Chapter IX: Part II: Three Years After (5)

"On the contrary," laughed Ashe. "Parham has shown a wonderful amount of originality. If you and I are taken by surprise, what will the public be? And they'll like him all the better--you'll see. He has shown courage and gone for new men--that's what they'll say. _Vive_ Parham! Well, good-bye. Now, please the Lord, we shall get off--and I may be among the grouse this day week."

He stopped on his way out of the club to discuss the list with the men coming in. He was conscious that some would have avoided him. But he had no mind to be avoided, and his caustic, good-humored talk carried off the situation. Presently he was walking homeward, swinging his stick with the gayety of a school-boy expecting the holidays.

As he mounted St. James's Street a carriage descended. Ashe mechanically took off his hat to the half-recognized face within, and as he did so perceived the icy bow and triumphant eyes of Lady Parham.

He hurried along, fighting a curious sensation, as of a physical bruising and beating. The streets were full of the news, and he was stopped many times by mere acquaintances to talk of it. In Savile Row he turned into a small literary club of which he was a member, and wrote a letter to his mother. In very affectionate and amusing terms it begged her not to take the disappointment too seriously. "I think I won't come round to-night. But expect me first thing to-morrow."

He sent the note by messenger and walked home. When he reached Hill Street it was close on eight. Outside the house he suddenly asked himself what line he was going to take with Kitty.

Kitty, however, was not at home. As far as he could remember she had gone coaching with the Alcots into Surrey, Geoffrey Cliffe, of course, being of the party. Presently, indeed, he discovered a hasty line from her on his study table, to say that they were to dine at Richmond, and "Madeleine" supposed they would get home between ten and eleven. Not a word more. Like all strong men, Ashe despised the meditations of self-pity. But the involuntary reflection that on this evening of humiliation Kitty was not with him--did not apparently care enough about his affairs and his ambitions to be with him--brought with it a soreness which had to be endured.

The next moment, he was inclined to be glad of her absence. Such things, especially in the first shock of them, are best faced alone. If, indeed, there were any shock in the matter. He had for some time had his own shrewd previsions, and he was aware of a strong inner belief that his defeat was but temporary.

Probably, when she had time to remember such trifles, Kitty would feel the shock more than he did. Lady Parham had certainly won this round of the rubber!

He settled to his solitary dinner, but in the middle of it put down Kitty's Aberdeen terrier, which, for want of other company, he was stuffing atrociously, and ran up to the nursery. The nurse was at her supper, and Harry lay fast asleep, a pretty little fellow, flushed into a semblance of health, and with a strong look of Kitty.

Ashe bent down and put his whiskered cheek to the boy's. "Never mind, old man!" he murmured, "better luck next time!"

Then raising himself with a smile, he looked affectionately at the child, noticed with satisfaction his bright color and even breathing, and stole away.

He ran through the comments of the evening papers on the new cabinet list, finding in only two or three any reference to himself, then threw them aside, and seized upon a pile of books and reviews that were lying on his table. He carried them up to the drawing-room, hesitated between a theological review and a new edition of Horace, and finally plunged with avidity into the theological review.

For some two hours he sat enthralled by an able summary of the chief Tübingen positions; then suddenly threw himself back with a stretch and a laugh.

"Wonder what the chap's doing that's got my post! Not reading theology, I'll be bound."

The reflection followed that were he at that moment Home Secretary and in the cabinet, he would not probably be reading it either--nor left to a solitary evening. Friends would be dropping in to congratulate--the modern equivalent of the old "turba clientium."

As his thoughts wandered, the drawing-room clock struck eleven. He rose, astonished and impatient. Where was Kitty?

By midnight she had not arrived. Ashe heard the butler moving in the hall and summoned him.

"There may have been some mishap to the coach, Wilson. Perhaps they have stayed at Richmond. Anyway, go to bed. I'll wait for her ladyship."

He returned to his arm-chair and his books, but soon drew Kitty's _couvre-pied_ over him and went to sleep.

