to leave her paralyzed husband she had been with Kitty, nursing her with affectionate wisdom night and day.  While on the other members of the Haggart party the sheer pity of Kitty’s condition had worked with surprising force.  Lord Grosville had actually made his wife offer Grosville Park for Kitty’s convalescence—­Kitty got her first laugh out of the proposal.  The Dean had journeyed several times from his distant cathedral town, to see and sit with Kitty; Eddie Helston’s flowers had been almost a nuisance; Mrs. Alcot had shown herself quite soft and human.

The effect, indeed, of this general sympathy on Lord Parham’s relations to the chief member of his cabinet had been but small and passing.  Ashe disliked and distrusted him more than ever; and whatever might have happened to the Premier’s resentment of a particular offence, there could be no doubt that a visit from which Ashe had hoped much had ended in complete failure, that Parham was disposed to cross his powerful henchman where he could, and that intrigue was busy in the cabinet itself against the reforming party of which Ashe was the head Ashe, indeed, felt his own official position, outwardly so strong, by no means secure.  But the game of politics was none the less exhilarating for that.

As to Kitty’s relation to himself—­and life’s most intimate and tender things—­in these days, did he probe his own consciousness much concerning them?  Probably not.  Was he aware that, when all was said and done, in spite of her misdoings, in spite of his passion of anxiety during her illness, in spite of the pity and affection of his daily attitude, Kitty occupied, in truth, much less of his mind than she had ever yet occupied?—­that a certain magic—­primal, incommunicable—­had ceased to clothe her image in his thoughts?

Again—­probably not.  For these slow changes in a man’s inmost personality are like the ebb and flow of summer tides over estuary sands.  Silent, the main creeps in, or out; and while we dream, the great basin fills, and the fishing-boats come in—­or the gentle, pitiless waters draw back into the bosom of ocean, and the sea-birds run over the wide, untenanted flats.

* * * * *

They landed at the Piazzetta as the lamps were being lit.  The soft October darkness was falling fast, and on the ledges of St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace the pigeons had begun to roost.  An animated crowd was walking up and down in the Piazza where a band was playing; and on the golden horses of St. Mark’s there shone a pale and mystical light, the last reflection from the western sky.  Under the colonnades the jewellers and glass-shops blazed and sparkled, and the warm sea-wind fluttered the Italian flags on the great flag-staffs that but so recently had borne the Austrian eagle.

Ashe walked with his head thrown back, thinking absently, in this centre of Venice, of English politics, and of a phrase of Metternich’s he had come across in a volume of memoirs he had been lately reading on the journey: