nces over
Kitty's shoulder. "He knows that the public will rush for his wares! How
much money did he offer you, Kitty?"

He turned sharply on his heel to wait for her reply.

"A hundred pounds," said Kitty, almost inaudibly--"and a hundred more if
five thousand sold." She had returned again to her crouching attitude
over the fire.

"Generous!--upon my word!" said Ashe, scornfully turning over the two
thick-leaved, loosely printed Mudie volumes. "A guinea to the public, I
suppose--fifteen shillings to the trade. Darrell didn't exactly advise
you to advantage, Kitty."

Kitty kept silence. The sarcastic violence of his tone fell on her like
a blow. She seemed to shrink together; while Ashe resumed his walk to
and fro.

Presently, however, she looked up, to ask, in a voice that tried for
steadiness:

"What do you mean to do--exactly--William?"

"I shall, of course, buy up all I can; I shall employ some lawyer
fellow, and appeal to the good feelings of the newspapers. There will be
no trouble with the respectable ones. But some copies will get out, and
some of the Opposition newspapers will make capital out of them.
Naturally!--they'd be precious fools if they didn't."

A momentary hope sprang up in Kitty.

"But if you buy it up--and stop all the papers that matter," she
faltered--"why should you resign, William? There won't be--such great
harm done."

For answer he opened the book, and without speaking pointed to two
passages--the first, an account full of point and malice of the
negotiations between himself and Lord Parham at the time when he entered
the cabinet, the conditions he himself had made, and the confidential
comments of the Premier on the men and affairs of the moment.

"Do you remember the night when I told you those things, Kitty?"

Yes, Kitty remembered well. It was a night of intimate talk between man
and wife, a night when she had shown him her sweetest, tenderest mood,
and he--incorrigible optimist!--had persuaded himself that she was
growing as wise as she was lovely.

Her lip trembled. Then he pointed to the second--to the pitiless picture
of Lord Parham at Haggart.

"You wrote that--when he was under our roof--there by our pressing
invitation! You couldn't have written it--unless he had so put himself
in your power. A wandering Arab, Kitty, will do no harm to the man who
has eaten and drunk in his tent!"

She looked up, and as she read his face she understood at last how what
she ha