Chapter XIV: Part IV: Storm (3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Louis Harman was sitting behind Kitty, a little to her right. He saw her watching the actress and her companion; noticed a compression of the lip, a flash in the eye. She sprang up, said she must go home, and practically dissolved the party.

Mademoiselle Ricci, who had also risen, proposed to Lord Magellan that she should take him in her gondola to the shop of a famous dealer on the Canal.

"Thank you very much," said Lord Magellan, irresolute, and he looked at Kitty. The look apparently decided him, for he immediately added that he had unfortunately an engagement in the opposite direction. The actress angrily drew herself up, and proposed a later appointment. Then Kitty carelessly intervened.

"Do you remember that you promised to see me home?" she said to the young man. "Don't if it bores you!"

Lord Magellan eagerly protested. Kitty moved away, and he followed her.

"Chère madame, will you present me to your daughter?" said the Ricci, in an unnecessarily loud voice.

Madame d'Estrées, with a flurried gesture, touched Kitty on the arm.

"Kitty, Mademoiselle Ricci."

Kitty took no notice. Madame d'Estrées said, quickly, in a low, imploring voice:

"Please, dear Kitty. I'll explain."

Kitty turned abruptly, looked at her mother, and at the woman to whom she was to be introduced.

"Ah! comme elle est charmante!" cried the actress, with an inflection of irony in her strident voice. "Miladi, il faut absolument que nous nous connaissions. Je connais votre chère mère depuis si longtemps! À Paris, l'hiver passé c'était une amitié des plus tendres!"

The nasal drag she gave to the words was partly natural, partly insolent. Madame d'Estrées bit her lip.

"Oui?" said Kitty, indifferently. "Je n'en avais jamais entendu parler."

Her brilliant eyes studied the woman before her. "She has some hold on maman," she said to herself, in disgust. "She knows of something shady that maman has done." Then another thought stung her; and with the most indifferent bow, triumphing in the evident offence that she was giving, she turned to Lord Magellan.

"You'd like to see the Palazzo?"

Warington at once offered himself as a guide.

But Kitty declared she knew the way, would just show Lord Magellan the _piano nobile_, dismiss him at the grand staircase, and return. Lord Magellan made his farewells.

As Kitty passed through the door of the _salon_, while the young man held back the velvet _portière_ which hung over it, she was aware that Mademoiselle Ricci was watching her. The Marseillaise was leaning heavily on a _fauteuil_, supported by a hand behind her. A slow, disdainful smile played about her lips, some evil threatening thought expressed itself through every feature of her rounded, coarsened beauty. Kitty's sharp look met hers, and the curtain dropped.

* * * * *

"Don't, please, let that woman take you anywhere--to see anything!" said Kitty, with energy, to her companion, as they walked through the rooms of the _mezzanino_.

Lord Magellan laughed. "What's the matter with her?"

"Oh, nothing!" said Kitty, impatiently, "except that she's wicked--and common--and a snake--and your mother would have a fit if she knew you had anything to do with her."

The red-haired youth looked grave.

"Thank you, Lady Kitty," he said, quietly. "I'll take your advice."

"Oh, I say, what a nice boy you are!" cried Kitty, impulsively, laying a hand a moment on his shoulder. And then, as though his filial instinct had awakened hers, she added, with hasty falsehood: "Maman, of course, knows nothing about her. That was just bluff what she said. But Donna Laura oughtn't to ask such people. There--that's the way."

And she pointed to a small staircase in the wall, whereof the trap-door at the top was open. They climbed it, and found themselves at once in one of the great rooms of the _piano nobile_, to which this quick and easy access from the inhabited _entresol_ had been but recently contrived.

"What a marvellous place!" cried Lord Magellan, looking round him.

They were in the principal apartment of the famous Vercelli palace, a legacy from one of those classical architects whose work may be seen in the late seventeenth-century buildings of Venice. The rooms, enormously high, panelled here and there in tattered velvets and brocades, or frescoed in fast-fading scenes of old Venetian life, stretched in bewildering succession on either side of a central passage or broad corridor, all of them leading at last on the northern side to a vast hall painted in architectural perspective by the pupils of Tiepolo, and overarched by a ceiling in which the master himself had massed a multitude of forms equal to Rubens in variety and facility of design, expressed in a thin trenchancy of style. Figures recalling the ancient triumphs and possessions of Venice, in days when she sat dishonored and despoiled, crowded the coved roof, the painted cornices and pediments. Gayly colored birds hovered in blue skies; philosophers and poets in grisaille made a strange background for large-limbed beauties couched on roses, or young warriors amid trophies of shining arms; and while all this garrulous commonplace lived and breathed above, the walls below, cold in color and academic in treatment, maintained as best they could the dignity of the vast place, thus given up to one of the greatest of artists and emptiest of minds.

