insters, had seized on Marguerite d'Estrees--whose
acquaintance she had made in a Mont d'Or hotel--and was now keeping her
like a caged canary that sings for its food.

Madame d'Estrees was quite willing. So long as she had a sofa on which
to sit enthroned, a sufficiency of new gowns, a maid, cigarettes,
breakfast in bed, and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most
harmless and engaging of mortals. Her youth had been cruel, disorderly,
and vicious. It had lasted long; but now, when middle age stood at last
confessed, she was lapsing, it seemed, into amiability and good
behavior. She was, indeed, fast forgetting her own history, and soon the
recital of it would surprise no one so much as herself.

It was five o'clock. Madame d'Estrees had just established herself in
the silk-panelled drawing-room of Donna Laura's apartment, expectant of
visitors, and, in particular, of her daughter.

In begging Kitty to come on this particular afternoon, she had not
thought fit to mention that it would be Donna Laura's "day." Had she
done so, Kitty, in consideration of her mourning, would perhaps have
cried off. Whereas, really--poor, dear child!--what she wanted was
distraction and amusement.

And what Madame d'Estrees wanted was the presence beside her, in public,
of Lady Kitty Ashe. Kitty had already visited her mother privately, and
had explored the antiquities of the Vercelli palace. But Madame
d'Estrees was now intent on something more and different.

For in the four years which had now elapsed since the Ashe's marriage
this lively lady had known adversity. She had been forced to leave
London, as we have seen, by the pressure of certain facts in her past
history so ancient and far removed when their true punishment began that
she no doubt felt it highly unjust that she should be punished for them
at all. Her London debts had swallowed up what then remained to her of
fortune; and, afterwards, the allowance from the Ashes was all she had
to depend on. Banished to Paris, she fell into a lower stratum of life,
at a moment when her faithful and mysterious friend, Markham Warington,
was held in Scotland by the first painful symptoms of his sister's last
illness, and could do but little for her. She had, in fact, known the
sordid shifts and straits of poverty, though the smallest moral effort
would have saved her from them. She had kept disreputable company, she
had been miserable, and base; and although shame is not easy to