Lady Parham shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s Lady Kitty Ashe,” whispered the debutante, 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.

Kitty came back to the outer hall with Ashe.  Her cheeks had a rose flush, her wild eyes laughed at the crowd on the steps, without really seeing them.

“Are you going with Lady Parham?” she said, absently, to Mary Lyster.

“Yes.”

Kitty looked up and Ashe saw the two faces as she and Mary confronted each other—­the contempt in Mary’s, the startled wrath in Kitty’s.

“Come, Miss Lyster!” said Lady Parham, and pushing past the Ashes without a good-night, she hurried to her carriage, drawing up the glass with a hasty hand, though the night was balmy.

For a few moments none of those left on the steps spoke, except to fret in undertones for an absent carriage.  Then Ashe saw his own groom, and stormed at him for delay.  In another minute he and Kitty were in the carriage, and the figures under the porch dropped out of sight.

* * * * *

“Better not do that again, Kitty, I think,” said Ashe.

Kitty glanced at him.  But both voice and manner were as usual.  “Why shouldn’t I?” she said, haughtily; he saw that she had grown very white.  “I was telling Geoffrey where to find me at Lord’s.”

Ashe winced at the “Archangelism” of the Christian name.

“You kept Lady Parham waiting.”

“What does that matter?” said Kitty, with an angry laugh.

“And you did Cliffe too much honor,” said Ashe.  “It’s the men who should stand on the steps—­not the women!”

Kitty sat erect.  “What do you mean?” she said, in a low, menacing voice.

“Just what I say,” was the laughing reply.

Kitty threw herself back in her corner, and could not be induced to open her lips or look at her companion till they reached home.

On the landing, however, outside her bedroom, she turned and said:  “Don’t, please, say impertinent things to me again!” And drawn up to her full height, the most childish and obstinate of tragedy queens, she swept into her room.

Ashe went into his dressing-room.  And almost immediately afterwards he heard the key turn in the lock which separated his room from Kitty’s.

For the first time since their marriage!  He threw himself on his bed, and passed some sleepless hours.  Then fatigue had its way.  When he awoke, there was a gray dawn in the room, and he was conscious of something pressing against his bed.  Half asleep, he raised himself and saw Kitty, in a long white dressing-gown, sitting curled up on the floor, or rather on a pillow, her head resting on the edge of the bed.  In a glass opposite he saw the languid grace of her slight form and the cloud of her hair.