ore fighting, he had commended Lady
Blackwater to the care of his much older brother, also a soldier,
between whom and himself there existed a rare and passionate devotion;
and ever since the poor lad's death, Markham Warington had been the
friend and quasi-guardian of the lady--through her second marriage,
through the checkered years of her existence in London, and now through
the later years of her residence on the Continent, a residence forced
upon her by her agreement with the Tranmores. Again and again he had
saved her from bankruptcy, or from some worse scandal which would have
wrecked the last remnants of her fame.

But, all the time, he was himself bound by strong ties of gratitude and
affection to an elder sister who had brought him up, with whom he lived
in Scotland during half the year. And this stout Puritan lady detested
the very name of Madame d'Estrees.

"But she's dead," said Ashe. "I remember noticing her death in the
<i>Times</i> some three months ago. That, of course, explains it. Now he's
free to marry."

"And so maman will settle down, and be happy ever afterwards!" said
Kitty, with a sarcastic lifting of the brow. "Why should anybody be
good?"

The bitterness of her look struck Ashe disagreeably. That any child
should speak so of a mother was a tragic and sinister thing. But he was
well aware of the causes.

"Were you very unhappy when you were a child, Kitty?" He pressed the
hand he held.

"No," said Kitty, shortly. "I'm too like maman. I suppose, really, at
bottom, I liked all the debts, and the excitement, and the shady
people!"

"That wasn't the impression you gave me, in the first days of our
acquaintance!" said Ashe, laughing.

"Oh, then I was grown up--and there were drawbacks. But I'm made of the
same stuff as maman," she said, obstinately--"except that I can't tell
so many fibs. That's really why we didn't get on."

Her brown eyes held him with that strange, unspoken defiance it seemed
so often beyond her power to hide. It was like the fluttering of some
caged thing hungering for it knows not what. Then, as they scanned the
patient good-temper of his face, they melted; and her little fingers
squeezed his; while Margaret French kept her eyes fixed on the two
columns of the Piazzetta.

"How strange to find her here!" said Kitty, under her breath. "Now, if
it had been Alice--my sister Alice!"

William nodded. It had been known to them for some time that Lady Alice
Wensleydale,