharp and light, the sign surely of a chatterer and a flirt. To-night, as Kitty made use of it to expound her own peculiar theology to the French governess--whereof a few fragments now and then floated down to Ashe--nothing could have been more musical, melancholy, caressing. A voice full of sex, and the spell of sex.

What had she been talking of all these hours to mademoiselle? A lady whom she could never have set eyes on before this visit. He thought of her face, in the drawing-room, as she had spoken of her sister--of her eyes, so full of a bright feverish pain, which had hung upon his own.

Had she, indeed, been confiding all her home secrets to this stranger? Ashe felt a movement of distaste, almost of disgust. Yet he remembered that it was by her unconventionality, her lack of all proper reticence, or, as many would have said, all delicate feeling, that she had made her first impression upon him. Ay, that had been an impression--an impression indeed! He realized the fact profoundly, as he stood lingering in the darkness, trying not to hear the voice that thrilled him.

At last!--was she going to bed?

"Ah!--but I am a pig, to keep you up like this! Allez dormir!" (The sound of a kiss.) "I? Oh no! Why should one go to bed? It is in the night one begins to live."

She fell to humming a little French tune, then broke off.

"You remember? You promise? You have the letter?"

Asseverations apparently from mademoiselle, and a mention of eight o'clock, followed by remorse from Kitty.

"Eight o'clock! And I keep you like this. I am a brute beast! Allez--allez vite!" And quick steps scudded across the floor above, followed by the shutting of a door.

Kitty, however, came back to the window, and Ashe could still hear her sighing and talking to herself.

What had she been plotting? A letter? Conveyed by mademoiselle? To whom?

* * * * *

Long after all sounds above had ceased Ashe still lay awake, thinking of the story he had heard from Lord Grosville. Certainly, if he had known it, he would never have gone familiarly to Madame d'Estrées' house. Laxity, for a man of his type, is one thing; lying, meanness, and cruelty are another. What could be done for this poor child in her strange and sinister position? He was ironically conscious of a sudden heat of missionary zeal. For if the creature to be saved had not possessed such a pair of eyes--so slim a neck--such a haunting and teasing personality--what then?

The question presently plunged with him into sleep. But he had not forgotten it when he awoke.

* * * * *

He had just finished dressing next morning, when he chanced to see from the front window of his room, which commanded the main stretch of the park, the figure of a lady on one of the paths. She seemed to be returning from the farther end of a long avenue, and was evidently hurrying to reach the house. As she approached, however, she turned aside into a shrubbery walk and was soon lost to view. But Ashe had recognized Mademoiselle D. The matter of the letter recurred to him. He guessed that she had already delivered it. But where?

At breakfast Lady Kitty did not appear. Ashe made inquiries of the younger Miss Grosville, who replied with some tartness that she supposed Kitty had a cold, and hurried off herself to dress for Sunday-school. It was not at all the custom for young ladies to breakfast in bed on Sundays at Grosville Park, and Lady Grosville's brow was clouded. Ashe felt it a positive effort to tell her that he was not going to church, and when she had marshalled her flock and carried them off, those left behind knew themselves, indeed, as heathens and publicans.

Ashe wandered out with some official papers and a pipe into the spring sunshine. Mr. Kershaw, the editor, would gladly have caught him for a political talk. But Ashe would not be caught. As to the interests of England in the Persian Gulf, both they and Mr. Kershaw might for the moment go hang. Would Lady Kitty meet him in the old garden at eleven-thirty, or would she not? That was the only thing that mattered.

However, it was still more than an hour to the time mentioned. Ashe spent a while in roaming a wood delicately pied with primroses and anemones, and then sauntered back into the gardens, which were old and famous.

Suddenly, as he came upon a terrace bordered by a thick yew hedge, and descending by steps to a lower terrace, he became aware of voices in a strange tone and key--not loud, but, as it were, intensified far beyond the note of ordinary talk. Ashe stood still; for he had recognized the voice of Lady Kitty. But before he had made up his mind what to do a lady began to ascend the steps which connected the upper terrace with the lower. She came straight towards him, and Ashe looked at her with astonishment. She was not a member of the Grosville house party, and Ashe had never seen her before. Yet in her pale, unhappy face there was something that recalled another person; something, too, in her gait and her passionate energy of movement. She swept past him, and he saw that she was tall and thin, and dressed in deep mourning. Her eyes were set on some inner vision; he felt that she scarcely saw him. She passed like an embodied grief--menacing and lamentable.

Something like a cry pursued her up the steps. But she did not turn. She walked swiftly on, and was soon lost to sight in the trees.

Ashe hesitated a moment, then hurried down the steps.

On a stone seat beneath the yew hedge, Kitty Bristol lay prone. He heard her sobs, and they went most strangely through his heart.

"Lady Kitty!" he said, as he stood beside her and bent over her.

She looked up, and showed no surprise. Her face was bathed in tears, but her hand sought his piteously and drew him towards her.

"I have seen my sister," she said, "and she hates me. What have I done? I think I shall die of despair!"

V

The effect of the few sobbing words, with which Kitty Bristol had greeted his presence beside her, upon the feeling of William Ashe was both sharp and deep, for they seemed already to imply a peculiar relation, a special link between them. Had it not, indeed, begun in that very moment at St. James's Place when he had first caught sight of her, sitting forlorn in her white dress?--when she had "willed" him to come to her, and he came? Surely--though as to this he had his qualms--she could not have spoken with this abandonment to any other of her new English acquaintances? To Darrell, for instance, who was expected at Grosville Park that evening. No! From the beginning she had turned to him, William Ashe; she had been conscious of the same mutual understanding, the same sympathy in difference that he himself felt.

It was, at any rate, with the feeling of one whose fate has most strangely, most unexpectedly overtaken him that he sat down beside her. His own pulses were running at a great rate; but there was to be no sign of it for her. He tried, indeed, to calm her by that mere cheerful strength and vitality of which he was so easily master. "Why should you be in despair?" he said, bending towards her. "Tell me. Let me try and help you. Was your sister unkind to you?"

Kitty made no reply at once. The tears that brimmed her large eyes slipped down her cheeks without disfiguring her. She was looking absently, intently, into a dark depth of wood as though she sought there for some truth that escaped her--truth of the past or of the present.

"I don't know," she said, at last, shaking her head, "I don't know whether it was unkind. Perhaps it was only what we deserve, maman and I."

"You!" cried Ashe.

"Yes," she said, passionately. "Who's going to separate between maman and me? If she's done mean, shocking things, the people she's done them to will hate me too. They _shall_ hate me! It's right."

She turned to him violently. She was very white, and her little hands as she sat there before him, proudly erect, twisted a lace handkerchief between them that would soon be in tatters. Somehow Ashe winced before the wreck of the handkerchief; what need to ruin the pretty, fragile thing?

"I am quite sure no one will ever hate you for what you haven't done," he said, steadily. "That would be abominably unfair. But, you see, I don't understand--and I don't like--I don't wish--to ask questions."

"_Do_ ask questions!" she cried, looking at him almost reproachfully. "That's just what I want you to do--Only," she added, hanging her head in depression, "I shouldn't know what to answer. I am played with, and treated as a baby! There is something horrible the matter--and no one trusts me--every one keeps me in the dark. No one ever thinks whether I am miserable or not."

She raised her hands to her eyes and vehemently wiped away her tears with the tattered lace handkerchief. In all these words and actions, however, she was graceful and touching, because she was natural. She was not posing or conscious, she was hiding nothing. Yet Ashe felt certain she could act a part magnificently; only it would not be for the lie's sake, but for the sake of some romantic impulse or imagination.

"Why should you torment yourself so?" he asked her, kindly. Her hand had dropped and lay beside her on the bench. To his own amazement he found himself clasping it. "Isn't it better to forget old griefs? You can't help what happened years ago--you can't undo it. You've got to live your own life--_happily_! And I just wish you'd set about it."

