hat Kitty
detests her."

"Oh no," said Lady Tranmore, in a vague voice, "Kitty
couldn't--impossible!"

Mary turned an observant eye upon her companion's conscious and troubled
air, and drew conclusions not far from the truth.

"And it's all so awkward, isn't it?" she said, with sympathy, "when
apparently Lady Parham is as much Prime Minister as he is."

For in those days certain great houses and political ladies, though not
at the zenith of their power, were still, in their comparative decline,
very much to be reckoned with. When Lady Parham talked longer than usual
with the French Ambassador, his Austrian and German colleagues wrote
anxious despatches to their governments; when a special mission to the
East of great importance had to be arranged, nobody imagined that Lord
Parham had very much to do with the appointment of the commissioner, who
happened to have just engaged himself to Lady Parham's second girl. No
young member on the government side, if he wanted office, neglected
Lady Parham's invitations, and admission to her more intimate dinners
was still almost as much coveted as similar favors had been a generation
before in the case of Lady Jersey, or still earlier, in that of Lady
Holland. She was a small old woman, with a shrewish face, a waxen
complexion, and a brown wig. In spite of short sight, she saw things
that escaped most other people; her tongue was rarely at a loss; she
was, on the whole, a good friend, though never an unreflecting one; and
what she forgave might be safely reckoned as not worth resenting.

Elizabeth Tranmore received Mary's remark with reluctant consent. Lady
Parham--from the English aristocratic stand-point--was not well-born.
She had been the daughter of a fashionable music-master, whose blood was
certainly not Christian. And there were many people beside Lady Tranmore
who resented her domination.

"It will be so perfectly easy when the moment comes to invent some
excuse or other for shelving William's claims," sighed Ashe's mother.
"Nobody is indispensable, and if that old woman is provoked, she will be
capable of any mischief."

"What do you want for William?" said Mary, smiling.

"He ought, of course, to have the Home Office!" replied Lady Tranmore,
with fire.

Mary vowed that he would certainly have it. "Kitty is so clever, she
will understand how important discretion is, before things go too far."

Lady Tranmore made no answer. She gazed into the fire, and Miss Lyst