When he awoke, daylight was in the room. "What has happened to them?" he asked himself, in a sudden anxiety.

And amid the silence of the dawn he paced up and down, a prey for the first time to black depression. He was besieged by memories of the last two months, their anxieties and quarrels--the waste of time and opportunity--the stabs to feeling and self-respect. Once he found himself groaning aloud, "Kitty! Kitty!"

When this huge, distracting London was left behind, when he had her to himself amid the Scotch heather and birch, should he find her again--conquer her again--as in the exquisite days after their marriage? He thought of Cliffe with a kind of proud torment, disdaining to be jealous or afraid. Kitty had amused herself--had tested her freedom, his patience, to the utmost. Might she now be content, and reward him a little for a self-control, a philosophy, which had not been easy!

A French novel on Kitty's little table drew his attention. He thought not without a discomfortable humor of what a French husband would have made of a similar situation--recalling the remark of a French acquaintance on some case illustrating the freedom of English wives. "Il y a un élément turc dans le mari français, qui nous rendrait ces moeurs-là impossibles!"

_À la bonne heure_! Let the Frenchman keep up his seraglio standards as he pleased. An Englishman trusts both his wife and his daughter--scorns, indeed, to consider whether he trusts them or no! And who comes worst off? Not the Englishman--if, at least, we are to believe the French novel on the French _ménage!_

He paced thus up and down for an hour, defying his unseen critics--his mother--his own heart.

* * * * *

Then he went to bed and slept a little. But with the post next morning there was no letter from Kitty. There might be a hundred explanations of that. Yet he felt a sudden need of caution.

"Her ladyship comes up this morning by train," he said to Wilson, as though reading from a note. "There seems to have been a mishap."

Then he took a hansom and drove to the Alcots.

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

"Mrs. Alcot has been in her room since yesterday morning, sir. She was taken ill just before the coach was coming round, and the horses had to be sent back. But the doctor last night hoped it would be nothing serious."

Ashe turned and went home. Then Kitty was not with Madeleine Alcot--not on the coach! Where was she, and with whom?

He shut himself into his library and fell to wondering, in bewilderment, what he had better do. A tide of rage and agony was mounting within him. How to master it--and keep his brain clear!

He was sitting in front of his writing-table staring at the floor, his hands hanging before him, when the door opened and shut. He turned. There, with her back to the door, stood Kitty. Her aspect startled him to his feet. She looked at him, trembling--her little face haggard and white, with a touch of something in it which had blurred its youth.

"William!" She put both her hands to her breast, as though to support herself. Then she flew forward. "William! I have done nothing wrong--nothing--nothing! William--look at me!"

He sternly put out his hand, protecting himself.

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

Kitty fell into a chair and burst into wild tears.

XIII

There was silence for a few moments except for Kitty's crying. Ashe still stood beside his writing-table, his hand resting upon it, his eyes on Kitty. Once or twice he began to speak, and stopped. At last he said, with obvious difficulty:

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

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

"I never got it."

"Horrid little fiend!" cried Kitty, sitting up and dashing back her hair from her tear-stained cheeks. "I gave a boy half a crown this morning to be at the station with it by eight o'clock. And I couldn't possibly either write or telegraph last night--it was too late."

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

"--the butler told you Madeleine was in bed? So she is. She was ill yesterday morning. There was no coach and no party. I went with Geoffrey."

Kitty held herself erect; her eyes, from which the tears were involuntarily dropping, were fixed on her husband.

"Of course I guessed that," said Ashe.

"It was Geoffrey brought me the news--here, just as I was starting to go to the Alcots'. Then he said he had something to read me--and it would be delicious to go to Pangbourne--spend the day on the river--and come back from Windsor--at night--by train. And I had a horrid headache--and it was so hot--and you were at the office"--her lip quivered--"and I wanted to hear Geoffrey's poems--and so--"

She interrupted herself, and once more broke down--hiding her face against the chair. But the next moment she felt herself roughly drawn forward, as Ashe knelt beside her.

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

She looked up--she saw the handsome, good-humored face transformed--and wrenched herself away.

"He did," she said, bitterly--"like a villain." She began to twist and torment her handkerchief as Ashe had seen her do once before, the small white teeth pressed upon the lower lip--then suddenly she turned upon him--

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

All Kitty in the words! Her frankness, her daring, and the impatient, realistic tone she was apt to impose upon emotion--they were all there.

Ashe rose and began to walk up and down.

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

Kitty was silent. Ashe, looking at her, saw a curious shade of reverie, a kind of dreamy excitement steal over her face.

"Go on, Kitty!" he said, sharply. Then, restraining himself, he added, with all his natural courtesy--"I beg your pardon, Kitty, but the sooner we get through with this the better."

The mist in which her expression had been for a moment wrapped fell away. She flushed deeply.

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

Their eyes met in a shock of challenge and reply.

"Those things are not to be asked between you and me," he said, with vehemence, and he held out his hand. She just touched it--proudly. Then she drew a long breath.

"The day was--just like other days. He read me his poems--in a cool place we found under the bank. I thought he was rather absurd now and then--and different from what he had been. He talked of our going away--and his not seeing me--and how lonely he was. And of course I was awfully sorry for him. But it was all right till--"

She paused and looked at Ashe.

"You remember the inn near Hamel Weir--a few miles from Windsor--that lonely little place."

Ashe nodded.

"We dined there. Afterwards we were to row to Windsor and come home by a train about ten. We finished dinner early. By-the-way, there were two other people there--Lady Edith Manley and her boy. They had rowed down from somewhere--"

"Did Lady Edith--"

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

"Where she probably met mother?"

"She did meet her!" cried Kitty. She pointed to a letter which she had thrown down as she entered. "Your mother sent round this note to me this morning--to ask when I should be at home. And Wilson sent word--There! Of course I know she thinks I'm capable of anything."

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

"Go on, please," said Ashe.

"We finished dinner early. There was a field behind the inn, and then a wood. We strolled into the wood, and then Geoffrey--well, he went mad! He--"

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

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

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

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

Ashe came--unwillingly. She perceived the reluctance, and with a flaming face she motioned him back, while she controlled herself enough to pour out her story. Presently Ashe was able to reconstruct with tolerable clearness what had occurred. Cliffe, intoxicated by the long day of intimacy and of solitude, by Kitty's beauty and Kitty's folly, aware that parting was near at hand, and trusting to the wildness of Kitty's temperament, had suddenly assumed the language of the lover--and a lover by no means uncertain of his ultimate answer. So long as they understood each other--that, indeed, for the present, was all he asked. But she must know that she had broken off his marriage with Mary Lyster, and reopened in his nature all the old founts of passion and of storm. It had been her sovereign will that he should love her; it had been achieved. For her sake--knowing himself for the seared and criminal being that he was--for Ashe's sake--he had tried to resist her spell. In vain. A fatal fusion of their two natures--imaginations--sympathies--had come about. Each was interpenetrated by the other; and retreat was impossible.

A kind of sombre power, indeed--the power of the poet and the dreamer--seemed to have spoken from Cliffe's strange wooing. He had taken no particular pains to flatter her, or to conceal his original hesitation. He put her own action in a hard, almost a brutal light. It was plain that he thought she had treated her husband badly; that he warned her of a future of treachery and remorse. At the same time he let her see that he could not doubt but that she would face it. They still had the last justifying cards in their hands--passion, and the courage to go where passion leads. When those were played, they might look each other and the world in the face. Till then they were but triflers--mean souls--fit neither for heaven nor for hell.