On the floor of this magnificent hall stood a few old and broken chairs. But the candelabra of glass and ormolu, hanging from the ceiling, were very nearly of the date of the palace, and superb. Meanwhile, through a faded taffeta of a golden-brown shade, the afternoon light from the high windows to the southwest poured into the stately room.

"How it dwarfs us!" said Lord Magellan, looking at his companion. "One feels the merest pygmy! From the age of decadence indeed!" He glanced at the guide-book in his hand. "Good Heavens!--if this was their decay, what was their bloom?"

"Yes--it's big--and jolly. I like it," said Kitty, absently. Then she recollected herself. "This is your way out. Federigo!" she called to an old man, the _custode_ of the palace, who appeared at the magnificent door leading to the grand staircase.

"Commanda, eccellenza!" The old man, bent and feeble, approached. He carried a watering-pot wherewith he was about to minister to some straggling flowers in the windows fronting the Grand Canal. A thin cat rubbed itself against his legs. As he stood in his shabbiness under the high, carved door, the only permanent denizen of the building, he seemed an embodiment of the old shrunken Venetian life, still haunting a city it was no longer strong enough to use.

"Will you show this signor the way out?" said Kitty, in tourists' Italian. "Are you soon shutting up?"

For the main palazzo, which during the day was often shown to sightseers, was locked at half-past five, only the two _entresols_--one tenanted by Donna Laura, the other by the _custode_--remaining accessible.

The old man murmured something which Kitty did not understand, pointing at the same time to a door leading to the interior of the _piano nobile_. Kitty thought that he asked her to be quick, if she wished still to go round the palace. She tried to explain that he might lock up if he pleased; her way of retreat to the _mezzanino_, down the small staircase, was always open. Federigo looked puzzled, again said something in unintelligible Venetian, and led the way to the grand staircase followed by Lord Magellan.

* * * * *

A heavy door clanged below. Kitty was alone. She looked round her, at the stretches of marble floor, and the streaks of pale sunshine that lay upon its black and white, at the lofty walls painted with a dim superb architecture, at the crowded ceiling, the gorgeous candelabra. With its costly decoration, the great room suggested a rich and festal life; thronging groups below answering to the Tiepolo groups above; beauties patched and masked; gallants in brocaded coats; splendid senators, robed like William at the fancy ball.

Suddenly she caught sight of herself in one of the high and narrow mirrors that filled the spaces between the windows. In her mourning dress, with the light behind her, she made a tiny spectre in the immense hall. The image of her present self--frail, black-robed--recalled the two figures in the glass of her Hill Street room--the sparkling white of her goddess dress, and William's smiling face above hers, his arm round her waist.

How happy she had been that night! Even her wild fury with Mary Lyster seemed to her now a kind of happiness. How gladly would she have exchanged for it either of the two terrors that now possessed her!

With a shiver she crossed the hall, and pushed her way into the suite of rooms on the northern side. She felt herself in absolute possession of the palace. Federigo no doubt had locked up; her mother and a few guests were still talking in the _salon_ of the _mezzanine_, expecting her to return. She would return--soon; but the solitariness and wildness of this deserted place drew her on.

Room after room opened before her--bare, save for a few worm-eaten chairs, a fragment of tapestry on the wall, or some tattered portraits in the Longhi manner, indifferent to begin with, and long since ruined by neglect. Yet here and there a young face looked out, roses in the hair and at the breast; or a Doge's cap--and beneath it phantom features still breathing even in the last decay of canvas and paint the violence and intrigue of the living man--the ghost of character held there by the ghost of art. Or a lad in slashed brocade, for whom even in this silent palace, and in spite of the gaping crack across his face, life was still young; a cardinal; a nun; a man of letters in clerical dress, the Abbé Prévost of his day....

Presently she found herself in a wide corridor, before a high, closed door. She tried it, and saw a staircase mounting and descending. A passion of curiosity that was half romance, half restlessness, drove her on. She began to ascend the marble steps, hearing only the echo of her own movements, a little afraid of the cold spaces of the vast house, and yet delighting in the fancies that crowded upon her. At the top of the flight she found, of course, another apartment, on the same plan as the one below, but smaller and less stately. The central hall entered from a door supported by marble caryatids, was flagged in yellow marble, and frescoed freely with faded eighteenth-century scenes--cardinals walking in stiff gardens, a pope alighting from his coach, surrounded by peasants on their knees, and behind him fountains and obelisk and the towering façade of St. Peter's. At the moment, thanks to a last glow of light coming in through a west window at the farther end, it was a place beautiful though forlorn. But the rooms into which she looked on either side were wreck and desolation itself, crowded with broken furniture, many of them shuttered and dark.

