He supposed there was no harm in it.  The lad was not a Geoffrey Cliffe, and it was no doubt Kitty’s mad love of excitement which impelled her to these defiances of convention.  But Ashe should put his foot down; there was no knowing with a creature so wild and so lovely where these things might end.  And after the scandal of last year—­

As to that scandal, Lord Grosville, as a man of the world, by no means endorsed the lurid imaginations of his wife.  Kitty and Cliffe had certainly behaved badly at Grosville Park—­that is to say, judged by any ordinary standards.  And the gossip of the season had apparently gathered and culminated round some incident of a graver character than the rest—­though nobody precisely knew what it might be.  But it seemed that Ashe had at last asserted himself; and if in Kitty’s abrupt departure to the country, and the sudden dissolution of the intimacy between herself and Cliffe, those who loved her not had read what dark things they pleased, her uncle by marriage was quite content to see in it a mere disciplinary act on the part of the husband.

Lord Grosville believed that some rumors as to Cliffe’s private character had entered into the decisive defeat—­in a constituency largely Nonconformist—­which had befallen that gentleman at the polls.  Poor Lady Tranmore!  He saw her anxieties in her face, and was truly sorry for her.  At the same time, inveterate gossip that he was, he regarded her with a kind of hunger.  If she only would talk things over with him!  So far, however, she had given him very little opening.  If she ever did, he would certainly advise her to press something like a temporary separation on her son.  Why should not Lady Kitty be left at Haggart when the next session began?  Lord Grosville, who had been a friend of Melbourne’s, recalled the early history of that great man.  When Lady Caroline Lamb had become too troublesome to a political husband, she had been sent to Brocket.  And then Mr. Lamb was only Irish Secretary—­without a seat in the cabinet.  How was it possible to take an important share in steering the ship of state, and to look after a giddy wife at the same time?

* * * * *

Ashe and his guests lingered late below-stairs.  When, somewhere about one o’clock, he entered his dressing-room, he was suddenly alarmed by a smell of burning.  It seemed to come from Kitty’s room.  He knocked hastily at her door.

“Kitty!”

No answer.  He opened the door, and stood arrested.

The room was in complete darkness save for some weird object in the centre of it, on which a fire was burning, sending up a smoke which hung about the room.  Ashe recognized an old Spanish brazier of beaten copper, standing on iron feet, which had been a purchase of his own in days when he trifled with bric-a-brac.  Upon it, a heap of some light material, which fluttered and crackled as it burned, was blazing and smoking away, while beside it—­her profile set and waxen amid the drifts of smoke, her fair hair blanched to whiteness by the strange illumination from below, and all her slight form, checkered with the light and shade of the fire, drawn into a curve of watchfulness, vindictive and intent—­stood Kitty.