The Marriage of William Ashe

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

"No, no!—he knows," said Cliffe, with impatience. "The others don't. Parham is more impossible—more crassly, grossly ignorant!" He lifted hands and eyes in protest. "But Ashe, of course, is another matter altogether."

"Well, go and see him—go and talk to him!" said Lady Tranmore, still mocking. "There are no lions in the way."

"None," said Cliffe. "As a matter of fact, Lady Kitty has asked me to luncheon. But does one find Ashe himself in the middle of the day?"

At the mention of her daughter-in-law Elizabeth made an involuntary movement. Mary, standing beside her, turned towards her and smiled.

"Not often." The tone was cold. "But you could always find him at the House." And Lady Tranmore moved away.

"Is there a quiet corner anywhere?" said Cliffe to Mary. "I have such heaps to tell you."

So while some Polish gentleman in the main drawing-room, whose name ended in ski, challenged his violin to the impossible, Cliffe and Mary retired from observation into a small room thrown open with the rest of the suite, which was in truth the morning-room of the ambassadress.

As soon as they found themselves alone, there was a pause in their conversation; each involuntarily looked at the other. Mary certainly recognized that these years of absence had wrought a noticeable change in the man before her. He had aged. Hard living and hard travelling had left their marks. But, like Lady Tranmore, she also perceived another difference. The eyes bent upon her were indeed, as before, the eyes of a man self-centred, self-absorbed. There was no chivalrous softness in them, no consideration. The man who owned them used them entirely for his own purposes; they betrayed none of that changing instinctive relation towards the human being—any human being—within their range, which makes the charm of so many faces. But they were sadder, more sombre, more restless; they thrilled her more than they had already thrilled her once, in the first moment of her youth.

What was he going to say? From the moment of his first letter to her from Japan, Mary had perfectly understood that he had some fresh purpose in his mind. She was not anxious, however, to precipitate the moment of explanation. She was no longer the young girl whose equilibrium is upset by the mere approach of the man who interests her. Moreover, there was a past between herself and Cliffe, the memory of which might indeed point her to caution. Did he now, after all, want to marry her—because she was rich, and he was comparatively poor, and could only secure an English career at the cost of a well-stored wife? Well, all that should be thought over; by herself no less than by him. Meanwhile her vanity glowed within her, as she thus held him there, alone, to the discomfiture of other women more beautiful and more highly placed than herself; as she remembered his letters in her desk at home; and the secrets she imagined him to have told her. Then again she felt a rush of sudden disquiet, caused by this new aspect—wavering and remote—as though some hidden grief emerged and vanished. He had the haggard air of a man who scarcely sleeps. All that she had ever heard of the French affair rushed through her mind, stirring there an angry curiosity.

These impressions took, however, but a few minutes, while they exchanged some conventionalities. Then Cliffe said, scrutinizing the face and form beside him with that intentness which, from him, was more generally taken as compliment than offence: