them look to their own affairs--they needed it.

At last the party broke up. Kitty touched him on the shoulder as he was
standing on the stairs, apparently absorbed in a teasing skirmish with a
charming child in her first season, who thought him the most delightful
of men.

"I'm ready, William."

He turned sharply, and saw that she was alone.

"Come along, then! In five minutes more I should have been asleep on the
stairs."

They descended. Kitty went for her cloak. Ashe sent for the carriage. As
he was standing on the steps Cliffe pushed past him and called for a
hansom. It came in the rear of two or three carriages already under the
portico. He ran along the pavement and jumped in. The doors were just
being shut by the linkman when a little figure in a white cloak flew
down the steps of the house and held up a hand to the driver of the
hansom.

"Do you see that?" said Lady Parham, in a voice of suppressed but
contemptuous amazement, as she turned to Mary Lyster, who was driving
home with her. "Call my carriage, please!" she said, imperiously, to one
of the footmen at the door. Her carriage, as it happened, was
immediately behind the hansom; but the hansom could not move because of
the small lady who had jumped upon the step and was leaning eagerly
forward.

There was a clamor of shouting voices: "Move on, cabby! Move on!" "Stand
clear, ma'am, please," said the driver, while Cliffe opened the door of
the cab, and seemed about to jump down again.

"Who is it?" said an impatient judge behind Lady Parham. "What's the
matter?"

Lady Parham shrugged her shoulders.

"It's Lady Kitty Ashe," whispered the <i>debutante</i>, who was the judge's
daughter, "talking to Mr. Cliffe. Isn't she pretty?"

A sudden silence fell upon the group in the porch. Kitty's high, clear
laugh seemed to ring back into the house. Then Ashe ran down the steps.

"Kitty, don't stop the way." He peremptorily drew her back.

Cliffe raised his hat, fell back into the hansom, and the man whipped up
his horse.

Kitty came back to the outer hall with Ashe. Her cheeks had a rose
flush, her wild eyes laughed at the crowd on the steps, without really
seeing them.

"Are you going with Lady Parham?" she said, absently, to Mary Lyster.

"Yes."

Kitty looked up and Ashe saw the two faces as she and Mary confronted
each other--the contempt in Mary's, the startled wrath in Kitty's.

"Come, Miss Lyster!" said Lady Parham, and pushing past the As