life, her will given to him wholly, sighed out upon
his heart.

* * * * *

Then gradually she recovered her balance; the normal Kitty came back.
She put out her hand and touched his face.

"You must go back to the House, William."

"Yes, if you are all right."

She sat up, and began to rearrange some of her hair that had slipped
down.

"You have carried us both into such heights and depths, darling!" said
Ashe, after he had watched her a little in silence, "that I have
forgotten to tell you the gossip I brought back from mother this
morning."

Kitty paused, interrogatively. She was still pale.

"Do you know that mother is convinced Mary Lyster has made up her mind
to marry Cliffe?"

There was a pause, then Kitty said, with incredulous contempt: "He would
never <i>dream</i> of marrying her!"

"Not so sure! She has a great deal of money, and Cliffe wants money
badly."

Ashe began to put his papers together. Kitty questioned him a little
more, intermittently, as to what his mother had said. When he had left
her, she sat for long on the sofa, playing with some flowers she had
taken from her dress, or sombrely watching the child, as it lay on the
floor beside her.

X

"My lady! It's come!"

The maid put her head in just to convey the good news. Kitty was in her
bedroom walking up and down in a fury which was now almost speechless.

The housemaid was waiting on the stairs. The butler was waiting in the
hall. Till that hurried knock was heard at the front door, and the
much-tried Wilson had rushed to open it, the house had been wrapped in a
sort of storm silence. It was ten o'clock on the night of the ball. Half
Kitty's costume lay spread out upon her bed. The other half--although
since seven o'clock all Kitty's servants had been employed in rushing to
Fanchette's establishment in New Bond Street, at half-hour intervals, in
the fastest hansoms to be found--had not yet appeared.

However, here at last was the end of despair. A panting boy dragged the
box into the hall, the butler and footman carried it up-stairs and into
their mistress's room, where Kitty in a white peignoir stood waiting,
with the brow of Medea.

"The boy that brought it looked just fit to drop, my lady!" said the
maid, as she undid the box. She was a zealous servant, but she was glad
sometimes to chasten these great ones of the land by insisting on the
seamy side of their pleasures.

Kitty pause