As she closed the last door, her attention was caught by a strange bust placed on a pedestal above the entrance. What was wrong with it? An accident? An injury? She went nearer, straining her eyes to see. No!--there was no injury. The face indeed was gone. Or, rather, where the face should have been there now descended a marble veil from brow to breast, of the most singular and sinister effect. Otherwise the bust was that of a young and beautiful woman. A pleasing horror seized on Kitty as she looked. Her fancy hunted for the clew. A faithless wife, blotted from her place?--made infamous forever by the veil which hid from human eye the beauty she had dishonored? Or a beloved mistress, on whom the mourning lover could no longer bear to look--the veil an emblem of undying and irremediable grief?

Kitty stood enthralled, striving to pierce the ghastly meaning of the bust, when a sound--a distant sound--a shock through her. She heard a step overhead, in the topmost apartment, or _mansarde_ of the palace, a step that presently traversed the whole length of the floor immediately above her head and began to descend the stair.

Strange! Federigo must have shut the great gates by this time--as she had bade him? He himself inhabited the smaller _entresol_ on the farther side of the palace, far away. Other inhabitants there were none; so Donna Laura had assured her.

The step approached, resonant in the silence. Kitty, seized with nervous fright, turned and ran down the broad staircase by which she had come, through the series of deserted rooms in the _piano nobile_, till she reached the great hall.

There she paused, panting, curiosity and daring once more getting the upperhand. The door she had just passed through, which gave access to the staircase, opened again and shut. The stranger who had entered came leisurely towards the hall, lingering apparently now and then to look at objects on the way. Presently a voice--an exclamation.

Kitty retreated, caught at the arm of a chair for support, clung to it trembling. A man entered, holding his hat in one hand and a small white glove in the other.

At sight of the lady in black, standing on the other side of the hall, he started violently--and stopped. Then, just as Kitty, who had so far made neither sound nor movement, took the first hurried step towards the staircase by which she had entered, Geoffrey Cliffe came forward.

"How do you do, Lady Kitty? Do not, I beg of you, let me disturb you. I had half an hour to spare, and I gave the old man down-stairs a franc or two, that he might let me wander over this magnificent old place by myself for a bit. I have always had a fancy for deserted houses. You, I gather, have it, too. I will not interfere with you for a moment. Before I go, however, let me return what I believe to be your property."

He came nearer, with a studied, deliberate air, and held out the white glove. She saw it was her own and accepted it.

"Thank you."

She bowed with all the haughtiness she could muster, though her limbs shook under her. Then as she walked quickly towards the door of exit, Cliffe, who was nearer to it than she, also moved towards it, and threw it open for her. As she approached him he said, quietly:

"This is not the first time we have met in Venice, Lady Kitty."

She wavered, could not avoid looking at him, and stood arrested. That almost white head!--that furrowed brow!--those haggard eyes! A slight, involuntary cry broke from her lips.

Cliffe smiled. Then he straightened his tall figure.

"You see, perhaps, that I have not grown younger. You are quite right. I have left my youth--what remained of it--among those splendid fellows whom the Turks have been harrying and torturing. Well!--they were worth it. I would give it them again."

There was a short silence.

The eyes of each perused the other's face. Kitty began some words, and left them unfinished. Cliffe resumed--in another tone--while the door he held swung gently backward, his hand following it.

"I spent last winter, as perhaps you know, with the Bosnian insurgents in the mountains. It was a tough business--hardships I should never have had the pluck to face if I had known what was before me. Then, in July, I got fever. I had to come away, to find a doctor, and I was a long time at Cattaro pulling round. And, meanwhile, the Turks--God blast them!--have been at their fiends' work. Half my particular friends, with whom I spent the winter, have been hacked to pieces since I left them."

She wavered, held by his look, by the coercion of that mingled passion and indifference with which he spoke. There was in his manner no suggestion whatever of things behind, no reference to herself or to the past between them. His passion, it seemed, was for his comrades; his indifference for her. What had he to do with her any more? He had been among the realities of battle and death, while she had been mincing and ambling along the usual feminine path. That was the utterance, it seemed, of the man's whole manner and personality, and nothing could have more effectually recalled Kitty's wild nature to the lure.

"Are you going back?" She had turned from him and was pulling at the fingers of the glove he had picked up.

"Of course! I am only kicking my heels here till I can collect the money and stores--ay, and the _men_--I want. I give my orders in London, and I must be here to see to the transshipment of stores and the embarkation of my small force! Not meant for the newspapers, you see, Lady Kitty--these little details!"

