"Come along, then! In five minutes more I should have been asleep on the stairs."
They descended. Kitty went for her cloak. Ashe sent for the carriage. As he was standing on the steps Cliffe pushed past him and called for a hansom. It came in the rear of two or three carriages already under the portico. He ran along the pavement and jumped in. The doors were just being shut by the linkman when a little figure in a white cloak flew down the steps of the house and held up a hand to the driver of the hansom.
"Do you see that?" said Lady Parham, in a voice of suppressed but contemptuous amazement, as she turned to Mary Lyster, who was driving home with her. "Call my carriage, please!" she said, imperiously, to one of the footmen at the door. Her carriage, as it happened, was immediately behind the hansom; but the hansom could not move because of the small lady who had jumped upon the step and was leaning eagerly forward.
There was a clamor of shouting voices: "Move on, cabby! Move on!" "Stand clear, ma'am, please," said the driver, while Cliffe opened the door of the cab, and seemed about to jump down again.
"Who is it?" said an impatient judge behind Lady Parham. "What's the matter?"
Lady Parham shrugged her shoulders.
"It's Lady Kitty Ashe," whispered the débutante, who was the judge's daughter, "talking to Mr. Cliffe. Isn't she pretty?"
A sudden silence fell upon the group in the porch. Kitty's high, clear laugh seemed to ring back into the house. Then Ashe ran down the steps.
"Kitty, don't stop the way." He peremptorily drew her back.
Cliffe raised his hat, fell back into the hansom, and the man whipped up his horse.