Ashe's whole being was soon in a tumult of rage under the sting of this report, as he was able to piece it out from Kitty. But he kept his self-command, and by dint of it he presently arrived at some notion of her own share in the scene. Horror, recoil, disavowal--a wild resentment of the charges heaped upon her, of the pitiless interpretation of her behavior which broke from those harsh lips, of the incredulity passing into something like contempt with which Cliffe had endured her wrath and received her protestations--then a blind flight through the fields to the little wayside station, where she hoped to catch the last train; the arrival and departure of the train while she was still half a mile from the line, and her shelter at a cottage for the night; these things stood out plainly, whatever else remained in obscurity. How far she had provoked her own fate, and how far even now she was delivered from the morbid spell of Cliffe's personality, Ashe would not allow himself to ask. As she neared the end of her story, it was as though the great tempest wave in which she had been struggling died down, and with a merciful rush bore him to a shore of deliverance. She was there beside him; and she was still his own.

He had been leaning over the side of a chair, his chin on his hand, his eyes fixed upon her, while she told her tale. It ended in a burst of self-pity, as she remembered her collapse in the cottage, the impossibility of finding any carriage in the small hamlet of which it made part, the faint weariness of the night--

"I never slept," she said, piteously. "I got up at eight for the first train, and now I feel"--she fell back in her chair, and whispered desolately with shut eyes--"as if I should like to die!"

Ashe knelt down beside her.

"It's my fault, too, Kitty. I ought to have held you with a stronger hand. I hated quarrelling with you. But--oh, my dear, my dear--"

She met the cry in silence, the tears running over her cheeks. Roughly, impetuously, he gathered her in his arms and kissed her, as though he would once more re-knit and reconsecrate the bond between them. She lay passively against him, the tangle of her fair hair spread over his shoulder--too frail and too exhausted for response.

"This won't do," he said, presently, disengaging himself; "you must have some food and rest. Then we'll think what shall be done."

She roused herself suddenly as he went to the door.

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

"I sent a message early. Lawson came"--Lawson was his private secretary--"but I must go down in an hour."

"William!"

Kitty had raised herself, and her eyes shone large and startled in the small, tear-stained face.

"Yes." He paused a moment.

"William, is the list out?"

"Yes."

Kitty tottered to her feet.

"Is it all right?"

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

And then, without waiting, he went into the hall and closed the door behind him. He wrote a note to the Foreign Office to say that he should not be at the office till the afternoon, and that important papers were to be sent up to him. Then he told Wilson to bring wine and sandwiches into the library for Lady Kitty, who had been detained by an accident on the river the night before, and was much exhausted. No visitors were to be admitted, except, of course, Lady Tranmore or Miss French.

When he returned to the library he found Kitty with crimson cheeks, her hands locked behind her, walking up and down. As soon as she saw him she motioned to him imperiously.

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

He obeyed her, and she walked up to him deliberately. He saw the fluttering of her heart beneath her white dress--the crushed, bedraggled dress, which still in its soft elegance, its small originalities, spoke Kitty from head to foot. But her manner was quite calm and collected.

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

He started.

"What do you mean?"

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

"Don't, please, exaggerate, Kitty! There is no question of ruin. I shall make my way when the time comes, and Lady Parham will have nothing to say to it!"

"No! Nothing will ever go well--while I'm there--like a millstone round your neck. William"--she came closer to him--"take my advice--do it! I Warned you when you married me. And now you see--it was true."

"You foolish child," he answered, slowly, "do you think I could forget you for an hour, wherever you were?"

"Oh yes," she said, steadily, "I know you would forget me--- if I wasn't here. I'm sure of it. You're very ambitious, William--more than you know. You'll soon care--"

"More for politics than for you? Another of your delusions, Kitty. Nothing of the sort. Moreover, if you will only let me advise you--trust your husband a little--think both for him and yourself. I see nothing either in politics or in our life together that cannot be retrieved."

He spoke with manly kindness and reasonableness. Not a trace of his habitual indolence or indifference. Kitty, listening, was conscious of the most tempestuous medley of feelings--love, remorse, shame, and a strange gnawing desolation. What else, what better _could_ she have asked of him? And yet, as she looked at him, she thought suddenly of the moonlit garden at Grosville Park, and of that young, headlong chivalry with which he had thrown himself at her feet. This man before her, so much older and maturer, counting the cost of his marriage with her in the light of experience, and magnanimously, resolutely paying it--Kitty, in a flash, realized his personality as she had never yet done, his moral independence of her, his separateness as a human being. Her passionate self-love instinctively, unconsciously, had made of his life the appendage of hers. And now--? His devotion had never been so plain, so attested; and all the while bitter, terrifying voices rang upon the inner ear, voices of fate, vague and irrevocable.