He drew himself up smiling, his worn aspect expressing just that mingling of dare-devil adventure with subtler and more self-conscious things which gave edge and power to his personality.

"I heard you were wounded," said Kitty, abruptly.

"So I was--badly. We were defending a _polje_--one of their high mountain valleys, against a Beg and his troops. My left arm"--he pointed to the black sling in which it was still held--"was nearly cut to pieces. However, it is practically well."

He took it out of the sling and showed that he could use it. Then his expression changed. He stepped back to the door, and opened it ceremoniously.

"Don't, however, let me delay you, Lady Kitty--by my chatter."

Kitty's cheeks were crimson. Her momentary yielding vanished in a passion of scorn. What!--he knew that she had seen him before, seen him with that woman--and he dared to play the mere shattered hero, kept in Venice by these crusader's reasons!

"Have you another volume on the way?" she asked him, as she advanced. "I read your last."

Her smile was the smile of an enemy. He eyed her strangely.

"Did you? That was waste of time."

"I think you intended I should read it."

He hesitated.

"Lady Kitty, those things are very far away. I can't defend myself--for they seem wiped out." He had crossed his arms, and was leaning back against the open door, a fine, rugged figure, by no means repentant.

Kitty laughed.

"You overstate the difference!"

"Between the past and the present? What does that mean?"

She dropped her eyes a moment, then raised them.

"Do you often go to San Lazzaro?"

He bowed.

"I had a suspicion that the vision at the window--though it was there only an instant--was you! So you saw Mademoiselle Ricci?"

His tone was assurance itself. Kitty disdained to answer. Her slight gesture bade him let her pass through; but he ignored it.

"I find her kind, Lady Kitty. She listens to me--I get sympathy from her."

"And you want sympathy?"

Her tone stung him. "As a hungry man wants food --as an artist wants beauty. But I know where I shall _not_ get it."

"That is always a gain!" said Kitty, throwing back her little head. "Mr. Cliffe, pray let me bid you good-bye."

He suddenly made a step forward. "Lady Kitty!"--his deep-set, imperious eyes searched her face--"I can't restrain myself. Your look--your expression--go to my heart. Laugh at me if you like. It's true. What have you been doing with yourself?"

He bent towards her, scrutinizing every delicate feature, and, as it seemed, shaken with agitation. She breathed fast.

"Mr. Cliffe, you must know that any sympathy from you to me--is an insult! Kindly let me pass."

He, too, flushed deeply.

"Insult is a hard word, Lady Kitty. I regret that poem."

She swept forward in silence, but he still stood in the way.

"I wrote it--almost in delirium. Ah, well"--he shook his head impatiently--"if you don't believe me, let it be. I am not the man I was. The perspective of things is altered for me." His voice fell. "Women and children in their blood--heroic trust--and brute hate--the stars for candles--the high peaks for friends--those things have come between me and the past. But you are right; we had better not talk any more. I hear old Federigo coming up the stairs. Good-night, Lady Kitty--good-night!"

He opened the door. She passed him, and, to her own intense annoyance, a bunch of pale roses she carried at her belt brushed against the doorway, so that one broke and fell. She turned to pick it up, but it was already in Cliffe's hand. She held out hers, threateningly.

"I think not." He put it in his pocket. "Here is Federigo. Good-night."

It was quite dark when Kitty reached home. She groped her way up-stairs and opened the door of the _salon_. So weary was she that she dropped into the first chair, not seeing at first that any one was in the room. Then she caught sight of a brown-paper parcel, apparently just unfastened, on the table, and within it three books, of similar shape and size. A movement startled her.

"William!"

Ashe rose slowly from the deep chair in which he had been sitting. His aspect seemed to her terrified eyes utterly and wholly changed. In his hand he held a book like those on the table, and a paper-cutter. His face expressed the remote abstraction of a man who has been wrestling his way through some hard contest of the mind.

She ran to him. She wound her arms round him.

"William, William! I didn't mean any harm! I didn't! Oh, I have been so miserable! I tried to stop it--I did all I could. I have hardly slept at all--since we talked--you remember? Oh, William, look at me! Don't be angry with me!"

Ashe disengaged himself.

"I have asked Blanche to pack for me to-night, Kitty. I go home by the early train to-morrow."

"Home!"

She stood petrified; then a light flashed into her face.

"You'll buy it all up? You'll stop it, William?"

Ashe drew himself together.

"I am going home," he said, with slow decision, "to place my resignation in the hands of Lord Parham."

XXI

Kitty fell back in silence, staring at William. She loosened her mantle and threw it off, then she sat down in a chair near the wood fire, and bent over it, shivering.

