"Ah! you are interested in these things, Lady Kitty? Well—tell me your views. You women have such an instinct—"
—whereby the moth was kept hovering round the flame. Till, in a flash, Kitty awoke to the fact that while she had been listening happily to her own voice, taking no notice whatever of the signals which William endeavored to send her from the other end of the table—while she had been tripping gayly through one indiscretion after another, betraying innumerable things as to William's opinions and William's plans that she had infinitely better not have betrayed—Lord Parham had said nothing, betrayed nothing, promised nothing. A quiet smile—a courteous nod—and presently a shade of mockery in the lips—the meaning of them, all in a moment, burst on Kitty.
Her face flamed. Thenceforward it would be difficult to describe the dinner. Conversationally, at Kitty's end it became an uproar. She started the wildest topics, and Lord Parham had afterwards a bruised recollection as of one who has been dragged or driven, Caliban-like, through brake and thicket, pinched and teased and pelted by elfish fingers, without one single uncivil speech or act of overt offence to which an angry guest could point. With each later course, the Prime Minister grew stiffer and more silent. Endurance was written in every line of his fighting head and round, ungraceful shoulders, in his veiled eyes and stolid mouth. Lady Tranmore gave a gasp of relief when at last Kitty rose from her seat.
The evening went no better. Lord Parham was set down to cards with Kitty, Eddie Helston, and Lord Grosville. Lord Grosville, his partner, played, to the Premier's thinking, like an idiot, and Lady Kitty and the young man chattered and sparred, so that all reasonable play became impossible. Lord Parham lost more than he at all liked to lose, and at half-past ten he pleaded fatigue, refused to smoke, and went to his room.
Ashe was perfectly aware of the failure of the evening, and the discomfort of his guest. But he said nothing, and Kitty avoided his neighborhood. Meanwhile, between him and his mother a certain tacit understanding began to make itself felt. They talked quietly, in corners, of the arrangements for the speech and fête of the morrow. So far, they had been too much left to Kitty. Ashe promised his mother to look into them. He and she combined for the protection of Lord Parham.
When about one o'clock Ashe went to bed, Kitty either was or pretended to be fast asleep. The room was in darkness save for the faint illumination of a night-light, which just revealed to Ashe the delicate figure of his wife, lying high on her pillows, her cheek and brow hidden in the confusion of her hair.
One window was wide open to the night, and once more Ashe stood lost in "recollection" beside it, as on that night in Hill Street, more than a year before. But the thoughts which on that former occasion had been still as tragic and unfamiliar guests in a mind that repelled them had now, alack, lost their strangeness; they entered habitually, unannounced—frequent, irritating, deplorable.
Had the relation between himself and Kitty ever, in truth, recovered the shock of that incident on the river—of his night of restlessness, his morning of agonized alarm, and the story to which he listened on her return? It had been like some physical blow or wound, easily healed or conquered for the moment, which then, as time goes on, reveals a hidden series of consequences.
Consequences, in this case, connected above all with Kitty's own nature and temperament. The excitement of Cliffe's declaration, of her own resistance and dramatic position, as between her husband and her lover, had worked ever since, as a poison in Kitty's mind—Ashe was becoming dismally certain of it. The absurd incident of the night before with the photograph had been enough to prove it.