som from the
corner of Grosvenor Street. In the hansom she carefully drew down her
veil, with the shrinking of one on whom disgrace--the long pursuing,
long expected--has seized at last. All the various facts, statements,
indications as to Kitty's behavior, which through the most diverse
channels had been flowing steadily towards her for weeks past, were now
surging through her mind and memory--a grievous, damning host. And every
now and then, as she caught the placards in the streets, her heart
contracted anew. Her son, her William, in what should have been the
heyday of his gifts and powers, baffled, tripped up, defeated!--by his
own wife, the selfish, ungrateful, reckless child on whom he had
lavished the undeserved treasures of the most generous and untiring
love. And had she not only checked or ruined his career--was he to be
also dishonored, struck to the heart?

She could scarcely stand as she rang the bell at Hill Street, and it was
only with a great effort that she could ask her question:

"Is Mr. Ashe at home?"

"Mr. Ashe, my lady, is, I believe, just going out," said Wilson. "Her
ladyship arrived just about an hour ago, and that detained him."

Elizabeth betrayed nothing. The training of her class held good.

"Are they in the library?" she asked--"or up-stairs?"

Wilson replied that he believed her ladyship was in her room, and Mr.
Ashe with her.

"Please ask Mr. Ashe if I can see him for a few minutes."

Wilson disappeared, and Lady Tranmore stood motionless, looking round at
William's books and tables. She loved everything that his hand had
touched, every sign of his character--the prize books of his college
days, the pictures on the wall, many of which had descended from his
Eton study, the photographs of his favorite hunter, the drawing she
herself had made for him of his first pony.

On his writing-table lay a despatch-box from the Foreign Office. Lady
Tranmore turned away from it. It reminded her intolerably of the shock
and defeat of the day before. During the past six months she had become
more rejoicingly conscious than ever before of his secret, deepening
ambition, and her own heart burned with the smart of his disappointment.
No one else, however, should guess at it through her. No sooner had she
received his letter from the club than, after many weeks of withdrawal
from society, she had forced herself to go to the Holland House party,
that no one might say she hid herself, that no one mi