"Of course you didn't mean that, William?" she said, at last.

Ashe turned.

"I should not have said it unless I had meant every word of it. It is, of course, the only thing to be done."

Kitty looked at him miserably. "But you _can't_ mean that--that you'll resign because of that book?"

She pulled it towards her and turned over the pages with a hand that trembled. "That would be too foolish!"

Ashe made no reply. He was standing before the fire, with his hands in his pockets, and a face half absent, half ironical, as though his mind followed the sequences of a far distant future.

"William!" She caught the sleeve of his coat with a little cry. "I wrote that book because I thought it would help you."

His attention came back to her.

"Yes, Kitty, I believe you did."

She gulped down a sob. His tone was so odd, so remote.

"Many people have done such things. I know they have. Why--why, it was only meant--as a skit--to make people laugh! There's _no_ harm in it, William."

Ashe, without speaking, took up the book and looked back at certain pages, which he seemed to have marked. Kitty's feeling as she watched him was the feeling of the condemned culprit, held dumb and strangled in the grip of his own sense of justice, and yet passionately conscious how much more he could say for himself than anybody is ever likely to say for him.

"When did you have the first idea of this book, Kitty?"

"About a year ago," she said, in a low voice.

"In October? At Haggart?"

Kitty nodded.

Ashe thought. Her admission took him back to the autumn weeks at Haggart, after the Cliffe crisis and the rearrangement of the ministry in the July of that year. He well remembered that those weeks had been weeks of special happiness for both of them. Afterwards, the winter had brought many renewed qualms and vexations. But in that period, between the storms of the session and Kitty's escapades in the hunting-field, memory recalled a tender, melting time--a time rich in hidden and exquisite hours, when with Kitty on his breast, lip to lip and heart to heart, he had reaped, as it seemed to him, the fruits of that indulgence which, as he knew, his mother scorned. And at that very moment, behind his back, out of his sight, she had begun this atrocious thing.

He looked at her again--the bitterness almost at his lips, almost beyond his control.

"I wish I knew what could have been your possible object in writing it?"

She sat up and confronted him. The color flamed back again into her pale cheeks.

"You know I told you--when we had that talk in London--that I wanted to write. I thought it would be good for me--would take my thoughts off--well, what had happened. And I began to write this--and it amused me to find I could do it--and I suppose I got carried away. I loved describing you, and glorifying you--and I loved making caricatures of Lady Parham--and all the people I hated. I used to work at it whenever you were away--or I was dull and there was nothing to do.

"Did it never occur to you," said Ashe, interrupting, "that it might get you--get us both--into trouble, and that you ought to tell me?"

She wavered.

"No!" she said, at last. "I never did mean to tell you, while I was writing it. You know I don't tell lies, William! The real fact is, I was afraid you'd stop it."

"Good God!" He threw up his hands with a sound of amazement, then thrust them again into his pockets and began to pace up and down.

"But then"--she resumed--"I thought you'd soon get over it, and that it was funny--and everybody would laugh--and you'd laugh--and there would be an end of it."

He turned and stared at her. "Frankly, Kitty--I don't understand what you can be made of! You imagined that that sketch of Lord Parham"--he struck the open page--"a sketch written by _my wife_, describing my official chief--when he was my guest--under my own roof--with all sorts of details of the most intimate and offensive kind--mocking his speech--his manners--his little personal ways--charging him with being the corrupt tool of Lady Parham, disloyal to his colleagues, a man not to be trusted--and justifying all this by a sort of evidence that you could only have got as my wife and Lord Parham's hostess--you actually supposed that you could write and publish _that!_--without in the first place its being plain to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that you had written it--and in the next, without making it impossible for your husband to remain a colleague of the man you had treated in such a way? Kitty!--you are not a stupid woman! Do you really mean to say that you could write and publish this book without _knowing_ that you were doing a wrong action--which, so far from serving me, could only damage my career irreparably? Did nothing--did no one warn you--if you were determined to keep such a secret from your husband, whom it most concerned?"

He had come to stand beside her, both hands on the back of a chair--stooping forward to emphasize his words--the lines of his fine face and noble brow contracted by anger and pain.

"Mr. Darrell warned me," said Kitty, in a low voice, as though those imperious eyes compelled the truth from her--"but of course I didn't believe him."

"Darrell!" cried Ashe, in amazement--"Darrell! You confided in him?"

"I told him all about it. It was he who took it to a publisher."

"Hound!" said Ashe, between his teeth. "So that was his revenge."

"Oh, you needn't blame him too much," said Kitty, proudly, not understanding the remark. "He wrote to me not long ago to say it was horribly unwise--and that he washed his hands of it."

