But even if she could have brought herself to put any of these anxieties into words, she had no opportunity.  Kitty’s voice was in the hall; the handle turned, and she ran in.

“William!  Ah!—­I didn’t know mother was here.”

She went up to Elizabeth, and lightly kissed that lady’s cheek.

“Good-morning.  William, I just came to tell you that I may be late for dinner, so perhaps you had better dine at the House.  I am going on the river.”

“Are you?” said Ashe, gathering up his papers.  “Wish I was.”

“Are you going with the Crashaw’s party?” asked Elizabeth.  “I know they have one.”

“Oh, dear, no!” said Kitty.  “I hate a crowd on the river.  I am going with Geoffrey Cliffe.”

Ashe bent over his desk.  Lady Tranmore’s eyebrows went up, and she could not restrain the word: 

“Alone?”

“Naturellement!” laughed Kitty.  “He reads me French poetry, and we talk French.  We let Madeleine Alcot come once, but her accent was so shocking that Geoffrey wouldn’t have her again!”

Lady Tranmore flushed deeply.  The “Geoffrey” seemed to her intolerable.  Kitty, arrayed in the freshest of white gowns, walked away to the farther end of the library to consult a Bradshaw.  Elizabeth, looking up, caught her son’s eyes—­and the mingled humor and vexation in them, wherewith he appealed to her, as it were, to see the whole silly business as he himself did.  Lady Tranmore felt a moment’s strong reaction.  Had she indeed been making a foolish fuss about nothing?

Yet the impression left by the miserable meditations of her night was still deep enough to make her say—­with just a signal from eye and lips, so that Kitty neither saw nor heard—­“Don’t let her go!”

Ashe shook his head.  He moved towards the door, and stood there despatch-box in hand, throwing a last look at his wife.

“Don’t be late, Kitty—­or I shall be nervous.  I don’t trust Cliffe on the river.  And please make it a rule that, in locks, he stops quoting French poetry.”

Kitty turned round, startled and apparently annoyed by his tone.

“He is an excellent oar,” she said, shortly.

“Is he?  At Oxford we tried him for the Torpids—­” Ashe’s shrug completed his remark.  Then, still disregarding another imploring look from Lady Tranmore, he left the room.

Kitty had flushed angrily.  The belittling, malicious note in Ashe’s manner had been clear enough.  She braced herself against it, and Lady Tranmore’s chance was lost.  For when, summoning all her courage, and quite uncertain whether her son would approve or blame her, Elizabeth approached her daughter-in-law affectionately, trying in timid and apologetic words to unburden her own heart and reach Kitty’s, Kitty met her with one of those outbursts of temper that women like Elizabeth Tranmore cannot cope with.  Their moral recoil is too great.  It is the recoil of the spiritual aristocrat; and between them and the children of passion the links are few, the antagonism eternal.