deed been making a foolish fuss about nothing?

Yet the impression left by the miserable meditations of her night was
still deep enough to make her say--with just a signal from eye and lips,
so that Kitty neither saw nor heard--"Don't let her go!"

Ashe shook his head. He moved towards the door, and stood there
despatch-box in hand, throwing a last look at his wife.

"Don't be late, Kitty--or I shall be nervous. I don't trust Cliffe on
the river. And please make it a rule that, in locks, he stops quoting
French poetry."

Kitty turned round, startled and apparently annoyed by his tone.

"He is an excellent oar," she said, shortly.

"Is he? At Oxford we tried him for the Torpids--" Ashe's shrug completed
his remark. Then, still disregarding another imploring look from Lady
Tranmore, he left the room.

Kitty had flushed angrily. The belittling, malicious note in Ashe's
manner had been clear enough. She braced herself against it, and Lady
Tranmore's chance was lost. For when, summoning all her courage, and
quite uncertain whether her son would approve or blame her, Elizabeth
approached her daughter-in-law affectionately, trying in timid and
apologetic words to unburden her own heart and reach Kitty's, Kitty met
her with one of those outbursts of temper that women like Elizabeth
Tranmore cannot cope with. Their moral recoil is too great. It is the
recoil of the spiritual aristocrat; and between them and the children of
passion the links are few, the antagonism eternal.

She left the house, pale, dignified, the tears in her eyes. Kitty ran
up-stairs, humming an air from "Faust," as though she would tear it to
pieces, put on a flame-colored hat that gave a still further note of
extravagance to her costume, ordered a hansom, and drove away.

* * * * *

Whether Kitty got much joy out of the three weeks which followed must
remain uncertain. She had certainly routed Mary Lyster, if there were
any final satisfaction in that. Mary had left town early, and was now in
Somersetshire helping her father to entertain, in order, said the
malicious, to put the best face possible on a defeat which this time had
been serious. And instead of devoting himself to the wooing of a
northern constituency where he had been adopted as the candidate of a
new Tory group, Cliffe lingered obstinately in town, endangering his
chances and angering his supporters. Kitty's influence over his actions
was, indeed, paten