He smiled at her, and there were few faces more attractive than his when he let his natural softness have its way, without irony. She let her eyes be drawn to his, and as they met he saw a flush rise in her clear skin and spread to the pale gold of her hair. The man in him was marvellously pleased by that flush--fascinated, indeed. But she gave him small time to observe it; she drew herself impatiently away.

"Of course, you don't understand a word about it," she said, "or you couldn't talk like that. But I'll tell you." Her eyes, half miserable, half audacious, returned to him. "My sister--came here--because I sent for her. I made mademoiselle go with a letter. Of course, I knew there was a mystery--I knew the Grosvilles did not want us to meet--I knew that she and maman hated each other. But maman will tell me nothing--and I have a _right_ to know."

"No, you have no right to know," said Ashe, gravely.

She looked at him wildly.

"I have--I have!" she repeated, passionately. "Well, I told my sister to meet me here--I had forgotten, you see, all about you! My mind was so full of Alice. And when she came I felt as if it was a dream--a horrible, tragic dream. You know--she is _so_ like me--which means, I suppose, that we are both like papa. Only her face--it's not handsome, oh no--but it's stern--and--yes, noble! I was proud of her. I would like to have gone on my knee and kissed her dress. But she would not take my hand--she would hardly speak to me. She said she had come, because it was best, now that I was in England, that we should meet once, and understand that we _couldn't_ meet--that we could never, never be friends. She said that she hated my mother--that for years she had kept silence, but that now she meant to punish maman--to drive her from London. And then"--the girl's lips trembled under the memory--"she came close to me, and she looked into my eyes, and she said, 'Yes, we're like each other---we're like our father--and it would be better for us both if we had never been born--'"

"Ah, cruel!" cried Ashe, involuntarily, and once more his hand found Kitty's small fingers and pressed them in his.

Kitty looked at him with a strange, exalted look.

"No. I think it's true. I often think I'm not made to be happy. I can't ever be happy--it's not in me."

"It's in you to say foolish things then!" said Ashe, lightly, and crossing his arms he tried to assume the practical elder-brotherly air, which he felt befitted the situation--if anything befitted it. For in truth it seemed to him one singularly confused and ugly. Their talk floated above tragic depths, guessed at by him, wholly unknown to her. And yet her youth shrank from it knew not what--"as an animal shrinks from shadows in the twilight." She seemed to him to sit enwrapped in a vague cloud of shame, resenting and hating it, yet not able to escape from thinking and talking of it. But she must not talk of it.

She did not answer his last remark for a little while. She sat looking before her, overwhelmed, it seemed, by an inward rush of images and sensations. Till, with a sudden movement, she turned to him and said, smiling, quite in her ordinary voice:

"Do you know why I shall never be happy? It is because I have such a bad temper."

"Have you?" said Ashe, smiling.

She gave him a curious look.

"You don't believe it? If you had been in the convent, you would have believed it. I'm mad sometimes--quite mad; with pride, I suppose, and vanity. The Soeurs said it was that."

"They had to explain it somehow," said Ashe. "But I am quite sure that if I lived in a convent I should have a furious temper."

"You!" she said, half contemptuously. "You couldn't be ill-tempered anywhere. That's the one thing I don't like about you--you're too calm--too--too satisfied. It's--Well! you said a sharp thing to me, so I don't see why I shouldn't say one to you. You shouldn't look as though you enjoyed your life so much. It's _bourgeois_! It is, indeed." And she frowned upon him with a little extravagant air that amused him.

By some prescience, she had put on that morning a black dress of thin material, made with extreme simplicity. No flounces, no fanfaronnade. A little girlish dress, that made the girlish figure seem even frailer and lighter than he remembered it the night before in the splendors of her Paris gown. Her large black hat emphasized the whiteness of her brow, the brilliance of her most beautiful eyes; and then all the rest was insubstantial sprite and airy nothing, to be crushed in one hand. And yet what untamed, indomitable things breathed from it--a self surely more self, more intensely, obstinately alive than any he had yet known.

Her attack had brought the involuntary blood to his cheeks, which annoyed him. But he invited her to say why cheerfulness was a vice. She replied that no one should look success--as much as he did.

"And you scorn success?"

"Scorn it!" She drew a long breath, clasped both her hands above her head, then slowly let the thin arms fall again. "Scorn it! What nonsense! But everybody who hasn't got it hates those who have."

"Don't hate me!" said Ashe, quickly.

"Yes," she said, with stubbornness, "I must. Do you know why I was such a wild-cat at school? Because some of the other girls were more important than I--much more important--and richer--and more beautiful--and people paid them more attention. And that seemed to _burn_ the heart in me." She pressed her hands to her breast with a passionate gesture. "You know the French word _panache_? Well, that's what I care for --that's what I _adore_! To be the first--the best--the most distinguished. To be envied--and pointed at--obeyed when I lift my finger--and then to come to some great, glorious, tragic end!"

Ashe moved impatiently.

"Lady Kitty, I don't like to hear you talk like this. It's wild, and it's also--I beg your pardon--"

"In bad taste?" she said, catching him up breathlessly. "That's what you meant, isn't it? You said it to me before, when I called you handsome."

"Pshaw!" he said, in vexation. She watched him throw himself back and feel for his cigarette-case; a gesture of her hand gave him leave; she waited, smiling, till he had taken a few calming whiffs. Then she gently moved towards him.

"Don't be angry with me!" she said, in a sweet, low voice. "Don't you understand how hard it is--to have that nature--and then to come here out of the convent--where one had lived on dreams--and find one's self--"

She turned her head away. Ashe put down his new-lit cigarette.

"Find yourself?" he repeated.

"Everybody scorns me!" she said, her brow drooping.

Ashe exclaimed.

"You know it's true. My mother is not received. Can you deny that?"

"She has many friends," said Ashe.

"She is _not received_. When I speak of her no one answers me. Lady Grosville asked me here--_me_--out of charity. It would be thought a disgrace to marry me--"

"Look here, Lady Kitty!--"

"And I"--she wrung her small hands, as though she clasped the necks of her enemies--"I would never _look_ at a man who did not think it the glory of his life to win me. So you see, I shall never marry. But then the dreadful thing is--"

She let him see a white, stormy face.

"That I have no loyalty to maman--I--I don't think I even love her."

Ashe surveyed her gravely.

"You don't mean that," he said.

"I think I do," she persisted. "I had a horrid childhood. I won't tell tales; but, you see, I don't _know_ maman. I know the Soeurs much better. And then for some one you don't know--to have to--to have to bear--this horrible thing--"

She buried her face in her hands. Ashe looked at her in perplexity.

"You sha'n't bear anything horrible," he said, with energy. "There are plenty of people who will take care of that. Do you mind telling me--have there been special difficulties just lately?"

"Oh yes," she said, calmly, looking up, "awful! Maman's debts are--well--ridiculous. For that alone I don't think she'll be able to stay in London--apart from--Alice."

The name recalled all she had just passed through, and her face quivered. "What will she do?" she said, under her breath. "How will she punish us?--and why?--for what?"

Her dread, her ignorance, her fierce, bruised vanity, her struggling pride, her helplessness, appealed amazingly to the man beside her. He began to talk to her very gently and wisely, begging her to let the past alone, to think only what could be done to help the present. In the first place, would she not let his mother be of use to her?

He could answer for Lady Tranmore. Why shouldn't Lady Kitty spend the summer with her in Scotland? No doubt Madame d'Estrées would be abroad.

"Then I must go with her," said Kitty.

Ashe hesitated.

"Of course, if she wishes it."

"But I don't know that she will wish it. She is not very fond of me," said Kitty, doubtfully. "Yes, I would like to stay with Lady Tranmore. But will your cousin be there?"

"Miss Lyster?"

Kitty nodded.

"How can I tell? Of course, she is often there."

"It is quite curious," said Kitty, after reflection, "how we dislike each other. And it is so odd. You know most people like me!"

