urst on Kitty.

Her face flamed. Thenceforward it would be difficult to describe the
dinner. Conversationally, at Kitty's end it became an uproar. She
started the wildest topics, and Lord Parham had afterwards a bruised
recollection as of one who has been dragged or driven, Caliban-like,
through brake and thicket, pinched and teased and pelted by elfish
fingers, without one single uncivil speech or act of overt offence to
which an angry guest could point. With each later course, the Prime
Minister grew stiffer and more silent. Endurance was written in every
line of his fighting head and round, ungraceful shoulders, in his veiled
eyes and stolid mouth. Lady Tranmore gave a gasp of relief when at last
Kitty rose from her seat.

* * * * *

The evening went no better. Lord Parham was set down to cards with
Kitty, Eddie Helston, and Lord Grosville. Lord Grosville, his partner,
played, to the Premier's thinking, like an idiot, and Lady Kitty and the
young man chattered and sparred, so that all reasonable play became
impossible. Lord Parham lost more than he at all liked to lose, and at
half-past ten he pleaded fatigue, refused to smoke, and went to his
room.

Ashe was perfectly aware of the failure of the evening, and the
discomfort of his guest. But he said nothing, and Kitty avoided his
neighborhood. Meanwhile, between him and his mother a certain tacit
understanding began to make itself felt. They talked quietly, in
corners, of the arrangements for the speech and fete of the morrow. So
far, they had been too much left to Kitty. Ashe promised his mother to
look into them. He and she combined for the protection of Lord Parham.

When about one o'clock Ashe went to bed, Kitty either was or pretended
to be fast asleep. The room was in darkness save for the faint
illumination of a night-light, which just revealed to Ashe the delicate
figure of his wife, lying high on her pillows, her cheek and brow hidden
in the confusion of her hair.

One window was wide open to the night, and once more Ashe stood lost in
"recollection" beside it, as on that night in Hill Street, more than a
year before. But the thoughts which on that former occasion had been
still as tragic and unfamiliar guests in a mind that repelled them had
now, alack, lost their strangeness; they entered habitually,
unannounced--frequent, irritating, deplorable.

Had the relation between himself and Kitty ever, in truth, recovered th