He looked at her with a sudden odd sense of something unusual, then went on, still floundering:
"We met her at St. Pancras on our way down. If I had only known we were to have had the pleasure of meeting you—Do you know, I think she is looking decidedly better?"
His kindly expression as he rose expected a word of sisterly assent. Meanwhile even Lady Grosville was paralyzed, and the words with which she had meant to interpose failed on her lips.
Kitty, too, rose, looking round for something, which she seemed to find in the face of William Ashe, for her eyes clung there.
"My sister," she repeated, in the same low, strained voice. "My sister Alice? I—I don't know. I have never seen her."
Ashe could not remember afterwards precisely how the incident closed. There was a bustle of departing guests, and from the midst of it Lady Kitty slipped away. But as he came down-stairs in smoking trim, ten minutes later, he overheard the injured Dean wrestling with his wife, as she lit a candle for him on the landing.
"My dear, what did you look at me like that for? What did the child mean? And what on earth is the matter?"