She looked up at him without a trace of coquetry, rather with a certain timidity that feared possible rebuff. "That's always been my difficulty," she went on, "till now. Everybody spoils me. I always get my own way. In the convent I was indulged and flattered, and then they wondered that I made all sorts of follies. I want a guide--that's quite certain--somebody to tell me what to do."

"I would offer myself for the post," said Ashe, "but that I feel perfectly sure that you would never follow anybody's advice in anything."

"Yes, I would," she said, wistfully. "I would--"

Ashe's face changed.

"Ah, if you would--"

She sprang up. "Do you see "--she pointed to some figures on a distant path--"they are coming back from church. You understand?--_nobody_ must know about my sister. It will come round to Aunt Lina, of course; but I hope it'll be when I'm gone. If she knew now, I should go back to London to-day."

Ashe made it clear to her that he would be discretion itself. They left the bench, but, as they began to ascend the steps, Kitty turned back.

"I wish I hadn't seen her," she said, in a miserable tone, the tears flooding once more into her eyes.

Ashe looked at her with great kindness, but without speaking. The moment of sharp pain passed, and she moved on languidly beside him. But there was an infection in his strong, handsome presence, and her smiles soon came back. By the time they neared the house, indeed, she seemed to be in wild spirits again.

Did he know, she asked him, that three more guests were coming that afternoon--Mr. Darrell, Mr. Louis Harman, _and_--Mr. Geoffrey Cliffe? She laid an emphasis on the last name, which made Ashe say, carelessly:

"You want to meet him so much?"

"Of course. Doesn't all the world?"

Ashe replied that he could only answer for himself, and as far as he was concerned he could do very well without Cliffe's company at all times.

Whereupon Kitty protested with fire that other men were jealous of such a famous person because women liked him--because--

"Because the man's a coxcomb and the women spoil him?"

"A coxcomb!"

Kitty was up in arms.

"Pray, is he not a great traveller?--_a very_ great traveller?" she asked, with indignation.

"Certainly, by his own account."

"And a most brilliant writer?"

"Macaulayese," said Ashe, perversely, "and not very good at that."

Kitty was at first struck dumb, and then began a voluble protest against unfairness so monstrous. Did not all intelligent people read and admire? It was mere jealousy, she repeated, to deny the gentleman's claims.

Ashe let her talk and quote and excite herself, applying every now and then a little sly touch of the goad, to make her still run on, and so forget the tragic hour which had overshadowed her. And meanwhile all he cared for was to watch the flashing of her face and eyes, and the play of the wind in her hair, and the springing grace with which she moved. Poor child!--it all came back to that--poor child!--what was to be done with her?

* * * * *

At luncheon--the Sunday luncheon--which still, at Grosville Park, as in the early Victorian days of Lord Grosville's mother, consisted of a huge baronial sirloin to which all else upon the varied table appeared as appurtenance and appendage, Ashe allowed himself the inward reflection that the Grosville Park Sundays were degenerating. Both Lord and Lady Grosville had been good hosts in their day; and the downrightness of the wife had been as much to the taste of many as the agreeable gossip of the husband. But on this occasion both were silent and absent-minded. Lady Grosville showed no generalship in placing her guests; the wrong people sat next to each other, and the whole party dragged--without a leader.

And certainly Kitty Bristol did nothing to enliven it. She sat very silent, her black dress changing her a good deal, to Ashe's thinking, bringing back, as he chose to fancy, the pale convent girl. Was it so that she went through her pious exercises?--by-the-way, she was, of course, a Catholic?--said her lessons, and went to her confessor? Had the French cousin with whom she rode stag-hunting ever seen her like this? No; Ashe felt certain that "Henri" had never seen her, except as a fashion-plate, or _en amazone_. He could have made nothing of this ghost in black--this distinguished, piteous, little ghost.

After luncheon it became tolerably clear to Ashe that Lady Grosville's preoccupation had a cause. And presently catching him alone in the library, whither he had retired with some official papers, she closed the door with deliberate care, and stood before him.

"I see you are interested in Kitty, and I feel as if I must tell you, and ask your opinion. William, do you know what that child has been doing?"

He looked up from his writing.

"Ah!--what have you been discovering?"

"Grosville told you the story last night."

Ashe nodded.

"Well--Kitty wrote to Alice this morning--and they met. Alice has kept her room since--prostrate--so the Sowerbys tell me. I have just had a note from Mrs. Sowerby. Wasn't it an extraordinary, an indelicate thing to do?"

Ashe studied the frowning lady a moment--so large and daunting in her black silk and white lace. She seemed to suggest all those aspects of the English Sunday for which he had most secret dislike--its Pharisaism and dulness and heavy meals. He felt himself through and through Lady Kitty's champion.

"I should have thought it very natural," was his reply.

Lady Grosville threw up her hands.

"Natural!--when she knows--"

"How can she know?" cried Ashe, hotly. "How can such a child know or guess anything? She only knows that there is some black charge against her mother, on which no one will enlighten her. How can they? But meanwhile her mother is ostracized, and she feels herself dragged into the disgrace, not understanding why or wherefore. Could anything be more pathetic--more touching?"

In his heat of feeling he got up, and began to pace up and down. Lady Grosville's countenance expressed first astonishment--then wavering.

"Oh--of course, it's very sad," she said--"extremely sad. But I should have thought Kitty was clever enough to understand at least that Alice must have some grave reason for breaking with her mother--"

"Don't you all forget what a child she is," said Ashe, indignantly--"not yet nineteen!"

"Yes, that's true," said Lady Grosville, grudgingly. "I must confess I find it difficult to judge her fairly. She's so different from my own girls."

Ashe hastily agreed. Then it struck him as odd that he should have fallen so quickly into this position of Kitty's defender with her father's family; and he drew in his horns. He resumed his work, and Lady Grosville sat for a while, her hands in her lap, quietly observing him.

At last she said:

"So you think, William, I had better leave Kitty alone?"

"About what?" Ashe raised his curly head with a laugh. "Don't put too much responsibility on me. I know nothing about young ladies."

"I don't know that I do--much," said Lady Grosville, candidly. "My own daughters are so exceptional."

Ashe held his peace. Distant cousins as they were, he hardly knew the Grosville girls apart, and had never yet grasped any reason why he should.

"At any rate, I see clearly," said Lady Grosville, after another pause, "that you're very sorry for Kitty. Of course, it's very nice of you, and I find it's what most people feel."

"Hang it! dear Lady Grosville, why shouldn't they?" said Ashe, turning round on his chair. "If ever there was a forlorn little person on earth, I thought Lady Kitty was that person at lunch to-day."

"And after that absurd exhibition last night!" said Lady Grosville, with a shrug. "You never know where to have her. You think she looked ill?"

"I am sure she has got a splitting headache," said Ashe, boldly. "And why you and Grosville shouldn't be as sorry for her as for Lady Alice I can't imagine. _She's_ done nothing."

"No, that's true," said Lady Grosville, as she rose. Then she added: "I'll go and see if she has a headache. You must consult with us, William; you know the mother so well."

"Oh, I'm no good!" said Ashe, with energy. "But I'm sure that kindness would pay with Lady Kitty."

He smiled at her, wishing to Heaven she would go.

Lady Grosville stared.

"I hope we are always kind to her," she said, with a touch of haughtiness. And then the library door closed behind her.

* * * * *

"Kindness" was indeed, that afternoon, the order of the day, as from the Grosvilles to Lady Kitty. Ashe wondered how she liked it. The girls followed her about with shawls. Lady Grosville installed her on a sofa in the back drawing-room. A bottle of sal-volatile appeared, and Caroline Grosville, instead of going twice to Sunday-school, devoted herself to fanning Kitty, though the weather--which was sunny, with a sharp east wind--suggested, to Ashe's thinking, fires rather than fans.

