shpots went, was
finely treated. Kitty was in full force, glittering in a spangled dress,
her dazzling face and neck, and the piled masses of her hair, thrown out
in relief against the panelled walls of the dining-room with a
brilliance which might have tempted a modern Rembrandt to paint an
English Saskia. Eddie Helston, on her left, could not take his eyes from
her. And even Lord Parham, much as he disliked her, acknowledged, during
the early courses, that she was handsome, and in her own way--thank God!
it was not the way of any womankind belonging to him--good company.

He saw, too, or thought he saw, that she was anxious to make him amends
for her behavior of the afternoon. She restrained herself, and talked
politics. And within the lines he always observed when talking to women,
lines dictated by a contempt innate and ineradicable, Lord Parham was
quite ready to talk politics too. Then--it suddenly struck him that she
was pumping him, and with great adroitness. Ashe, he knew, wanted an
early place in the session for a particular measure in which he was
interested. Lord Parham had no mind to give him the precedence that he
wanted; was, in fact, determined on something quite different. But he
was well aware by now that Ashe was a person to be reckoned with; and he
had so far taken refuge in vagueness--an amiable vagueness, by which
Ashe, on their walk before dinner, had been much taken in, misled no
doubt by the strength of his own wishes.

And now here was Lady Kitty--whom, by-the-way, it was not at all easy to
take in--trying to "manage" him, to pin him to details, to wheedle him
out of a pledge!

Lord Parham, presently, looked at her with cold, smiling eyes.

"Ah! you are interested in these things, Lady Kitty? Well--tell me your
views. You women have such an instinct--"

--whereby the moth was kept hovering round the flame. Till, in a flash,
Kitty awoke to the fact that while she had been listening happily to her
own voice, taking no notice whatever of the signals which William
endeavored to send her from the other end of the table--while she had
been tripping gayly through one indiscretion after another, betraying
innumerable things as to William's opinions and William's plans that she
had infinitely better not have betrayed--Lord Parham had said nothing,
betrayed nothing, promised nothing. A quiet smile--a courteous nod--and
presently a shade of mockery in the lips--the meaning of them, all in a
moment, b