When this huge, distracting London was left behind, when he had her to himself amid the Scotch heather and birch, should he find her again—­conquer her again—­as in the exquisite days after their marriage?  He thought of Cliffe with a kind of proud torment, disdaining to be jealous or afraid.  Kitty had amused herself—­had tested her freedom, his patience, to the utmost.  Might she now be content, and reward him a little for a self-control, a philosophy, which had not been easy!

A French novel on Kitty’s little table drew his attention.  He thought not without a discomfortable humor of what a French husband would have made of a similar situation—­recalling the remark of a French acquaintance on some case illustrating the freedom of English wives.  “Il y a un element turc dans le mari francais, qui nous rendrait ces moeurs-la impossibles!”

A la bonne heure!  Let the Frenchman keep up his seraglio standards as he pleased.  An Englishman trusts both his wife and his daughter—­scorns, indeed, to consider whether he trusts them or no!  And who comes worst off?  Not the Englishman—­if, at least, we are to believe the French novel on the French menage!

He paced thus up and down for an hour, defying his unseen critics—­his mother—­his own heart.

* * * * *

Then he went to bed and slept a little.  But with the post next morning there was no letter from Kitty.  There might be a hundred explanations of that.  Yet he felt a sudden need of caution.

“Her ladyship comes up this morning by train,” he said to Wilson, as though reading from a note.  “There seems to have been a mishap.”

Then he took a hansom and drove to the Alcots.

“Is Mrs. Alcot at home?” he asked the butler.  “Can I have an answer to this note?”

“Mrs. Alcot has been in her room since yesterday morning, sir.  She was taken ill just before the coach was coming round, and the horses had to be sent back.  But the doctor last night hoped it would be nothing serious.”

Ashe turned and went home.  Then Kitty was not with Madeleine Alcot—­not on the coach!  Where was she, and with whom?

He shut himself into his library and fell to wondering, in bewilderment, what he had better do.  A tide of rage and agony was mounting within him.  How to master it—­and keep his brain clear!

He was sitting in front of his writing-table staring at the floor, his hands hanging before him, when the door opened and shut.  He turned.  There, with her back to the door, stood Kitty.  Her aspect startled him to his feet.  She looked at him, trembling—­her little face haggard and white, with a touch of something in it which had blurred its youth.

“William!” She put both her hands to her breast, as though to support herself.  Then she flew forward.  “William!  I have done nothing wrong—­nothing—­nothing!  William—­look at me!”

He sternly put out his hand, protecting himself.