She dropped into a chair beside his table, trembling and white.

"No, no," she said, drawing her handkerchief across her eyes, with a gesture of childish misery, "it's all been a--a horrid mistake. Your mother was quite right. Of course she hated your marrying me--and now--now she'll see what I've done. I guess perfectly what she's thinking about me to-day! And I can't help it--I shall go on--if you let me stay with you. There's a twist--a black drop in me. I'm not like other people."

Her voice, which was very quiet, gave Ashe intolerable pain.

"You poor, tired, starved child," he said, kneeling down beside her. "Put your arms round my neck. Let me carry you up-stairs."

With a sob she did as she was told. Ashe's library a comparatively late addition to the rambling, old-fashioned house, communicated by a small staircase at the back with his dressing-room above. He lifted the small figure with ease, and half-way up-stairs he impetuously kissed the delicate cheek.

"I'm glad you're not Polly Lyster, darling!"

Kitty laughed through her tears. Presently he deposited her on the large sofa in her own room, and stood beside her, panting a little.

"It's all very well," said Kitty, as she nestled down among the pillows, "but we're _none_ of us feathers!"

Her eyes were beginning to recover a little of their sparkle. She looked at him with attention.

"You look horribly tired. What--what did you do--last night?" She turned away from him.

"I sat up reading--then went to sleep down-stairs. I thought the coach had come to grief, and you were somewhere with the Alcots."

"If I had known that," she murmured, "_I_ might have gone to sleep. Oh, it was so horrible--the little stuffy room, and the dirty blankets." She gave a shiver of disgust. "There was a poor baby, too, with whooping-cough. Lucky I had some money. I gave the woman a sovereign. But she wasn't at all nice--she never smiled once. I know she thought I was a bad lot."

Then she sprang up.

"Sit there!" She pointed to the foot of the sofa. Ashe obeyed her.

"When did you know?"

"About the ministry? Between six and seven. I saw Lady Parham afterwards driving in St. James's Street. She never enjoyed anything so much in her life as the bow she gave me.'"

Kitty groaned, and subsided again, a little crumpled form among her cushions.

"Tell me the names."

Ashe gave her the list of the ministry. She made one or two shrewd or bitter comments upon it. He fully understood that in her inmost mind she was registering a vow of vengeance against the Parhams; but she made no spoken threat. Meanwhile, in the background of each mind there lay that darker and more humiliating fact, to which both shrank from returning, while yet both knew that it must be faced.

There was a knock at the door, and Blanche appeared with the tray which had been ordered down-stairs. She glanced in astonishment at her mistress.

"We had an accident on the river last night, Blanche," said Kitty. "Come back in half an hour. I'm too tired to change just yet."

She kept her face hidden from the maid, but when Blanche had departed, Ashe saw that her cheeks were flaming.

"I hate lying!" she said, with a kind of physical disgust--"and now I suppose it will be my chief occupation for weeks."

It was true that she hated lying, and Ashe was well aware of it. Of such a battle-stroke, indeed, as she had played at the ball, when her prompt falsehood snatched Cliffe from Mary Lyster, she was always capable. But in general her pride, her very egotism and quick temper kept her true.

Perhaps the fact represented one of those deep sources whence the well of Ashe's tenderness was fed. At any rate, consciously or not, it was at this moment one of his chief motives for not finding the past intolerable or the future without hope. He took some wine and a sandwich from the tray, and began to feed her. In the middle, she pushed his hands away, and her eyes brimmed again with tears.

"Put it down," she commanded. And when he had done so, she raised his hands deliberately, one after the other, and kissed them, crying:

"William!--I have been a horrible wife to you!"

"Don't be a goose, Kitty. You know very well that--till this last business--And don't imagine that I feel myself a model, either!"