He was himself carried off for the customary Sunday walk, Mr. Kershaw being now determined to claim the sacred rights of the press. The walkers left the house by a garden door, to reach which they had to pass through the farther drawing-room. Kitty, a picturesque figure on the sofa, nodded farewell to Ashe, and then, unseen by Caroline Grosville, who sat behind her, shot him a last look which drove him to a precipitate exit lest the inward laugh should out.

The walk through the flat Cambridgeshire country was long and strenuous. Though for at least half of it the active journalist who was Ashe's companion conceived the poorest opinion of the new minister. Ashe knew nothing; had no opinions; cared for nothing, except now and then for the stalking of an unfamiliar bird, or the antics of the dogs, or tales of horse-racing, of which he talked with a fervor entirely denied to those high political topics of which Kershaw's ardent soul was full.

Again and again did the journalist put them under his nose in their most attractive guise. In vain; Ashe would have none of them. Till suddenly a chance word started an Indian frontier question, vastly important, and totally unknown to the English public. Ashe casually began to talk; the trickle became a stream, and presently he was holding forth with an impetuosity, a knowledge, a matured and careful judgment that fairly amazed the man beside him.

The long road, bordered by the flat fen meadows, the wide silver sky, the gently lengthening day, all passed unnoticed. The journalist found himself in the grip of a _mind_--strong, active, rich. He gave himself up with docility, yet with a growing astonishment, and when they stood once more on the steps of the house he said to his companion:

"You must have followed these matters for years. Why have you never spoken in the House, or written anything?"

Ashe's aspect changed at once.

"What would have been the good?" he said, with his easy smile. "The fellows who didn't know wouldn't have believed me; and the fellows who knew didn't want telling."

A shade of impatience showed in Kershaw's aspect.

"I thought," he said, "ours was government by discussion."

Ashe laughed, and, turning on the steps, he pointed to the splendid gardens and finely wooded park.

"Or government by country-houses--which? If you support us in this--as I gather you will--this walk will have been worth a debate--now won't it?"

The flattered journalist smiled, and they entered the house. From the inner hall Lord Grosville perceived them.

"Geoffrey Cliffe's arrived," he said to Ashe, as they reached him.

"Has he?" said Ashe, and turned to go up-stairs.

But Kershaw showed a lively interest. "You mean the traveller?" he asked of his host.

"I do. As mad as usual," said the old man. "He and my niece Kitty make a pair."

VI

When Ashe returned to the drawing-room he found it filled with the sound of talk and laughter. But it was a talk and laughter in which the Grosville family seemed to have itself but little part. Lady Grosville sat stiffly on an early Victorian sofa, her spectacles on her nose, reading the _Times_ of the preceding day, or appearing to read it. Amy Grosville, the eldest girl, was busy in a corner, putting the finishing touches to a piece of illumination; while Caroline, seated on the floor, was showing the small child of a neighbor how to put a picture-puzzle together. Lord Grosville was professedly in a farther room, talking with the Austrian count; but every other minute he strolled restlessly into the big drawing-room, and stood at the edge of the talk and laughter, only to turn on his heel again and go back to the count--who meanwhile appeared in the opening between the two rooms, his hands on his hips, eagerly watching Kitty Bristol and her companions, while waiting, as courtesy bade him, for the return of his host.

Ashe at once divined that the Grosville family were in revolt. Nor had he to look far to discover the cause.

Was that astonishing young lady in truth identical with the pensive figure of the morning? Kitty had doffed her black, and she wore a "demi-toilette" gown of the utmost elegance, of which the expensiveness had, no doubt, already sunk deep into Lady Grosville's soul. At Grosville Park the new fashion of "tea-gowns" was not favorably regarded. It was thought to be a mere device of silly and extravagant women, and an "afternoon dress," though of greater pretensions than a morning gown, was still a sober affair, not in any way to be confounded with those decorative effects that nature and sound sense reserved for the evening.

But Kitty's dress was of some white silky material; and it displayed her slender throat and some portion of her thin white arms. The Dean's wife, Mrs. Winston, as she secretly studied it, felt an inward satisfaction; for here at last was one of those gowns she had once or twice gazed on with a covetous awe in the shop-windows of the Rue de la Paix, brought down to earth, and clothing a simple mortal. They were then real, and they could be worn by real women; which till now the Dean's wife had scarcely believed.

Alack! how becoming were these concoctions to minxes with fair hair and sylphlike frames! Kitty was radiant, triumphant; and Ashe was certain that Lady Grosville knew it, however she might barricade herself behind the _Times_. The girl's slim fingers gesticulated in aid of her tongue; one tiny foot swung lightly over the other; the glistening folds of the silk wrapped her in a shimmering whiteness, above which the fair head--negligently thrown back--shone out on a red background, made by the velvet chair in which she sat.

The Dean was placed close beside her, and was clearly enjoying himself enormously. And in front of her, absorbed in her, engaged, indeed, in hot and furious debate with her, stood the great man who had just arrived.

"How do you do, Cliffe?" said Ashe, as he approached.

Geoffrey Cliffe turned sharply, and a perfunctory greeting passed between the two men.

"When did you arrive?" said Ashe, as he threw himself into an arm-chair.

"Last Tuesday. But that don't matter," said Cliffe, impatiently--"nothing matters--except that I must somehow defeat Lady Kitty!"

And he stood, looking down upon the girl in front of him, his hands on his sides, his queer countenance twitching with suppressed laughter. An odd figure, tall, spare, loosely jointed, surmounted by a pale parchment face, which showed a somewhat protruding chin, a long and delicate nose, and fine brows under a strange overhanging mass of fair hair. He had the dissipated, battered look of certain Vandyck cavaliers, and certainly no handsomeness of any accepted kind. But as Ashe well knew, the aspect and personality of Geoffrey Cliffe possessed for innumerable men and women, in English "society" and out of it, a fascination it was easier to laugh at than to explain.

Lady Kitty had eyes certainly for no one else. When he spoke of "defeating" her, she laughed her defiance, and a glance of battle passed between her and Cliffe. Cliffe, still holding her with his look, considered what new ground to break.

"What is the subject?" said Ashe.

"That men are vainer than women," said Kitty. "It's so true, it's hardly worth saying--isn't it? Mr. Cliffe talks nonsense about our love of clothes--and of being admired. As if that were vanity! Of course it's only our sense of duty."

"Duty?" cried Cliffe, twisting his mustache. "To whom?"

"To the men, of course! If we didn't like clothes, if we didn't like being admired--where would you be?"

"Personally, I could get on," said Cliffe. "You expect us to be too much on our knees."

"As if we should ever get you there if it didn't amuse you!" said Kitty. "Hypocrites! If we don't dress, paint, chatter, and tell lies for you, you won't look at us--and if we do--"

"Of course, it all depends on how well it's done," threw in Cliffe.

Kitty laughed.

"That's judging by results. I look to the motive. I repeat, if I powder and paint, it's not because I'm vain, but because it's my painful duty to give you pleasure."

"And if it doesn't give me pleasure?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Call me stupid then--not vain. I ought to have done it better."

"In any case," said Ashe, "it's your duty to please us?"

"Yes--" sighed Kitty. "Worse luck!"

And she sank softly back in her chair, her eyes shining under the stimulus of the laugh that ran through her circle. The Dean joined in it uneasily, conscious, no doubt, of the sharp, crackling movements by which in the distance Lady Grosville was dumbly expressing herself--through the _Times_. Cliffe looked at the small figure a moment, then seized a chair and sat down in front of her, astride.

"I wonder why you want to please us?" he said, abruptly, his magnificent blue eyes upon her.

"Ah!" said Kitty, throwing up her hands, "if we only knew!"

"You find it in the tragedy of your sex?"

"Or comedy," said the Dean, rising. "I take you at your word, Lady Kitty. To-night it will be your duty to please _me_. Remember, you promised to say us some more French." He lifted an admonitory finger.

"I don't know any 'Athalie,'" said Kitty, demurely, crossing her hands upon her knee.