"Ay--when he'd done the deed! When did you show it him?" said Ashe, impetuously.

"At Haggart--in August."

"_Et tu, Brute!_" said Ashe, turning away. "Well, that's done with. Now the only thing to do is to face the music. I go home. Whatever can be done to withdraw the book from circulation I shall, of course, do; but I gather from this precious letter"--he held up the note which had been enclosed in the parcel--"that some thousands of copies have already been ordered by the booksellers, and a few distributed to 'persons in high places.'"

"William," she said, in despair, catching his arm again--"listen! I offered the man two hundred pounds only yesterday to stop it."

Ashe laughed.

"What did he reply?"

"He said it was impossible. Fifty copies had been already issued."

"The review copies, no doubt. By next week there will be, I should say, five thousand in the shops. Your man understands his business, Kitty. This is the kind of puff preliminary he has been scattering about."

And with sparkling eyes he handed to her a printed slip containing an outline of the book for the information of the booksellers.

It drew attention to the extraordinary interest of the production as a painting of the upper class by the hand of one belonging to its inmost circle. "People of the highest social and political importance will be recognized at once; the writer handles cabinet ministers and their wives with equal freedom, and with a touch betraying the closest and most intimate knowledge. Details hitherto quite unknown to the public of ministerial combinations and intrigues--especially of the feminine influences involved--will be found here in their lightest and most amusing form. A certain famous fancy ball will be identified without difficulty. Scathing as some of the portraits are, the writer is by no means merely cynical. The central figure of the book is a young and rising statesman, whose aim and hopes are touched with a loving hand--the charm of the portrait being only equalled by the venom with which the writer assails those who have thwarted or injured his hero. But our advice is simply--'Buy and Read!' Conjecture will run wild about the writer. All we can say is that the most romantic or interesting surmise that can possibly be formed will fall far short of the reality."

"The beast is a shrewd beast!" said Ashe, as he raised himself from the stooping position in which he had been following the sentences over Kitty's shoulder. "He knows that the public will rush for his wares! How much money did he offer you, Kitty?"

He turned sharply on his heel to wait for her reply.

"A hundred pounds," said Kitty, almost inaudibly--"and a hundred more if five thousand sold." She had returned again to her crouching attitude over the fire.

"Generous!--upon my word!" said Ashe, scornfully turning over the two thick-leaved, loosely printed Mudie volumes. "A guinea to the public, I suppose--fifteen shillings to the trade. Darrell didn't exactly advise you to advantage, Kitty."

Kitty kept silence. The sarcastic violence of his tone fell on her like a blow. She seemed to shrink together; while Ashe resumed his walk to and fro.

Presently, however, she looked up, to ask, in a voice that tried for steadiness:

"What do you mean to do--exactly--William?"

"I shall, of course, buy up all I can; I shall employ some lawyer fellow, and appeal to the good feelings of the newspapers. There will be no trouble with the respectable ones. But some copies will get out, and some of the Opposition newspapers will make capital out of them. Naturally!--they'd be precious fools if they didn't."

A momentary hope sprang up in Kitty.

"But if you buy it up--and stop all the papers that matter," she faltered--"why should you resign, William? There won't be--such great harm done."

For answer he opened the book, and without speaking pointed to two passages--the first, an account full of point and malice of the negotiations between himself and Lord Parham at the time when he entered the cabinet, the conditions he himself had made, and the confidential comments of the Premier on the men and affairs of the moment.

"Do you remember the night when I told you those things, Kitty?"

Yes, Kitty remembered well. It was a night of intimate talk between man and wife, a night when she had shown him her sweetest, tenderest mood, and he--incorrigible optimist!--had persuaded himself that she was growing as wise as she was lovely.

Her lip trembled. Then he pointed to the second--to the pitiless picture of Lord Parham at Haggart.

"You wrote that--when he was under our roof--there by our pressing invitation! You couldn't have written it--unless he had so put himself in your power. A wandering Arab, Kitty, will do no harm to the man who has eaten and drunk in his tent!"

She looked up, and as she read his face she understood at last how what she had done had outraged in him all the natural and all the inherited instincts of a generous and fastidious nature. The "great gentleman," so strong in him as in all the best of English statesmen, whether they spring from the classes or the masses, was up in arms.

She sprang to her feet with a cry. "William, you can't give up politics! It would make you miserable."

"That can't be helped. And I couldn't go on like this, Kitty--even if this affair of the book could be patched up. The strain's too great."

They were but a yard apart, and yet she seemed to be looking at him across a gulf.

"You have been so happy in your work!" This time the sob escaped her.