"No," she said, with a long sigh. "Of course, you ought to have beaten me."

He smiled, with an unsteady lip.

"Perhaps I might still try it."

She shook her head.

"Too late. I am not a child any more."

Then throwing her soft arms round his neck, she clung to him, saying the most adorable and poignant things, dissolved, indeed, in a murmuring anguish of remorse; until, with the same unexpectedness as before, she again disengaged herself--urging, insisting that he should send her away.

"Let me go and live at Haggart, baby and I." (Haggart was one of the Tranmore "places," recently handed over to the young people.) "You can come and see me sometimes. I'll garden--and write books. Half the smart women I know write stories--or plays. Why shouldn't I?"

"Why, indeed? Meanwhile, madam, I take you to Scotland--next week."

"Scotland?" She pressed her hands over her eyes. "'Anywhere--anywhere--out of the world!'"

"Kitty!" Startled by the abandonment of her words, Ashe caught her hands and held them. "Kitty!--- you regret--"

"That man? Do I?" She opened her eyes, frowning. "I loathe him! When I think of yesterday, I could drown myself. If I could pile the whole world between him and me--I would. But"--she shivered--"but yet--if he were sitting there--"

"You would be once more under the spell?" said Ashe, bitterly.

"Spell!" she repeated, with scorn. Then snatching her hands from his, she threw back the hair from her temples with a wild gesture. "I warned you," she said--"I warned you."

"A man doesn't pay much attention to those warnings, Kitty."

"Then it is not my fault. I don't know what's wrong with me," she said, sombrely; "but I remember saying to you that sometimes my brain was on fire. I seem to be always in a hurry--in a desperate, desperate hurry!--to know or to feel something--while there is still time--before one dies. There is always a passion--always an effort. More life--_more life_!--even if it lead to pain--and agony--and tears."

She raised her strange, beautiful eyes, which had at the moment almost a look of delirium, and fixed them on his face. But Ashe's impression was that she did not see him.

He was conscious of the same pang, the same sudden terror that he had felt on that never-to-be-forgotten evening when she had talked to him of the mask in the "Tempest." He thought of the Blackwater stories he had heard from Lord Grosville. "_Mad, my dear fellow, mad!_"--the old man's frequent comment ran through his memory. Was there, indeed, some unsound spot in Kitty?

He sat dumb and paralyzed for a moment; then, recovering himself, he said, as he recaptured the cold little hands:

"'More _light_,' Kitty, was what Goethe said, in dying. A better prayer, don't you think?"

There was a strong, even a stern insistence in his manner which quieted Kitty. Her face as it came back to full consciousness was exquisitely sweet and mournful.

"That's the prayer of the _calm_," she said, in a whisper, "and my nature is hunger and storm. And Geoffrey Cliffe is the same. That's why I couldn't help being--"

She sprang up.

"William, don't let's talk nonsense. I can't ever see that man again. How's it to be done?"

She moved up and down--all practical energy and impatience--her mood wholly altered. His own adapted itself to hers.

"For the present, fear nothing," he said, dryly. "For his own sake Cliffe will hold his tongue and leave London. And as to the future--I can get some message conveyed to him--by a man he won't disregard. Leave it to me."

"You can't write to him, William!" cried Kitty, passionately.

"Leave it to me," he repeated. "Then suppose you take the boy--and Margaret French--to Haggart till I can join you?"

"And your mother?" she said, timidly, coming to stand beside him and laying a hand on each shoulder.

"Leave that also to me."

"How she'll hate the sight of me," she said, under her breath. Then, with another tone of voice--"How long, William, do you give the government?"

"Six months, perhaps--perhaps less. I don't see how they can last beyond February."

"And then--we'll _fight_!" said Kitty, with a long breath, smoothing back the hair from his brow.

"Allow me, please, to command the forces! Well, now then, I must be off!" He tried to rise, but she still held him.

"Did you have any breakfast, William?"

"I don't remember."