The Dean smiled to himself as he crossed the room to Lady Grosville, and endeavored by an impartial criticism of the new curate's manner and voice, as they had revealed themselves in church that morning, to distract her attention from her niece.

A hopeless task--for Kitty's personality was of the kind which absorbs, engulfs attention, do what the by-stander will. Eyes and ears were drawn perforce into the little whirlpool that she made, their owners yielding them, now with delight, now with repulsion.

Mary Lyster, for instance, came in presently, fresh from a walk with Lady Edith Manley. She, too, had changed her dress. But it was a discreet and reasonable change, and Lady Grosville looked at her soft gray gown with its muslin collar and cuffs--delicately embroidered, yet of a nunlike cut and air notwithstanding--with a hot energy of approval, provoked entirely by Kitty's audacities. Mary meanwhile raised her eyebrows gently at the sight of Kitty. She swept past the group, giving a cool greeting to Geoffrey Cliffe, and presently settled herself in the farther room, attended by Louis Harman and Darrell, who had just arrived by the afternoon train. Clearly she observed Kitty and observed her with dislike. The attitude of her companions was not so simple.

"What an amazing young woman!" said Harman, presently, under his breath, yet open-mouthed. "I suppose she and Cliffe are old friends."

"I believe they never met before," said Mary.

Darrell laughed.

"Lady Kitty makes short work of the preliminaries," he said; "she told me the other night life wasn't long enough to begin with talk about the weather."

"The weather?" said Harman. "At the present moment she and Cliffe seem to be discussing the 'Dame aux Camélias.' Since when do they take young girls to see that kind of thing in Paris?"

Miss Lyster gave a little cough, and bending forward said to Harman: "Lady Tranmore has shown me your picture. It is a dear, delicious thing! I never saw anything more heavenly than the angel."

Harman smiled a flattered smile. Mary Lyster referred to a copy of a "Filippo Lippi Annunciation" which he had just executed in water-color for Lady Tranmore, to whom he was devoted. He was, however, devoted to a good many peeresses, with whom he took tea, and for whom he undertook many harmless and elegant services. He painted their portraits, in small size, after pre-Raphaelite models, and he occasionally presented them with copies--a little weak, but charming--of their favorite Italian pictures. He and Mary began now to talk of Florence with much enthusiasm and many caressing adjectives. For Harman most things were "sweet"; for Mary, "interesting" or "suggestive." She talked fast and fluently; a subtle observer might have guessed she wished it to be seen that for her Lady Kitty Bristol's flirtations, be they in or out of taste, were simply non-existent.

Darrell listened intermittently, watched Cliffe and Lady Kitty, and thought a good deal. That extraordinary girl was certainly "carrying on" with Cliffe, as she had "carried on" with Ashe on the night of her first acquaintance with him in St. James's Place. Ashe apparently took it with equanimity, for he was still sitting beside the pair, twisting a paper-knife and smiling, sometimes putting in a word, but more often silent, and apparently of no account at all to either Kitty or Cliffe.

Darrell knew that the new minister disliked and despised Geoffrey Cliffe; he was aware, too, that Cliffe returned these sentiments, and was not unlikely to be found attacking Ashe in public before long on certain points of foreign policy, where Cliffe conceived himself to be a master. The meeting of the two men under the Grosvilles' roof struck Darrell as curious. Why had Cliffe been invited by these very respectable and straitlaced people the Grosvilles? Darrell could only reflect that Lady Eleanor Cliffe, the traveller's mother, was probably connected with them by some of those innumerable and ever-ramifying links that hold together a certain large group of English families; and that, moreover, Lady Grosville, in spite of philanthropy and Evangelicalism, had always shown a rather pronounced taste in "lions"--of the masculine sort. Of the women to be met with at Grosville Park, one could be certain. Lady Grosville made no excuses for her own sex. But she was a sufficiently ambitious hostess to know that agreeable parties are not constructed out of the saints alone. The men, therefore, must provide the sinners; and of some of the persons then most in vogue she was careful not to know too much. For, socially, one must live; and that being so, the strictness of to-day may have at any moment to be purchased by the laxity of to-morrow. Such, at any rate, was Darrell's analysis of the situation.

He was still astonished, however, when all was said. For Cliffe during the preceding winter, on his return from some remarkable travels in Persia, had paused on the Riviera, and an affair at Cannes with a French vicomtesse had got into the English papers. No one knew the exact truth of it; and a small volume of verse by Cliffe, published immediately afterwards--verse very distinguished, passionate, and obscure--had offered many clews, but no solution whatever. Nobody supposed, however, that the story was anything but a bad one. Moreover, the last book of travels--which had had an enormous success--contained one of the most malicious attacks on foreign missions that Darrell remembered. And if the missionaries had a supporter in England, it was Lady Grosville. Had she designs--material designs--on behalf of Miss Amy or Miss Caroline? Darrell smiled at the notion. Cliffe must certainly marry money, and was not to be captured by any Miss Amys--or Lady Kittys either, for the matter of that.

But?--Darrell glanced at the lady beside him, and his busy thoughts took a new turn. He had seen the greeting between Miss Lyster and Cliffe. It was cold; but all the same the world knew that they had once been friends. Was it some five years before that Miss Lyster, then in the height of a brilliant season under the wing of Lady Tranmore, had been much seen in public with Geoffrey Cliffe? Then he had departed eastward, to explore the upper waters of the Mékong, and the gossip excited had died away. Of late her name had been rather coupled with that of William Ashe.

Well, so far as the world was concerned, she might mate with either--with the mad notoriety of Cliffe or the young distinction of Ashe. Darrell's bitter heart contracted as he reflected that only for him and the likes of him, men of the people, with average ability, and a scarcely average income, were maidens of Mary Lyster's dower and pedigree out of reach. Meanwhile he revenged himself by being her very good friend, and allowing himself at times much caustic plainness of speech in his talks with her.

* * * * *

"What are you three gossiping about?" said Ashe, strolling in presently from the other room to join them.

"As usual," said Darrell. "I am listening to perfection. Miss Lyster and Harman are discussing pictures."

Ashe stifled a little yawn. He threw himself down by Mary, vowing that there was no more pleasure to be got out of pictures now that people would try to know so much about them. Mary meanwhile raised herself involuntarily to look into the farther room, where the noise made by Cliffe and Lady Kitty had increased.

"They are going to sing," said Ashe, lazily--"and it won't be hymns."

In fact, Lady Kitty had opened the piano, and had begun the first bars of something French and operatic. At the first sound of Kitty's music, however, Lady Grosville drew herself up; she closed the volume of Evangelical sermons for which she had exchanged the _Times_; she deposited her spectacles sharply on the table beside her.

"Amy!--Caroline!"

Those young ladies rose. So did Lady Grosville. Kitty meanwhile sat with suspended fingers and laughing eyes, waiting on her aunt's movements.

"Kitty, pray don't let me interfere with your playing," said Lady Grosville, with severe politeness--"but perhaps you would kindly put it off for half an hour. I am now going to read to the servants--"

"Gracious!" said Kitty, springing up. "I was going to play Mr. Cliffe some Offenbach."

"Ah, but the piano can be heard in the library, and your cousin Amy plays the harmonium--"

"_Mon Dieu_!" said Kitty. "We will be as quiet as mice. Or"--she made a quick step in pursuit of her aunt--"shall I come and sing, Aunt Lina?"

Ashe, in his shelter behind Mary Lyster, fell into a silent convulsion of laughter.

"No, thank you!" said Lady Grosville, hastily. And she rustled away followed by her daughters.

Kitty came flying into the inner room followed by Cliffe.

"What have I done?" she said, breathlessly, addressing Harman, who rose to greet her. "Mayn't one play the piano here on Sundays?"

"That depends," said Harman, "on what you play."

"Who made your English Sunday?" said Kitty, impetuously. "Je vous demande--_who_?"

She threw her challenge to all the winds of heaven--standing tiptoe, her hands poised on the back of a chair, the smallest and most delicate of furies.

