m sorry, dear mother. I hate
that you should be worried. But there's the fact. Kitty won't go!"

"Then use your authority," said Lady Tranmore.

"I have none."

"William!" Ashe rose from his seat, and began to walk up and down. His
aspect of competence and dignity, as of a man already accustomed to
command and destined to a high experience, had never been more marked
than at the very moment of this helpless utterance. His mother looked at
him with mingled admiration and amazement.

Presently he paused beside her.

"I should like you to understand me, mother. I cannot fight with Kitty.
Before I asked her to marry me, I made up my mind to that. I knew then
and I know now that nothing but disaster could come of it. She must be
free, and I shall not attempt to coerce her."

"Or to protect her!" cried his mother.

"As to that, I shall do what I can. But I clearly foresaw when we
married that we should scandalize a good many of the weaker brethren."

He smiled, but, as it seemed to his mother, with some effort.

"William! as a public man--"

He interrupted her.

"If I can be both Kitty's husband and a public man, well and good. If
not, then I shall be--"

"Kitty's husband?" cried Lady Tranmore, with an accent of bitterness,
almost of sarcasm, of which she instantly repented her. She changed her
tone.

"It is, of course, Kitty, first and foremost, who is concerned in your
public position," she said, more gently. "Dearest William--she is so
young still--she probably doesn't quite understand, in spite of her
great cleverness. But she <i>does</i> care--she <i>must</i> care--and she ought to
know what slight things may sometimes affect a man's prospects and
future in this country."

Ashe said nothing. He turned on his heel and resumed his pacing. Lady
Tranmore looked at him in perplexity.

"William, I heard a rumor last night--"

He held his cigarette suspended.

"Lord Crashaw told me that the resignations would certainly be in the
papers this week, and that the ministry would go on--after a
rearrangement of posts. Is it true?"

Ashe resumed his cigarette.

"True--as to the facts--so far as I know. As to the date, Lord Crashaw
knows, I think, no more than I do. It may be this week, it may be next
month."

"Then I hear--thank goodness I never see her," Elizabeth went on,
reluctantly--"that that dreadful woman, Lady Parham, is more infuriated
than ever--"

"With Kitty? Let her be! It really doesn't matte