"Sit still and eat one of my sandwiches." She divided one into strips, and standing over him began to feed him. A knock at the door arrested her.

"Don't move!" she said, peremptorily, before she ran to open the door.

"Please, my lady," said Blanche, "Lady Tranmore would like to see you."

Kitty started and flushed. She looked round uncertainly at Ashe.

"Ask her ladyship to come up," said Ashe, quietly.

The maid departed.

"Feed me if you want to, Kitty," said Ashe, still seated.

Kitty returned, her breath hurried, her step wavering. She looked doubtfully at Ashe--then her eyes sparkled--as she understood. She dropped on her knees beside him, kissing the sleeve of his coat, against which her cheek was pressed--in a passion of repentance.

He bent towards her, touching her hair, murmuring over her. His mind meanwhile was torn with feelings which, so to speak, observed each other. This thing which had happened was horribly serious--important. It might easily have wrecked two lives. Had he dealt with it as he ought--made Kitty feel the gravity of it?

Then the optimist in him asked impatiently what was "the good of exaggerating the damned business"? That fellow has got his lesson--could be driven headlong out of his life and Kitty's henceforward. And how could _he_ doubt the love shown in this clinging penitence, these soft kisses? How would the Turk theory of marriage, please, have done any better? Kitty had had her own wild way. No fiat from without had bound her; but love had brought her to his feet. There was something in him which triumphed alike in her revolt and her submission.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, in the cool drawing-room to which the green _persiennes_ gave a pleasant foreign look, Lady Tranmore had been waiting for the maid's return. She shrank from every sound in the house; from her own reflection in Kitty's French mirrors; from her own thoughts most of all.

Lady Edith Manley--at Holland House--had been the most innocent of gossips. A little lady who did no wrong herself--and thought no wrong of others; as white-minded and unsuspicious as a convent child. "Poor Lady Kitty! Something seemed to have gone wrong with the Alcots' coach, and they were somehow divided from all their party. I can't remember exactly what it was they said, but Mr. Cliffe was confident they would catch their train. Though my boy--you remember my boy? they've just put him in the eight!--thought they were running it _rather_ fine."

Then, five minutes later, in the supper-room, Lady Tranmore had run across Madeleine Alcot's husband, who had given her in passing the whole story of the frustrated expedition--Mrs. Alcot's chill, and the despatch of Cliffe to Hill Street. "Horrid bore to have to put it off! Hope he got there in time to stop Lady Kitty getting ready. Oh, thanks, Madeleine's all right."

And then no more, as the rush of the crowd swept them apart.

After that, sleep had wholly deserted Lady Tranmore--if, indeed, after the publication of the cabinet list in the afternoon, and William's letter following upon it, any had been still possible. And in the early morning she had sent her note to Kitty--a _ballon d'essai_, despatched in a horror of great fear.

"Her ladyship has not yet returned." The message from Hill Street, delivered by the footman's indifferent mouth, struck Lady Tranmore with trembling.

"Where is William?" she said to herself, in anguish. "I must find him--but--what shall I say to him?" Then she went up-stairs, and, without calling for her maid, put on her walking things with shaking hands.

She slipped out unobserved by her household, and took a hansom from the corner of Grosvenor Street. In the hansom she carefully drew down her veil, with the shrinking of one on whom disgrace--the long pursuing, long expected--has seized at last. All the various facts, statements, indications as to Kitty's behavior, which through the most diverse channels had been flowing steadily towards her for weeks past, were now surging through her mind and memory--a grievous, damning host. And every now and then, as she caught the placards in the streets, her heart contracted anew. Her son, her William, in what should have been the heyday of his gifts and powers, baffled, tripped up, defeated!--by his own wife, the selfish, ungrateful, reckless child on whom he had lavished the undeserved treasures of the most generous and untiring love. And had she not only checked or ruined his career--was he to be also dishonored, struck to the heart?

She could scarcely stand as she rang the bell at Hill Street, and it was only with a great effort that she could ask her question:

"Is Mr. Ashe at home?"

