nown house in
Piccadilly. The evening party was beginning to thin, but in a side
drawing-room a fine Austrian band was playing Strauss, and some of the
intimates of the house were dancing.

Ashe at once perceived his wife. She was dancing with a clever Cambridge
lad, a cousin of Madeleine Alcot's, who had long been one of her
adorers. And so charming was the spectacle, so exhilarating were the
youth and beauty of the pair, that Ashe presently suspected what was
indeed the truth, that most of the persons gathering in the room were
there to watch Kitty dance, rather than to dance themselves. He himself
watched her, though he professed to be talking to his hostess, a woman
of middle age, with honest eyes and a brow of command.

"It is a delight to see Lady Kitty dance," she said to him, smiling.
"But she is tired. I am sure she wants the country."

"Like my boy," said Ashe. "I wish to goodness they'd both go."

"Oh, I know it's hard to leave the husband toiling in town!" said his
companion, who, as the daughter, wife, and mother of politicians, had
had a long experience of official life.

Ashe glanced at her--at her face moulded by kind and scrupulous
living--with a sudden relief from tension. Clearly no gossip had reached
her. He lingered beside her, for the sheer pleasure of talking to her.
But their <i>tete-a-tete</i> was soon interrupted by the approach of Lady
Parham, with a daughter--a slim and silent girl, to whom, it was
whispered, her mother was giving "a last chance" this season, before
sending her into the country as a failure, and bringing out her younger
sister.

Lady Parham greeted the hostess with effusion. It was a rich house, and
these small, informal dances were said to be more helpful to matrimonial
development than larger affairs. Then she perceived Ashe, and her whole
manner changed. There was a very evident bristling, and she gave him a
greeting deliberately careless.

"Confound the woman!" thought Ashe, and his own pride rose.

"Working as hard as usual, Lady Parham?" he asked her, with a smile.

"If you like to put it so," was the stiff reply. "There is, of course, a
good deal of going out."

"I hope, if I may say so, you don't allow Lord Parham to do too much of
it."

"Lord Parham never was better in his life," said Lord Parham's spouse,
with the air of putting down an impertinence.

"That's good news. I must say when I saw him this afternoon I thought he
seemed to be feeling his wor