Presently he paused beside her.

“I should like you to understand me, mother.  I cannot fight with Kitty.  Before I asked her to marry me, I made up my mind to that.  I knew then and I know now that nothing but disaster could come of it.  She must be free, and I shall not attempt to coerce her.”

“Or to protect her!” cried his mother.

“As to that, I shall do what I can.  But I clearly foresaw when we married that we should scandalize a good many of the weaker brethren.”

He smiled, but, as it seemed to his mother, with some effort.

“William! as a public man—­”

He interrupted her.

“If I can be both Kitty’s husband and a public man, well and good.  If not, then I shall be—­”

“Kitty’s husband?” cried Lady Tranmore, with an accent of bitterness, almost of sarcasm, of which she instantly repented her.  She changed her tone.

“It is, of course, Kitty, first and foremost, who is concerned in your public position,” she said, more gently.  “Dearest William—­she is so young still—­she probably doesn’t quite understand, in spite of her great cleverness.  But she does care—­she must care—­and she ought to know what slight things may sometimes affect a man’s prospects and future in this country.”

Ashe said nothing.  He turned on his heel and resumed his pacing.  Lady Tranmore looked at him in perplexity.

“William, I heard a rumor last night—­”

He held his cigarette suspended.

“Lord Crashaw told me that the resignations would certainly be in the papers this week, and that the ministry would go on—­after a rearrangement of posts.  Is it true?”

Ashe resumed his cigarette.

“True—­as to the facts—­so far as I know.  As to the date, Lord Crashaw knows, I think, no more than I do.  It may be this week, it may be next month.”

“Then I hear—­thank goodness I never see her,” Elizabeth went on, reluctantly—­“that that dreadful woman, Lady Parham, is more infuriated than ever—­”

“With Kitty?  Let her be!  It really doesn’t matter an old shoe, either to Kitty or me.”

“She can be a most bitter enemy, William.  And she certainly influences Lord Parham.”

Ashe smoked and smiled.  Lady Tranmore saw that his pride, too, had been aroused, and that here he was likely to prove as obstinate as Kitty.

“I wish I could get her out of my mind!” she sighed.

Ashe glanced at her kindly.

“I daresay we shall hold our own.  Xanthippe is not beloved, and I don’t believe Parham will let her interfere with what he thinks best for the party.  Will it pay to put me in the cabinet or not?—­that’s what he’ll ask.  I shall be strongly backed, too, by most of our papers.”

A number of thoughts ran through Lady Tranmore’s brain.  With her long experience of London, she knew well what the sudden lowering of a man’s “consideration”—­to use a French word—­at a critical moment may mean.  A cooling of the general regard—­a breath of detraction coming no one knows whence—­and how soon new claims emerge, and the indispensable of yesterday becomes the negligible of to-day!