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.

PART II

THREE YEARS AFTER

"The world an ancient murderer is."

VII

"Her ladyship will be in before six, my lady. I was to be sure and ask
you to wait, if you came before, and to tell you that her ladyship had
gone to Madame Fanchette about her dress for the ball."

So said Lady Kitty's maid. Lady Tranmore hesitated, then said she would
wait, and asked that Master Henry might be brought down.

The maid went for the child, and Lady Tranmore entered the drawing-room.
The Ashes had been settled since their marriage in a house in Hill
Street--a house to which Kitty had lost her heart at first sight. It was
old and distinguished, covered here and there with eighteenth-century
decoration, once, no doubt, a little florid and coarse beside the finer
work of the period, but now agreeably blunted and mellowed by time.
K