companions
disappeared into the house.

Lady Edith Manley and Lord Grosville began to cross the lawn.

"What is the matter?" asked Mrs. Alcot, as they converged.

"Kitty ran over a boy," said Lord Grosville, in evident annoyance. "The
rascal hadn't a scratch, but Kitty must needs pick him up and drive him
home with a nurse. 'I ain't hurt, mum,' says the boy. 'Oh! but you must
be,' said Kitty. I offered to take him to his mother and give him half a
crown. 'It's my duty to look after him,' says Kitty. And she lifted him
up herself--dirty little vagabond!--and put him in the carriage. There
were some laborers and grooms standing near, and one of them sang out,
'Three cheers for Lady Kitty Ashe!' Such a ridiculous scene as you never
saw!"

The old man shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"Lady Kitty is always so kind," said the amicable Lady Edith. "But her
pretty dress--I <i>was</i> sorry!"

"Oh no--only an excuse for a new one," said Mrs. Alcot.

The Dean and Lady Tranmore approached--behind them again Ashe and Mrs.
Winston.

"Well, old fellow!" said Ashe, clapping a hand on Darrell's shoulder.
"Uncommonly glad to see you. You look as though that damned London had
been squeezing the life out of you. Come for a stroll before dinner?"

The two men accordingly left the talkers on the lawn, and struck into
the park. Ashe, in a straw hat and light suit, made his usual impression
of strength and good-humor. He was gay, friendly, amusing as ever. But
Darrell was not long in discovering or imagining signs of change. Any
one else would have thought Ashe's talk frankness--nay,
indiscretion--itself. Darrell at once divined or imagined in it shades
of official reserve, tracts of reticence, such as an old friend had a
right to resent.

"One can see what a personage he feels himself!"

Yet Darrell would have been the first to own that Ashe had some right to
feel himself a personage. The sudden revelation of his full intellectual
power, and of his influence in the country, for which the general
election of the preceding winter had provided the opportunity, was still
an exciting memory among journalists and politicians. He had gone into
the election a man slightly discredited, on whose future nobody took
much trouble to speculate. He had emerged from it--after a series of
speeches laying down the principles and vindicating the action of his
party--one of the most important men in England, with whom Lord Parham
himself mu