er eyes, her grace--even in her fits of
proud shyness--and the way in which, as he had put her into her cab
after the visit to Lady Tranmore, her tiny hand had lingered in his, a
mute, astonishing appeal. Haunted, too, by what he heard of her fortunes
and surroundings. What was the real truth of Madame d'Estrees'
situation? During the preceding weeks some ugly rumors had reached Ashe
of financial embarrassment in that quarter, of debts risen to
mountainous height, of crisis and possible disappearance. Then these
rumors were met by others, to the effect that Colonel Warington, the old
friend and support of the d'Estrees' household, had come to the rescue,
that the crisis had been averted, and that the three weekly evenings, so
well known and so well attended, would go on; and with this phase of the
story there mingled, as Ashe was well aware, not the slightest breath of
scandal, in a case where, so to speak, all was scandal.

And meanwhile what new and dolorous truths had Lady Kitty been learning
as to her mother's history and her mother's position? By Jove! it <i>was</i>
hard upon the girl. Darrell was right. Why not leave her to her French
friends and relations?--or relinquish her to Lady Grosville? Madame
d'Estrees had seen little or nothing of her for years. She could not,
therefore, be necessary to her mother's happiness, and there was a real
cruelty in thus claiming her, at the very moment of her entrance into
society, where Madame d'Estrees could only stand in her way. For
although many a man whom the girl might profitably marry was to be
found among the mother's guests, the influences of Madame d'Estrees'
"evenings" were certainly not matrimonial. Still the unforeseen was
surely the probable in Lady Kitty's case. What sort of man ought she to
marry--what sort of man could safely take the risks of marrying
her--with that mother in the background?

He descended at the way-side station prescribed to him, and looked round
him for fellow-guests--much as the card-player examines his hand. Mary
Lyster, a cabinet minister--filling an ornamental office and handed on
from ministry to ministry as a kind of necessary appendage, the public
never knew why--the minister's second wife, an attache from the Austrian
embassy, two members of Parliament, and a well-known journalist--Ashe
said to himself flippantly that so far the trumps were not many. But he
was always reasonably glad to see Mary, and he went up to her, cared for
he