"Mr. Ashe, my lady, is, I believe, just going out," said Wilson. "Her ladyship arrived just about an hour ago, and that detained him."

Elizabeth betrayed nothing. The training of her class held good.

"Are they in the library?" she asked--"or up-stairs?"

Wilson replied that he believed her ladyship was in her room, and Mr. Ashe with her.

"Please ask Mr. Ashe if I can see him for a few minutes."

Wilson disappeared, and Lady Tranmore stood motionless, looking round at William's books and tables. She loved everything that his hand had touched, every sign of his character--the prize books of his college days, the pictures on the wall, many of which had descended from his Eton study, the photographs of his favorite hunter, the drawing she herself had made for him of his first pony.

On his writing-table lay a despatch-box from the Foreign Office. Lady Tranmore turned away from it. It reminded her intolerably of the shock and defeat of the day before. During the past six months she had become more rejoicingly conscious than ever before of his secret, deepening ambition, and her own heart burned with the smart of his disappointment. No one else, however, should guess at it through her. No sooner had she received his letter from the club than, after many weeks of withdrawal from society, she had forced herself to go to the Holland House party, that no one might say she hid herself, that no one might for an instant suppose that any hostile act of such a man as Lord Parham, or any malice of that low-minded woman, could humiliate her son or herself.

Suddenly she saw Kitty's gloves--Kitty's torn and soiled gloves--lying on the floor. She clasped her trembling hands, trying to steady herself. Husband and wife were together. What tragedy was passing between them?

Of course there _might_ have been an accident; her thoughts might be all mistake and illusion. But Lady Tranmore hardly allowed herself to encourage the alternative of hope. It was like Kitty's audacity to have come back. Incredible!--unfathomable!--like all she did.

"Her ladyship says, my lady, would you please go up to her room?"

The message was given in Blanche's timid voice. Lady Tranmore started, looked at the girl, longed to question her, and had not the courage. She followed mechanically, and in silence. Could she, must she face it? Yes--for her son's sake. She prayed inwardly that she might meet the ordeal before her with Christian strength and courage.

* * * * *

The door opened. She saw two figures in the pretty, bright-colored room, William sat astride upon a chair in front of Kitty, who, like some small mother-bird, hovered above him, holding what seemed to be a tiny strip of bread-and-butter, which she was dropping with dainty deliberation into his mouth. Her face, in spite of the red and swollen eyes, was alive with fun, and Ashe's laugh reflected hers. The domesticity, the intimate affection of the scene--before these things Elizabeth Tranmore stood gasping.

"Dearest mother!" cried Ashe, starting up.

Kitty turned. At sight of Lady Tranmore she hung back; her smiles departed; her lip quivered.

"William!"--she pursued him and touched him on the shoulder. "I--I can't--I'm afraid. If mother ever means to speak to me again--come and tell me."

And, hiding her face, Kitty escaped like a whirlwind. The dressing-room door closed behind her, and mother and son were left alone.

"Mother!" said Ashe, coming up to her gayly, both hands out-stretched. "Ask me nothing, dear. Kitty has been a silly child--but things will go better now. And as for the Parhams--what does it matter?--come and help me send them to the deuce!"

Lady Tranmore recoiled. For once the good-humor of that handsome face--pale as the face was--seemed to her an offence--nay, a disgrace. That what had happened had been no mere _contretemps_, no mere accident of trains and coaches, was plain enough from Kitty's eyes--from all that William did _not_ say, no less than from what he said. And still this levity!--this inconceivable levity! Was it true, as she knew was said, that William had no high sense of honor, that he failed in delicacy and dignity?

In reality, it was the same cry as the Dean's--upon another and smaller occasion. But in this case it was unspoken. Lady Tranmore dropped into a chair, one hand abandoned to her son, the other hiding her face. He talked fast and tenderly, asking her help--neither of them quite knew for what--her advice as to the move to Haggart--and so forth. Lady Tranmore said little. But it was a bitter silence; and if Ashe himself failed in indignation, his mother's protesting heart supplied it amply.