ainst the Parhams; but she made no
spoken threat. Meanwhile, in the background of each mind there lay that
darker and more humiliating fact, to which both shrank from returning,
while yet both knew that it must be faced.

There was a knock at the door, and Blanche appeared with the tray which
had been ordered down-stairs. She glanced in astonishment at her
mistress.

"We had an accident on the river last night, Blanche," said Kitty. "Come
back in half an hour. I'm too tired to change just yet."

She kept her face hidden from the maid, but when Blanche had departed,
Ashe saw that her cheeks were flaming.

"I hate lying!" she said, with a kind of physical disgust--"and now I
suppose it will be my chief occupation for weeks."

It was true that she hated lying, and Ashe was well aware of it. Of such
a battle-stroke, indeed, as she had played at the ball, when her prompt
falsehood snatched Cliffe from Mary Lyster, she was always capable. But
in general her pride, her very egotism and quick temper kept her true.

Perhaps the fact represented one of those deep sources whence the well
of Ashe's tenderness was fed. At any rate, consciously or not, it was at
this moment one of his chief motives for not finding the past
intolerable or the future without hope. He took some wine and a sandwich
from the tray, and began to feed her. In the middle, she pushed his
hands away, and her eyes brimmed again with tears.

"Put it down," she commanded. And when he had done so, she raised his
hands deliberately, one after the other, and kissed them, crying:

"William!--I have been a horrible wife to you!"

"Don't be a goose, Kitty. You know very well that--till this last
business--And don't imagine that I feel myself a model, either!"

"No," she said, with a long sigh. "Of course, you ought to have beaten
me."

He smiled, with an unsteady lip.

"Perhaps I might still try it."

She shook her head.

"Too late. I am not a child any more."

Then throwing her soft arms round his neck, she clung to him, saying the
most adorable and poignant things, dissolved, indeed, in a murmuring
anguish of remorse; until, with the same unexpectedness as before, she
again disengaged herself--urging, insisting that he should send her
away.

"Let me go and live at Haggart, baby and I." (Haggart was one of the
Tranmore "places," recently handed over to the young people.) "You can
come and see me sometimes. I'll garden--and write books. Half the smar