as patronized or snubbed me ever since I
married--when she hasn't been setting my best friends against me. She is
false, false, <i>false</i>!" Kitty struck her hands together with an emphatic
gesture. "And Lord Parham said a thing to me last week I shall never
forgive. Voila! Now I mean to have done with it!"

"And you choose to forget altogether that Lord Parham is William's
political chief--that William's affairs are in a critical state, and
everything depends on Lord Parham--that it is not seemly, not possible,
that William's wife should publicly slight Lady Parham, and through her
the Prime Minister--at this moment of all moments."

Lady Tranmore breathed fast.

"William will not expect me to put up with insults," said Kitty, also
beginning to show emotion.

"But can't you see that--just now especially--you ought to think of
nothing--<i>nothing</i>--but William's future and William's career?"

"William will never purchase his career at my expense."

"Kitty, dear, listen," cried Lady Tranmore, in despair, and she threw
herself into arguments and appeals to which Kitty listened quite unmoved
for some twenty minutes. Margaret French, feeling herself an
uncomfortable third, tried several times to steal away. In vain. Kitty's
peremptory hand retained her. She could not escape, much as she wished
it, from the wrestle between the two women--on the one side the mother,
noble, already touched with age, full of dignity and protesting
affection; on the other the wife, still little more than a child in
years, vibrating through all her slender frame with passion and
insolence, more beautiful than usual by virtue of the very fire which
possessed her--a maenad at bay.

Lady Tranmore had just begun to waver in a final despair when the door
opened and William Ashe entered.

He looked in astonishment at his mother and wife. Then in a flash he
understood, and, with an involuntary gesture of fatigue, he turned to
go.

"William!" cried his mother, hurrying after him, "don't go. Kitty and I
were disputing; but it is nothing, dear! Don't go, you look so tired.
Can you stay for dinner?"

"Well, that was my intention," said Ashe, with a smile, as he allowed
himself to be brought back. "But Kitty seems in the clouds."

For Kitty had not moved an inch to greet him. She sat in a high-back
chair, one foot crossed over the other, one hand supporting her cheek,
looking straight before her with shining eyes.

Lady Tranmore laid a ha