Then she sprang up.

“Sit there!” She pointed to the foot of the sofa.  Ashe obeyed her.

“When did you know?”

“About the ministry?  Between six and seven.  I saw Lady Parham afterwards driving in St. James’s Street.  She never enjoyed anything so much in her life as the bow she gave me.’”

Kitty groaned, and subsided again, a little crumpled form among her cushions.

“Tell me the names.”

Ashe gave her the list of the ministry.  She made one or two shrewd or bitter comments upon it.  He fully understood that in her inmost mind she was registering a vow of vengeance against the Parhams; but she made no spoken threat.  Meanwhile, in the background of each mind there lay that darker and more humiliating fact, to which both shrank from returning, while yet both knew that it must be faced.

There was a knock at the door, and Blanche appeared with the tray which had been ordered down-stairs.  She glanced in astonishment at her mistress.

“We had an accident on the river last night, Blanche,” said Kitty.  “Come back in half an hour.  I’m too tired to change just yet.”

She kept her face hidden from the maid, but when Blanche had departed, Ashe saw that her cheeks were flaming.

“I hate lying!” she said, with a kind of physical disgust—­“and now I suppose it will be my chief occupation for weeks.”

It was true that she hated lying, and Ashe was well aware of it.  Of such a battle-stroke, indeed, as she had played at the ball, when her prompt falsehood snatched Cliffe from Mary Lyster, she was always capable.  But in general her pride, her very egotism and quick temper kept her true.

Perhaps the fact represented one of those deep sources whence the well of Ashe’s tenderness was fed.  At any rate, consciously or not, it was at this moment one of his chief motives for not finding the past intolerable or the future without hope.  He took some wine and a sandwich from the tray, and began to feed her.  In the middle, she pushed his hands away, and her eyes brimmed again with tears.

“Put it down,” she commanded.  And when he had done so, she raised his hands deliberately, one after the other, and kissed them, crying: 

“William!—­I have been a horrible wife to you!”

“Don’t be a goose, Kitty.  You know very well that—­till this last business—­And don’t imagine that I feel myself a model, either!”

“No,” she said, with a long sigh.  “Of course, you ought to have beaten me.”

He smiled, with an unsteady lip.

“Perhaps I might still try it.”

She shook her head.

“Too late.  I am not a child any more.”

Then throwing her soft arms round his neck, she clung to him, saying the most adorable and poignant things, dissolved, indeed, in a murmuring anguish of remorse; until, with the same unexpectedness as before, she again disengaged herself—­urging, insisting that he should send her away.