"Oh, don't let's talk about that," he said, abruptly, as he walked away. "There'll be a certain relief in giving up the impossible. I'll go back to my books. We can travel, I suppose, and put politics out of our heads."

"But--you won't resign your seat?"

"No," he said, after a pause--"no. As far as I can see at present, I sha'n't resign my seat, though my constituents, of course, will be very sick. But I doubt whether I shall stand again."

Every phrase fell as though with a thud on Kitty's ear. It was the wreck of a man's life, and she had done it.

"Shall you--shall you go and see Lord Parham?" she asked, after a pause.

"I shall write to him first. I imagine"--he pointed to the letter lying on the table--"that creature has already sent him the book. Then later I daresay I shall see him."

She looked up.

"If I wrote and told him it was all my doing, William?--if I grovelled to him?"

"The responsibility is mine," he said, sternly. "I had no business to tell even you the things printed there. I told them at my own risk. If anything I say has any weight with you, Kitty, you will write nothing."

She spread out her hands to the fire again, and he heard her say, as though to herself:

"The thing is--the awful thing is, that I'm mad--I must be mad. I never thought of all this when I was writing it. I wrote it in a kind of dream. In the first place, I wanted to glorify you--"

He broke into an exclamation.

"Your _taste_, Kitty!--where was your taste? That a wife should praise a husband in public! You could only make us both laughing-stocks."

His handsome features quivered a little. He felt this part of it the most galling, the most humiliating of all; and she understood. In his eyes she had shown herself not only reckless and treacherous, but indelicate, vulgar, capable of besmirching the most sacred and intimate of relations.

She rose from her seat.

"I must go and take my things off," she said, in "a vague voice," and as she moved she tottered a little. He turned to look at her. Amid his own crushing sense of defeat and catastrophe, his natural and righteous indignation, he remembered that she had been ill--he remembered their child. But whether from the excitement, first of the meeting in the Vercelli palace, and now of this scene--or merely from the heat of the fire over which she had been hanging, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes blazed. Her beauty had never been more evident; but it made little appeal to him; it was the wild, ungovernable beauty from which he had suffered. He saw that she was excited, but there was an air also of returning physical vigor; and the nascent feeling which might have been strengthened by pallor and prostration died away.

Kitty moved as though to pass him and go to her room, which opened out of the _salon_. But as she neared him she suddenly caught him by the arm.

"William!--William! don't do it!--don't resign! Let me apologize!"

He was angered by her persistence, and merely said, coldly:

"I have given you my reasons, Kitty, why such a course is impossible."

"And--and you start to-morrow morning?"

"By the early train. Please let me go, Kitty. There are many things to arrange. I must order the gondola, and see if the people here can cash me a check."

"You mean--to leave me alone?" The words had a curious emphasis.

"I had a few words with Miss French before you came in. The packet arrived by the evening post, and seeing that it was books--for you--I opened it. After about an hour"--he turned and walked away again--"I saw my bearings. Then I called Miss French, told her I should have to go to-morrow, and asked her how long she could stay with you."

"William!" cried Kitty again, leaning heavily on the table beside her--"don't go!--don't leave me!"

His face darkened.

"So you would prevent me from taking the only honorable, the only decent way out of this thing that remains to me?"

She made no immediate reply. She stood--wrapped apparently in painful abstraction--a creature lovely and distraught. The masses of her fair hair loosened by the breeze on the canal had fallen about her cheeks and shoulders; her black hat framed the white brow and large, feverish eyes; and the sable cape she had worn in the gondola had slipped down over the thin, sloping shoulders, revealing the young figure and the slender waist. She might have been a child of seventeen, grieving over the death of her goldfinch.

Ashe gathered together his official letters and papers, found his check-book, and began to write. While he wrote he explained that Miss French could keep her company at least another fortnight, that he could leave with them four or five circular notes for immediate expenses, and would send more from home directly he arrived.

In the middle of his directions Kitty once more appealed to him in a passionate, muffled voice not to go. This time he lost his temper, and without answering her he hastily left the room to arrange his packing with his valet.

* * * * *

When he returned to the _salon_ Kitty was not there. He and Miss French--who knew only that something tragic had happened in which Kitty was concerned--kept up a fragmentary conversation till dinner was announced and Kitty entered. She had evidently been weeping, but with powder and rouge she had tried to conceal the traces of her tears; and at dinner she sat silent, hardly answering when Margaret French spoke to her.