"A breath unmakes it, as a breath has made," said Cliffe. "Come and play billiards, Lady Kitty. You said just now you played."

"Billiards!" said Harman, throwing up his hands. "On Sunday--_here_?"

"Can they hear the balls?" said Kitty, eagerly, with a gesture towards the library.

Mary Lyster, who had been perfunctorily looking at a book, laid it down.

"It would certainly greatly distress Lady Grosville," she said, in a voice studiously soft, but on that account perhaps all the more significant.

Kitty glanced at Mary, and Ashe saw the sudden red in her cheek. She turned provokingly to Cliffe. "There's quite half an hour, isn't there, before one need dress--"

"More," said Cliffe. "Come along."

And he made for the door, which he held open for her. It was now Mary Lyster's turn to flush--the rebuff had been so naked and unadorned. Ashe rose as Kitty passed him.

"Why don't you come, too?" she said, pausing. There was a flash from eyes deep and dark beneath a pair of wilful brows. "Aunt Lina would never be cross with _you_!"

"Thank you! I should be delighted to play buffer, but unfortunately I have some work I must do before dinner."

"Must you?" She looked at him uncertainly, then at Cliffe. In the dusk of the large, heavily furnished room, the pale yet brilliant gold of her hair, her white dress, her slim energy and elegance drew all their eyes--even Mary Lyster's.

"I must," Ashe repeated, smiling. "I am glad your headache is so much better."

"It is not in the least better!"

"Then you disguise it like a heroine."

He stood beside her, looking down upon her, his height and strength measured against her smallness. Apparently his amused detachment, the slight dryness of his tone annoyed her. She made a tart reply and vanished through the door that Cliffe held open for her.

* * * * *

Ashe retired to his own room, dealt with some Foreign Office work, and then allowed himself a meditative smoke. The click of the billiard-balls had ceased abruptly about ten minutes after he had begun upon his papers; there had been voices in the hall, Lord Grosville's he thought among them; and now all was silence.

He thought of the events of the afternoon with mingled amusement and annoyance. Cliffe was an unscrupulous fellow, and the child's head might be turned. She should be protected from him in future--he vowed she should. Lady Tranmore should take it in hand. She had been a match for Cliffe in various other directions before this.

What brought the man, with his notorious character and antecedents, to Grosville Park--one of the dwindling number of country-houses in England where the old Puritan restrictions still held? It was said he was on the look-out for a post--Ashe, indeed, happened to know it officially; and Lord Grosville had a good deal of influence. Moreover, failing an appointment, he was understood to be aiming at Parliament and office; and there were two safe county-seats within the Grosville sphere.

"Yet even when he wants a thing he can't behave himself in order to get it," thought Ashe. "Anybody else would have turned Sabbatarian for once, and refrained from flirting with the Grosvilles' niece. But that's Cliffe all over--and perhaps the best thing about him."

He might have added that as Cliffe was supposed to desire an appointment under either the Foreign Office or the Colonial Office, it might have been thought to his interest to show himself more urbane than he had in fact shown himself that afternoon to the new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. But Ashe rarely or never indulged himself in reflections of that kind. Besides, he and Cliffe knew each other too well for posing. There was a time when they had been on very friendly terms, and when Cliffe had been constantly in his mother's drawing-room. Lady Tranmore had a weakness for "influencing" young men of family and ability; and Cliffe, in fact, owed her a good deal. Then she had seen cause to think ill of him; and, moreover, his travels had taken him to the other side of the world. Ashe was now well aware that Cliffe reckoned on him as a hostile influence and would not try either to deceive or to propitiate him.

He thought Cliffe had been disagreeably surprised to see him that afternoon. Perhaps it was the sudden sense of antagonism acting on the man's excitable nature that had made him fling himself into the wild nonsense he had talked with Lady Kitty.

And thenceforward Ashe's thoughts were possessed by Kitty only--Kitty in her two aspects, of the morning and the afternoon. He dressed in a reverie, and went down-stairs still dreaming.

* * * * *

At dinner he found himself responsible for Mary Lyster. Kitty was on the other side of the table, widely separated both from himself and Cliffe. She was in a little Empire dress of blue and silver, as extravagantly simple as her gown of the afternoon had been extravagantly elaborate.

Ashe observed the furtive study that the Grosville girls could not help bestowing upon her--upon her shoulder-straps and long, bare arms, upon her high waist and the blue and silver bands in her hair. Kitty herself sat in a pensive or proud silence. The Dean was beside her, but she scarcely spoke to him, and as to the young man from the neighborhood who had taken her in, he was to her as though he were not.

"Has there been a row?" Ashe inquired, in a low voice, of his companion.

Mary looked at him quietly.

"Lord Grosville asked them not to play--because of the servants."

"Good!" said Ashe. "The servants were, of course, playing cards in the house-keeper's room."

"Not at all. They were singing hymns with Lady Grosville."

Ashe looked incredulous.

"Only the slaveys and scullery maids that couldn't help themselves. Never mind. Was Lady Kitty amenable?"

"She seems to have made Lord Grosville very angry. Lady Grosville and I smoothed him down."

"Did you?" said Ashe. "That was nice of you."

Mary colored a little, and did not reply. Presently Ashe resumed.

"Aren't you as sorry for her as I am?"

"For Lady Kitty? I should think she managed to amuse herself pretty well."

"She seems to me the most deplorable tragic little person," said Ashe, slowly.

Miss Lyster laughed.

"I really don't see it," she said.

"Oh yes, you do," he persisted--"if you think a moment. Be kind to her--won't you?"

She drew herself up with a cold dignity.

"I confess that she has never attracted me in the least."

Ashe returned to his dinner, dimly conscious that he had spoken like a fool.

When the ladies had withdrawn, the conversation fell on some important news from the Far East contained in the Sunday papers that Geoffrey Cliffe had brought down, and presumed to form part of the despatches which the two ministers staying in the house had received that afternoon by Foreign Office messenger. The government of Teheran was in one of its periodical fits of ill-temper with England; had been meddling with Afghanistan, flirting badly with Russia, and bringing ridiculous charges against the British minister. An expedition to Bushire was talked of, and the Radical press was on the war-path. The cabinet minister said little. A Lord Privy Seal, reverentially credited with advising royalty in its private affairs, need have no views on the Persian Gulf. But Ashe was appealed to and talked well. The minister at Teheran was an old friend of his, and he described the personal attacks made on him for political reasons by the Shah and his ministers with a humor which kept the table entertained.

Suddenly Cliffe interposed. He had been listening with restlessness, though Ashe, with pointed courtesy, had once or twice included him in the conversation. And presently, at a somewhat dramatic moment, he met a statement of Ashe's with a direct and violent contradiction. Ashe flushed, and a duel began between the two men of which the company were soon silent spectators. Ashe had the resources of official knowledge; Cliffe had been recently on the spot, and pushed home the advantage of the eye-witness with a covert insolence which Ashe bore with surprising carelessness and good-temper. In the end Cliffe said some outrageous things, at which Ashe laughed; and Lord Grosville abruptly dissolved the party.

Ashe went smiling out of the dining-room, caressing a fine white spaniel, as though nothing had happened. In crossing the hall Harman found himself alone with the Dean, who looked serious and preoccupied.

"That was a curious spectacle," said Harman. "Ashe's equanimity was amazing."

"I had rather have seen him angrier," said the Dean, slowly.

"He was always a very tolerant, easy-going fellow."

The Dean shook his head.

"A touch of _soeva indignatio_ now and then would complete him."

"Has he got it in him?"

"Perhaps not," said the little Dean, with a flash of expression that dignified all his frail person. "But without it he will hardly make a great man."

