t
the other desires, and affects to care nothing about it--of the
combatant who fights with rage to the combatant who fights with a smile.
Cliffe could often lash himself into fury by the mere thought of Ashe's
opportunities and Ashe's future, combined with the belief that Ashe's
mood towards himself was either contemptuous or condescending. And it
was at such moments that he would fling himself with most resource into
the establishing of his ascendency over Kitty.

The two men met when they did meet--which was but seldom--on perfectly
civil terms. If Ashe arrived unexpectedly from the House in the late
afternoon to find Cliffe in the drawing-room reading aloud to Kitty, the
politics of the moment provided talk enough till Cliffe could decently
take his departure. He never dined with them alone, Kitty having no mind
whatever for the discomforts of such a party; and in the evenings when
he and Kitty met at a small number of houses, where the flirtation was
watched nightly with a growing excitement, Ashe's duties kept him at
Westminster, and there was nothing to hinder that flow of small and yet
significant incident by which situations of this kind are developed.

Ashe set his teeth. He had made up his mind finally that it was a plague
and a tyranny which would pass, and could only be magnified by
opposition. But his temper suffered. There were many small quarrels
during these weeks between himself and Kitty, quarrels which betrayed
the tension produced in him by what was--in essentials--an iron
self-control. But they made daily life a sordid, unlovely thing, and
they gave Kitty an excuse for saying that William was as violent as
herself, and for seeking refuge in the exaltations of feeling or of
fancy provided by Cliffe's companionship.

Perhaps of all the persons in the drama, Lady Tranmore was the most to
be pitied. She sat at home, having no heart to go to Hill Street, and
more tied indeed than usual by the helpless illness of her husband.
Never, in all these days, did Ashe miss his daily visit to his father.
He would come in, apparently his handsome, good-humored self, ready to
read aloud for twenty minutes, or merely to sit in silence by the sick
man, his eyes making affectionate answer every now and then to the dumb
looks of Lord Tranmore. Only his mother sought and found that slight
habitual contraction of the brow which bore witness to some equally
persistent disquiet of the mind. But he kept her at arm's-lengt