antly.
"Fair fight, if you like! But if that kind of thing were to spread, I
for one should throw up politics to-morrow."

"Every one said it did a vast deal of good," persisted Kitty.

"A precious sort of good! Yes--I believe Parham in particular profited
by it--more shame to him! If anybody ever tried to help me in that sort
of way--anybody, that is, for whom I felt the smallest responsibility--I
know what I should do."

"What?" Kitty fell back on her cushions, but her eye still held him.

"Send in my resignation by the next post--and damn the fellow that did
it! Look here, Kitty!" He came to stand over her--a fine formidable
figure, his hands in his pockets. "Don't you ever try that kind of
thing--there's a darling."

"Would you damn me?"

She smiled at him--with a tremor of the lip.

He caught up her hand and kissed it. "Blow out my own brains, more
like," he said, laughing. Then he turned away. "What on earth have we
got into this beastly conversation for? Let's get out of it. The Parhams
are there--male and female--aren't they?--and we've got to put up with
them. Well, I'm going to the Piazza. Any commissions? Oh,
by-the-way"--he looked back at a letter in his hands--"mother says Polly
Lyster will probably be here before we go--she seems to be touring
around with her father."

"Charming prospect!" said Kitty. "Does mother expect me to chaperon
her?"

Ashe laughed and went. As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang from the
sofa, and walked up and down the room in a passionate preoccupation. A
tremor of great fear was invading her; an agony of unavailing regret.

"What can I do?" she said to herself, as her upper lip twisted and
tortured the lower one.

Presently she caught up her purse, went to her room, where she put on
her walking things without summoning Blanche, and stealing down the
stairs, so as to be unheard by Margaret, she made her way to the back
gate of the Palazzo, and so to the streets leading to the Piazza.
William had taken the gondola to the Piazzetta, so she felt herself
safe.

She entered the telegraphic office at the western end of the Piazza, and
sent a telegram to England that nearly emptied her purse of francs. When
she came out she was as pale as she had been flushed before--a little,
terror-stricken figure, passing in a miserable abstraction through the
intricate backways which took her home.

"It won't be published for ten days. There's time. It's only a question
of money," sh