Meanwhile Geoffrey Cliffe, his strange, twisted face still vindictively aglow, made his way to Kitty Bristol's corner in the drawing-room. Mary Lyster was conscious of it, conscious also of a certain look that Kitty bestowed upon the entrance of Ashe, while Cliffe was opening a battery of mingled chaff and compliments that did not at first have much effect upon her. But William Ashe threw himself into conversation with Lady Edith Manley, and was presently, to all appearance, happily plunged in gossip, his tall person wholly at ease in a deep arm-chair, while Lady Edith bent over him with smiles. Meanwhile there was a certain desertion of Kitty on the part of the ladies. Lady Grosville hardly spoke to her, and the girls markedly avoided her. There was a moment when Kitty, looking round her, suddenly shook her small shoulders, and like a colt escaping from harness gave herself to riot. She and Cliffe amused themselves so well and so noisily that the whole drawing-room was presently uneasily aware of them. Lady Grosville shot glances of wrath, rose suddenly at one moment and sat down again; her girls talked more disjointedly than ever to the gentlemen who were civilly attending them; while, on the other hand, Miss Lyster's flow of conversation with Louis Harman was more softly copious than usual. At last the Dean's wife looked at the Dean, a signal of kind distress, and the Dean advanced.

"Lady Kitty," he said, taking a seat beside the pair, "have you forgotten you promised me some French?"

Kitty turned on him a hot and mutinous face.

"Did I? What shall I say? Some Alfred de Musset?"

"No," said the Dean, "I think not."

"Some--some"--she cudgelled her memory--"some Théophile Gautier?"

"No, certainly not!" said the Dean, hastily.

"Well, as I don't know a word of him--" laughed Kitty.

"That was mischievous," said the Dean, raising a finger. "Let me suggest Lamartine."

Kitty shook her head obstinately. "I never learned one line."

"Then some of the old fellows," said the Dean, persuasively. "I long to hear you in Corneille or Racine. That we should _all_ enjoy."

And suddenly his wrinkled hand fell kindly on the girl's small, chilly ringers and patted them. Their eyes met, Kitty's wild and challenging, the Dean's full of that ethereal benevolence which blended so agreeably with his character as courtier and man of the world. There was a bright sweetness in them which seemed to say: "Poor child! I understand. But be a _little_ good--as well as clever--and all will be well."

Suddenly Kitty's look wavered and fell. All the harshness dissolved from her thin young beauty. She turned from Cliffe, and the Dean saw her quiver with submission.

"I think I could say some 'Polyeucte,'" she said, gently.

The Dean clapped his hands and rose.

"Lady Grosville," he said, raising his voice--"Ladies and gentlemen, Lady Kitty has promised to say us some more French poetry. You remember how admirably she recited last night. But this is Sunday, and she will give us something in a different vein."

Lady Grosville, who had risen impatiently, sat down again. There was a general movement; chairs were turned or drawn forward till a circle formed. Meanwhile the Dean consulted with Kitty and resumed:

"Lady Kitty will recite a scene from Corneille's beautiful tragedy of 'Polyeucte'--the scene in which Pauline, after witnessing the martyrdom of her husband, who has been beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to the gods, returns from the place of execution so melted by the love and sacrifice she has beheld that she opens her heart then and there to the same august faith and pleads for the same death."

The Dean seated himself, and Kitty stepped into the centre of the circle. She thought a moment, her lips moving, as though she recalled the lines. Then she looked down at her bare arms, and dress, frowned, and suddenly approached Lady Edith Manley.

"May I have that?" she said, pointing to a lace cloak that lay on Lady Edith's knee. "I am rather cold."

Lady Edith handed it to her, and she threw it round her.

"Actress!" said Cliffe, under his breath, with a grin of amusement.

At any rate, her impulse served her well. Her form and dress disappeared under a cloud of white. She became in a flash, so to speak, evangelized--a most innocent and spiritual apparition. Her beautiful head, her kindled and transfigured face, her little hand on the white folds, these alone remained to mingle their impression with the austere and moving tragedy which her lips recited. Her audience looked on at first with the embarrassed or hostile air which is the Englishman's natural protection against the great things of art; then for those who understood French the high passion and the noble verse began to tell; while those who could not follow were gradually enthralled by the gestures and tones with which the slight, vibrating creature, whom but ten minutes before most of them had regarded as a mere noisy flirt, suggested and conveyed the finest and most compelling shades of love, faith, and sacrifice.

When she ceased, there was a moment's profound silence. Then Lady Edith, drawing a long breath, expressed the welcome commonplace which restored the atmosphere of daily life.

"How _could_ you remember it all?"

Kitty sat down, her lip trembling scornfully.

"I had to say it every week at the convent."

"I understand," said Cliffe in Darrell's ear--"that last night she was Doña Sol. An accommodating young woman."

Meanwhile Kitty looked up to find Ashe beside her. He said, "Magnificent!"--but it did not matter to her what he said. His face told her that she had moved him, and that he was incapable of any foolish chatter about it. A smile of extraordinary sweetness sprang into her eyes; and when Lady Grosville came up to thank her, the girl impetuously rose, and, in the foreign way, kissed her hand, courtesying. Lord Grosville said, heartily, "Upon my word, Kitty, you ought to go on the stage!" and she smiled upon him, too, in a flutter of feeling, forgetting his scolding and her own impertinence, before dinner. The revulsion, indeed, throughout the company--with two exceptions--was complete. For the rest of the evening Kitty basked in sunshine and flattery. She met it with a joyous gentleness, and the little figure, still bedraped in white, became the centre of the room's kindness.

The Dean was triumphant.

"My dear Miss Lyster," he said, presently, finding himself near that lady, "did you ever hear anything better done? A most remarkable talent!"

Mary smiled.

"I am wondering," she said, "what they teach you in French convents--and why! It is all so singular,--isn't it?"

* * * * *

Late that night Ashe entered his room--before his usual time, however. He had tired even of Lord Grosville's chat, and had left the smoking-room still talking. Indeed, he wished to be alone, and there was that in his veins which told him that a new motive had taken possession of his life.

He sat beside the open window reviewing the scenes and feelings of the day--his interview with Kitty in the morning--the teasing coquette of the afternoon--the inspired poetic child of the evening. Rapidly, but none the less strongly and steadfastly, he made up his mind. He would ask Kitty Bristol to marry him, and he would ask her immediately.

Why? He scarcely knew her. His mother, his family would think it madness. No doubt it was madness. Yet, as far as he could explain his impulse himself, it depended on certain fundamental facts in his own nature--it was in keeping with his deepest character. He had an inbred love of the difficult, the unconventional in life, of all that piqued and stimulated his own superabundant consciousness of resource and power. And he had a tenderness of feeling, a gift of chivalrous pity, only known to the few, which was in truth always hungrily on the watch, like some starved faculty that cannot find its outlet. The thought of this beautiful child, in the hands of such a mother as Madame d'Estrées, and rushing upon risks illustrated by the half-mocking attentions of Geoffrey Cliffe, did in truth wring his heart. With a strange imaginative clearness he foresaw her future, he beheld her the prey at once of some bad fellow and of her own temperament. She would come to grief; he saw the prescience of it in her already; and what a waste would be there!

No!--he would step in--capture her before these ways and whims, now merely bizarre or foolish, stiffened into what might in truth destroy her. His pulse quickened as he thought of the development of this beauty, the ripening of this intelligence. Never yet had he seen a girl whom he much wished to marry. He was easily repelled by stupidity, still more by mere amiability. Some touch of acid, of roughness in the fruit--that drew him, in politics, thought, love. And if she married him he vowed to himself, proudly, that she would find him no tyrant. Many a man might marry her who would then fight her and try to break her. All that was most fastidious and characteristic in Ashe revolted from such a notion. With him she should have _freedom_--whatever it might cost. He asked himself deliberately, whether after marriage he could see her flirting with other men, as she had flirted that day with Cliffe, and still refrain from coercing her. And his question was answered, or rather put aside, first by the confidence of nascent love--he would love her so well and so loyally that she would naturally turn to him for counsel; and then by the clear perception that she was a creature of mind rather than sense, governed mainly by the caprices and curiosities of the _intelligence_, combined with a rather cold, indifferent temperament. One moment throwing herself wildly into a dangerous or exciting intimacy, the next, parting with a laugh, and without a regret--it was thus he saw her in the future, even as a wife. "She may scandalize half the world," he said to himself, stubbornly--"I shall understand her!"