After dinner Ashe went out with his cigar towards the Piazza. He was in a smarting, dazed state, beginning, however, to realize the blow more than he had done at first. He believed that Parham himself would not be at all sorry to be rid of him. He and his friends formed a powerful group both in the cabinet and out of it. But they were forcing the pace, and the elements of resistance and reaction were strong. He pictured the dismay of his friends, the possible breakdown of the reforming party. Of course they might so stand by him--and the suppression of the book might be so complete--

At this moment he caught sight of a newspaper contents bill displayed at the door of the only shop in the Piazza which sold English newspapers. One of the lines ran, "Anonymous attack on the Premier." He started, went in and bought the paper. There, in the "London Topics" column, was the following paragraph:

"A string of extracts from a forthcoming book, accompanied by a somewhat startling publisher's statement, has lately been sent round to the press. We are asked not to print them before the day of publication, but they have already roused much attention, if not excitement. They certainly contain a very gross attack on the Prime Minister, based apparently on first-hand information, and involving indiscretions personal and political of an unusually serious character. The wife of a cabinet minister is freely named as the writer, and even if no violation of cabinet secrecy is concerned, it is clear that the book outrages the confidential relations which ought to subsist between a Premier and his colleagues, if government on our English system is to be satisfactorily carried on. The statements it makes with every appearance of authority both as to the relations between Lord Parham and some of the most important members of his cabinet, and as to the Premier's intentions with regard to one or two of the most vital questions now before the country, are calculated seriously to embarrass the government. We fear the book will have a veritable _succès de scandale_."

"That fellow at least has done his best to kick the ball, damn him!" thought Ashe, with contempt, as he thrust the paper into his pocket.

It was no more than he expected; but it put an end to all thoughts of a more hopeful kind. He walked up and down the _Piazza_ smoking, till midnight, counting the hours till he could reach London, and revolving the phrases of a telegram to be sent to his solicitor before starting.

Kitty made no sign or sound when he entered her room. Her fair head was turned away from him, and all was dark. He could hardly believe that she was asleep; but it was a relief to him to accept her pretence of it, and to escape all further conversation. He himself slept but little. The mere profundity of the Venetian silence teased him; it reminded him how far he was from home.

Two images pursued him--of Kitty writing the book, while he was away electioneering or toiling at his new office--and then, of his returns to Haggart--tired or triumphant--on many a winter evening, of her glad rush into his arms, her sparkling face on his breast.

Or again, he conjured up the scene when the MS. had been shown to Darrell--his pretence of disapproval, his sham warnings, and the smile on his sallow face as he walked off with it. Ashe looked back to the early days of his friendship with Darrell, when he, Ashe, was one of the leaders at Eton, popular with the masters in spite of his incorrigible idleness, and popular with the boys because of his bodily prowess, and Darrell had been a small, sickly, bullied colleger. Scene after scene recurred to him, from their later relations at Oxford also. There was a kind of deliberation in the way in which he forced his thoughts into this channel; it made an outlet for a fierce bitterness of spirit, which some imperious instinct forbade him to spend on Kitty.

He dozed in the later hours of the night, and was roused by something touching his hand, which lay outside the bedclothes. Again the little head!--and the soft curls. Kitty was there--crouched beside him--weeping. There flashed into his mind an image of the night in London when she had come to him thus; and unwelcome as the whole remembrance was, he was conscious of a sudden swelling wave of pity and passion. What if he sprang up, caught her in his arms, forgave her, and bade the world go hang!

No! The impulse passed, and in his turn he feigned sleep. The thought of her long deceit, of the selfish wilfulness wherewith she had requited deep love and easy trust, was too much; it seared his heart. And there was another and a subtler influence. To have forgiven so easily would have seemed treachery to those high ambitions and ideals from which--as he thought, only too certainly--she had now cut him off. It was part of his surviving youth that the catastrophe seemed to him so absolute. Any thought of the fresh efforts which would be necessary for the reconquering of his position was no less sickening to him than that of the immediate discomforts and humiliations to be undergone. He would go back to books and amusement; and in the idling of the future there would be plenty of time for love-making.

* * * * *

In the morning, when all preparations were made, the gondoliers waiting below, Ashe's telegram sent, and the circular notes handed over to Margaret French, who had discreetly left the room, William approached his wife.

"Good-bye!" said Kitty, and gave him her hand, with a strange look and smile.

Ashe, however, drew her to him and kissed her--against her will. "I'll do my best, Kitty," he said, in a would-be cheery voice--"to pull us through. Perhaps--I don't know!--things may turn out better than I think. Good-bye. Take care of yourself. I'll write, of course. Don't hurry home. You'll want a fortnight or three weeks yet."

Kitty said not a word, and in another minute he was gone. The Italian servants congregated below at the water-gate sent laughing "A rivederlas" after the handsome, good-tempered Englishman, whom they liked and regretted; the gondola moved off; Kitty heard the plash of the water. But she held back from the window.