eed from
which the meditation in which he had been plunged since entering the
park had started. Between six and seven weeks ago, was it? It might have
been a century. He thought of Kitty as she was that night--Kitty
pirouetting in her glittering dress, or bending over the boy, or holding
her face to his as he kissed her on the stairs. Never since had she
shown him the smallest glimpse of such a mood. What was wrong with her
and with himself? Something, since May, had turned their life
topsy-turvy, and it seemed to Ashe that in the general unprofitable rush
of futile engagements he had never yet had time to stop and ask himself
what it might be.

Why, at any rate, was <i>he</i> in this chafing irritation and discomfort?
Why could he not deal with that fellow Cliffe as he deserved? And what
in Heaven's name was the reason why old friends like Lady M---- were
beginning to look at him coldly, and avoid his conversation?

His mother, too! He gathered that quite lately there had been some
disagreeable scene between her and Kitty. Kitty had resented some
remonstrance of hers, and for some days now they had not met. Nor had
Ashe seen his mother alone. Did she also avoid him, shrink from speaking
out her real mind to him?

Well, it was all monstrously absurd!--a great coil about nothing, as far
as the main facts were concerned, although the annoyance and worry of
the thing were indeed becoming serious. Kitty had no doubt taken a wild
liking to Geoffrey Cliffe--

"And, by George!" said Ashe, pausing in his walk, "she warned me."

And there rose in his memory the formal garden at Grosville Park, the
little figure at his side, and Kitty's franknesses--"I shall take mad
fancies for people. I sha'n't be able to help it. I have one now, for
Geoffrey Cliffe."

He smiled. There was the difficulty! If only the people whose envious
tongues were now wagging could see Kitty as she was, could understand
what a gulf lay between her and the ordinary "fast" woman, there would
be an end of this silly, ill-natured talk. Other women might be of the
earth earthy. Kitty was a sprite, with all the irresponsibility of such
incalculable creatures. The men and women--women especially--who
gossiped and lied about her, who sent abominable paragraphs to
scurrilous papers--he had one now in his pocket which had reached him at
the House from an anonymous correspondent--spoke out of their own vile
experience, judged her by their own standards. His moth