gger bone, and probably irritate Kitty to the point of rebellion? Yet
how induce her to go with any one else? Lady Tranmore was out of the
question. Margaret French, perhaps?

Then, suddenly, Ashe was assailed by an inner laughter, hollow and
discomfortable. Things were come to a pretty pass when he must even
dream of resigning because a man whom he despised would haunt his house,
and absorb the company of his wife; when, moreover, he could not even
think of a remedy for such a state of things without falling back
dismayed from the certainty of Kitty's temper--Kitty's wild and furious
temper.

For during the last fortnight, as it seemed to Ashe, all the winds of
tempest had been blowing through his house. Himself, the servants, even
Margaret, even the child, had all suffered. He also had lost his temper
several times--such a thing had scarcely happened to him since his
childhood. He thought of it as of a kind of physical stain or weakness.
To keep an even and stoical mind, to laugh where one could not
conquer--this had always seemed to him the first condition of decent
existence. And now to be wrangling over an expenditure, an engagement, a
letter, the merest nothing--whether it was a fine day or it
wasn't--could anything be more petty, degrading, intolerable?

He vowed that this should stop. Whatever happened, he and Kitty should
not degenerate into a pair of scolds--besmirch their life with quarrels
as ugly as they were silly. He would wrestle with her, his beloved,
unreasonable, foolish Kitty; he ought, of course, to have done so
before. But it was only within the last week or so that the horizon had
suddenly darkened--the thing grown serious. And now this beastly
paragraph! But, after all, what did such garbage matter? It would of
course be a comfort to thrash the editor. But our modern life breeds
such creatures, and they have to be borne.

* * * * *

He let himself into a silent house. His letters lay on the hall-table.
Among them was a handwriting which arrested him. He remembered, yet
could not put a name to it. Then he turned the envelope. "H'm. Lady
Grosville!" He read it, standing there, then thrust it into his pocket,
thinking angrily that there seemed to be a good many fools in this world
who occupied themselves with other people's business. Exaggeration, of
course, damnable <i>parti pris</i>! When did she ever see Kitty except with a
jaundiced eye? "I wonder Kitty condes