But his mother?--his friends?--his colleagues? He knew well his mother's ambitions for him, and the place that he held in her heart. Could he without cruelty impose upon her such a daughter as Kitty Bristol? Well!--his mother had a very large experience of life, and much natural independence of mind. He trusted her to see the promise in this untamed and gifted creature; he counted on the sense of power that Lady Tranmore possessed, and which would but find new scope in the taming of Kitty.

But Kitty's mother? Kitty must, of course, be rescued from Madame d'Estrées--must find a new and truer mother in Lady Tranmore. But money would do it; and money must be lavished.

Then, almost for the first time, Ashe felt a conscious delight in wealth and birth. _Panache_? He could give it her--the little, wild, lovely thing! Luxury, society, adoration--all should be hers. She should be so loved and cherished, she must needs love in turn.

His dreams were delicious; and the sudden fear into which he fell at the end lest after all Kitty should mock and turn from him, was only in truth another pleasure. No delay! Circumstances might develop at any moment and sweep her from him. Now or never must he snatch her from difficulty and disgrace--let hostile tongues wag as they pleased--and make her his.

His political future? He knew well the influence which, in these days of universal publicity, a man's private affairs may have on his public career. And in truth his heart was in that career, and the thought of endangering it hurt him. Certainly it would recommend him to nobody that he should marry Madame d'Estrées' daughter. On the other hand, what favor did he want of anybody? save what work and "knowing more than the other fellows" might compel? The cynic in him was well aware that he had already what other men fought for--family, money, and position. Society must accept his wife; and Kitty, once mellowed by happiness and praise, might live, laugh, and rattle as she pleased.

As to strangeness and caprice, the modern world delights in them; "the violent take it by force." There is, indeed, a dividing-line; but it was a love-marriage that should keep Kitty on the safe side of it.

He stood lost in a very ecstasy of resolve, when suddenly there was a sharp movement outside, and a flash of white among the yew hedges bordering the formal garden on which his windows looked. The night outside was still and veiled, but of the flash of white he was certain--and of a step on the gravel.

Something fell beside him, thrown from outside. He picked it up, and found a flower weighted by a stone, tied into a fold of ribbon.

"Madcap!" he said to himself, his heart beating to suffocation.

Then he stole out of his room, and down a small, winding staircase which led directly to the garden and a door beside the orangery. He had to unbolt the door, and as he did so a dog in one of the basement rooms began to bark. But there could be no flinching, though the whole thing was of an imprudence which pricked his conscience. To slip along the shadowed side of the orangery, to cross the space of clouded light beyond, and gain the darkness of the ilex avenue beyond was soon done. Then he heard a soft laugh, and a little figure fled before him. He followed and overtook.

Kitty Bristol turned upon him.

"Didn't I throw straight?" she said, triumphantly. "And they say girls can't throw."

"But why did you throw at all?" he said, capturing her hand.

"Because I wanted to talk to you. And I was restless and couldn't sleep. Why did you never come and talk to me this afternoon? And why"--she beat her foot angrily--"did you let me go and play billiards alone with Mr. Cliffe?"

"Let you!" cried Ashe. "As if anybody could have prevented you!"

"One sees, of course, that you detest Mr. Cliffe," said the whiteness beside him.

"I didn't come here to talk about Geoffrey Cliffe. I _won't_ talk about him! Though, of course, you must know--"

"That I flirted with him abominably all the afternoon? _C'est vrai--c'est ab-sol-ument vrai!_ And I shall always want to flirt with him, wherever I am--and whatever I may be doing."

"Do as you please," said Ashe, dryly, "but I think you will get tired."

"No, no--he excites me! He is bad, false, selfish, but he excites me. He talks to very few women--one can see that. And all the women want to talk to him. He used to admire Miss Lyster, and now he dislikes her. But she doesn't dislike him. No! she would marry him to-morrow if he asked her."

"You are very positive," said Ashe. "Allow me to say that I entirely disagree with you."

"You don't know anything about her," said the teasing voice.

"She is my cousin, mademoiselle."

"What does that matter? I know much more than you do, though I have only seen her two days. I know that--well, I am afraid of her!"

"Afraid of her? Did you come out--may I ask--determined to talk nonsense?"

"I came out--never mind! I _am_ afraid of her. She hates me. I think"--he felt a shiver in the air--will do me harm if she can."

"No one shall do you harm," said Ashe, his tone changing, "if you will only trust yourself--"

She laughed merrily.

"To you? Oh! you'd soon throw it up."

"Try me!" he said, approaching her. "Lady Kitty, I have something to say to you."

Suddenly she shrank away from him. He could not see her face, and had nothing to guide him.

"I haven't yet known you three weeks," he said, over-mastered by something passionate and profound. "I don't know what you will say--whether you can put up with me. But I know my own mind--I shall not change. I--I love you. I ask you to marry me."

A silence. The night seemed to have grown darker. Then a small hand seized his, and two soft lips pressed themselves upon it. He tried to capture her, but she evaded him.

"You--you really and actually--want to marry me?"

"I do, Kitty, with all my heart."

"You remember about my mother--about Alice?"

"I remember everything. We would face it together."

"And--you know what I told you about my bad temper?"

"Some nonsense, wasn't it? But I should be bored by the domestic dove. I want the hawk, Kitty, with its quick wings and its daring bright eyes."

She broke from him with a cry.

"You must listen. I _have_--a wicked, odious, ungovernable temper. I should make you miserable."

"Not at all," said Ashe. "I should take it very calmly. I am made that way."

"And then--I don't know how to put it--but I have fancies--overpowering fancies--and I must follow them. I have one now for Geoffrey Cliffe."

Ashe laughed.

"Oh, that won't last."

"Then some other will come after it. And I can't help it. It is my head"--she tapped her forehead lightly--"that seems on fire."

Ashe at last slipped his arm round her.

"But it is your heart--you will give me."

She pushed him away from her and held him at arm's-length.

"You are very rich, aren't you?" she said, in a muffled voice.

"I am well off. I can give you all the pretty things you want."

"And some day you will be Lord Tranmore?"

"Yes, when my poor father dies," he said, sighing. He felt her fingers caress his hand again. It was a spirit touch, light and tender.

"And every one says you are so clever--you have such prospects. Perhaps you will be Prime Minister."

"Well, there's no saying," he threw out, laughing--"if you'll come and help."

He heard a sob.

"Help! I should be the ruin of you. I should spoil everything. You don't know the mischief I can do. And I can't help it, it's in my blood."

"You would like the game of politics too much to spoil it, Kitty." His voice broke and lingered on the name. "You would want to be a great lady and lead the party."

"Should I? Could you ever teach me how to behave?"

"You would learn by nature. Do you know, Kitty, how clever you are?"

"Yes," she sighed. "I am clever. But there is always something that hinders--that brings failure."

"How old are you?" he said, laughing. "Eighteen--or eighty?"

Suddenly he put out his arms, enfolding her. And she, still sobbing, raised her hands, clasped them round his neck, and clung to him like a child.

"Oh! I knew--I knew--when I first saw your face. I had been so miserable all day--and then you looked at me--and I wanted to tell you all. Oh, I adore you--I adore you!" Their faces met. Ashe tasted a moment of rapture; and knew himself free at last of the great company of poets and of lovers.

They slipped back to the house, and Ashe saw her disappear by a door on the farther side of the orangery--noiselessly, without a sound. Except that just at the last she drew him to her and breathed a sacred whisper in his ear.

"Oh! what--what will Lady Tranmore say?"

Then she fled. But she left her question behind her, and when the dawn came Ashe found that he had spent half the night in trying anew to frame some sort of an answer to it.