“I think that came ten days ago,” he said, quietly.  “I imagined Kitty accepted it.”

“I never thought of it from that day to this,” said Kitty, who had clasped her hands behind her head and was staring at the ceiling.  “Say, please, that”—­she spaced out the words deliberately—­“Mr. and Lady Kitty Ashe—­are unable to accept—­Lord and Lady Parham’s invitation—­etc.—­”

“Kitty!” said Margaret, firmly, “there must be a ‘regret’ and a ‘kind.’  Think!  Ten days!  The party is next week!”

“No ‘regret,’ and no ’kind’!” said Kitty, still staring overhead.  “It’s my affair, please, Margaret, altogether.  And I’ll see the note before it goes, or you’ll be putting in civilities.”

Margaret, in despair, looked entreatingly at Ashe.  He and she had often conspired before this to soften down Kitty’s enormities.  But he said nothing—­made not the smallest sign.

With difficulty Margaret got a few more directions out of Kitty, over whom a shade of sombre taciturnity had now fallen.  Then, saying she would write the notes down-stairs and come back, she gathered up her basketful of letters and departed.

As soon as she was alone with Ashe, Kitty took up a novel beside her, and pretended to be absorbed in it.

He hesitated a moment, then he stooped over her and took her hand.

“Why did you come in to visit me, Kitty?” he said, in a low voice.

“I don’t know,” was her indifferent reply, and her hand pulled itself away, though not with violence.

“I wish I could understand you, Kitty.”  His tone was not quite steady.

“Well, I don’t understand myself!” said Kitty, shortly, reaching out for a bunch of roses that Margaret had just brought her, and burying her face among them.

“Perhaps, if you submitted the problem to me,” said Ashe, laughing, “we might be able to thresh it out together!”

He folded his arms and leaned against the foot of the bed, delighting his eyes with the vision of her amid the folds of muslin and lace, and all the costly refinements of pillow and coverlet with which she liked to surround herself at that hour of the morning.  She might have been a French princess of the old regime, receiving her court.

Kitty shook her head.  The roses fell idly from her hands, and made bright patches of blush pink about her.  Ashe went on: 

“Anyway, dear, don’t give silly tongues too good a handle!”

He threw her a gay comrade’s look, as though to say that they both knew the folly of the world, but he perhaps the better, as he was the elder.

“You mean,” said Kitty, calmly, “that I am not to talk so much to Geoffrey Cliffe?”

“Is he worth it?” said Ashe.  “That’s what I want to know—­worth the fuss that some people make?”

“It’s the fuss and the people that drive one on,” said Kitty, under her breath.

“You flatter them too much, darling!  Do you think you were quite kind to me last night?—­let’s put it that way.  I looked a precious fool, you know, standing on those steps, while you were keeping old Mother Parham and the whole show waiting!”