. He had known what it was to court a
woman who was more than his equal both in mind and passion; and it had
left him bitter and broken.

"Well, all this is most illuminating," he said at last. "I owe you
immense thanks." And he put out a pair of hands, thin, brown, and
weather-stained as his face, and pressed one of hers. "We're very old
friends, aren't we?"

"Are we?" said Mary, drawing back.

"So far as any one can be the friend of a chap like me," he said,
hastily. "Tell me, are you with Lady Tranmore?"

"No. I go to her in a few days--till I leave London."

"Don't go away," he said, suddenly and insistently. "Don't go away."

Mary could not help a slight wavering in the eyes that perforce met his.
Then he said, abruptly, as she rose:

"By-the-way, they tell me Ashe is a great man."

She caught the note of incredulous contempt in his voice and laughed.

"They say he'll be in the cabinet directly."

"And Lady Kitty, I understand, is a scandal to gods and men, and the
most fashionable person in town?"

"Oh, not now," said Mary. "That was last year."

"You mean people are tired of her?"

"Well, after a time, you know, a naughty child--"

"Becomes a bore. Is she a bore? I doubt; I very much doubt."

"Go and see," said Mary. "When do you lunch there?"

"I think to-morrow. Shall I find you?"

"Oh no. I am not at all intimate with Lady Kitty."

Cliffe's slight smile, as he followed her into the large drawing-room,
died under his mustache. He divined at once the relation between the
two, or thought he did.

As for Mary, she caught her last sight of Cliffe, standing bareheaded on
the steps of the embassy, his lean distinction, his ugly good looks
marking him out from the men around him. Then, as they drove away she
was glad that the darkness hid her from Lady Tranmore. For suddenly she
could not smile. She was filled with the perception that if Geoffrey
Cliffe did not now ask her to marry him, life would utterly lose its
savor, its carefully cherished and augmented savor, and youth would
abandon her. At the same time she realized that she would have to make a
fight of it, with every weapon she could muster.

IX

"Wasn't I expected?" said Darrell, with a chilly smile.

"Oh yes, sir--yes, sir!" said the Ashes' butler, as he looked
distractedly round the drawing-room. "I believe her ladyship will be in
directly. Will you kindly take a seat?"

The man's air of resignation convinced Darrell th