Accordingly, they were in the library, Ashe on the defensive, Lady Tranmore nervous, embarrassed, and starting at a sound.  Both of them watched the door.  Both looked for and dreaded the advent of Kitty.

“Dear William,” said his mother at last, stretching her hand across a small table which stood between them and laying it on her son’s, “you’ll forgive me, won’t you?—­even if I do seem to you prudish and absurd.  But I am afraid you ought to tell Kitty some of the unkind things people are saying!  You know I’ve tried, and she wouldn’t listen to me.  And you ought to beg her—­yes, William, indeed you ought!—­not to give any further occasion for them.”

She looked at him anxiously, full Of that timidity which haunts the deepest and tenderest affections.  She had just given him to read a letter from Lady Grosville to herself.  Ashe ran through it, then laid it down with a gesture of scorn.

“Kitty apparently enjoyed a moonlight walk with Cliffe.  Why shouldn’t she?  Lady Grosville thinks the moon was made to sleep by—­other people don’t.”

“But, William!—­at night—­when everybody had gone to bed—­escaping from the house—­they two alone!”

Lady Tranmore looked at him entreatingly, as though driven to protest, and yet hating the sound of her own words.

Ashe laughed.  He was smoking with an air so nonchalant that his mother’s heart sank.  For she divined that criticism in the society around her which she was never allowed to hear.  Was it true, indeed, that his natural indolence could not rouse itself even to the defence of a young wife’s reputation?

“All the fault of the Grosvilles,” said Ashe, after a moment, lighting another cigarette, “in shutting up their great heavy house, and drawing their great heavy curtains on a May night, when all reasonable people want to be out-of-doors.  My dear mother, what’s the good of paying any attention to what people like Lady Grosville say of people like Kitty?  You might as well expect Deborah to hit it off with Ariel!”

“William, don’t laugh!” said his mother, in distress.  “Geoffrey Cliffe is not a man to be trusted.  You and I know that of old.  He is a boaster, and—­”

“And a liar!” said Ashe, quietly.  “Oh!  I know that.”

“And yet he has this power over women—­one ought to look it in the face.  William, dearest William!” she leaned over and clasped his hand close in both hers, “do persuade Kitty to go away from London now—­at once!”

“Kitty won’t go,” said Ashe, quietly, “I am sorry, dear mother.  I hate that you should be worried.  But there’s the fact.  Kitty won’t go!”

“Then use your authority,” said Lady Tranmore.

“I have none.”

“William!” Ashe rose from his seat, and began to walk up and down.  His aspect of competence and dignity, as of a man already accustomed to command and destined to a high experience, had never been more marked than at the very moment of this helpless utterance.  His mother looked at him with mingled admiration and amazement.