Ashe shrugged his shoulders.  It seemed to him incredible that she should pursue this particular topic, after the incidents at Haggart.

“That’s not the purpose for which Prime Ministers exist.  Anyway, we can’t tell it him.”

Undaunted, however, by his tone, and with what seemed to him extraordinary excitability of manner, Kitty reminded him of an incident in the life of a bygone administration, when the near relative of an English statesman, staying at the time in the statesman’s house, had sent a communication to one of the quarterlies attacking his policy and belittling his character, by means of information obtained in the intimacy of a country-house party.

“One of the most treacherous things ever done!” said Ashe, indignantly.  “Fair fight, if you like!  But if that kind of thing were to spread, I for one should throw up politics to-morrow.”

“Every one said it did a vast deal of good,” persisted Kitty.

“A precious sort of good!  Yes—­I believe Parham in particular profited by it—­more shame to him!  If anybody ever tried to help me in that sort of way—­anybody, that is, for whom I felt the smallest responsibility—­I know what I should do.”

“What?” Kitty fell back on her cushions, but her eye still held him.

“Send in my resignation by the next post—­and damn the fellow that did it!  Look here, Kitty!” He came to stand over her—­a fine formidable figure, his hands in his pockets.  “Don’t you ever try that kind of thing—­there’s a darling.”

“Would you damn me?”

She smiled at him—­with a tremor of the lip.

He caught up her hand and kissed it.  “Blow out my own brains, more like,” he said, laughing.  Then he turned away.  “What on earth have we got into this beastly conversation for?  Let’s get out of it.  The Parhams are there—­male and female—­aren’t they?—­and we’ve got to put up with them.  Well, I’m going to the Piazza.  Any commissions?  Oh, by-the-way”—­he looked back at a letter in his hands—­“mother says Polly Lyster will probably be here before we go—­she seems to be touring around with her father.”

“Charming prospect!” said Kitty.  “Does mother expect me to chaperon her?”

Ashe laughed and went.  As soon as he was gone, Kitty sprang from the sofa, and walked up and down the room in a passionate preoccupation.  A tremor of great fear was invading her; an agony of unavailing regret.

“What can I do?” she said to herself, as her upper lip twisted and tortured the lower one.

Presently she caught up her purse, went to her room, where she put on her walking things without summoning Blanche, and stealing down the stairs, so as to be unheard by Margaret, she made her way to the back gate of the Palazzo, and so to the streets leading to the Piazza.  William had taken the gondola to the Piazzetta, so she felt herself safe.

She entered the telegraphic office at the western end of the Piazza, and sent a telegram to England that nearly emptied her purse of francs.  When she came out she was as pale as she had been flushed before—­a little, terror-stricken figure, passing in a miserable abstraction through the intricate backways which took her home.