and Harry that you had written it—­and in the next, without making it impossible for your husband to remain a colleague of the man you had treated in such a way?  Kitty!—­you are not a stupid woman!  Do you really mean to say that you could write and publish this book without knowing that you were doing a wrong action—­which, so far from serving me, could only damage my career irreparably?  Did nothing—­did no one warn you—­if you were determined to keep such a secret from your husband, whom it most concerned?”

He had come to stand beside her, both hands on the back of a chair—­stooping forward to emphasize his words—­the lines of his fine face and noble brow contracted by anger and pain.

“Mr. Darrell warned me,” said Kitty, in a low voice, as though those imperious eyes compelled the truth from her—­“but of course I didn’t believe him.”

“Darrell!” cried Ashe, in amazement—­“Darrell!  You confided in him?”

“I told him all about it.  It was he who took it to a publisher.”

“Hound!” said Ashe, between his teeth.  “So that was his revenge.”

“Oh, you needn’t blame him too much,” said Kitty, proudly, not understanding the remark.  “He wrote to me not long ago to say it was horribly unwise—­and that he washed his hands of it.”

“Ay—­when he’d done the deed!  When did you show it him?” said Ashe, impetuously.

“At Haggart—­in August.”

“Et tu, Brute!” said Ashe, turning away.  “Well, that’s done with.  Now the only thing to do is to face the music.  I go home.  Whatever can be done to withdraw the book from circulation I shall, of course, do; but I gather from this precious letter”—­he held up the note which had been enclosed in the parcel—­“that some thousands of copies have already been ordered by the booksellers, and a few distributed to ’persons in high places.’”

“William,” she said, in despair, catching his arm again—­“listen!  I offered the man two hundred pounds only yesterday to stop it.”

Ashe laughed.

“What did he reply?”

“He said it was impossible.  Fifty copies had been already issued.”

“The review copies, no doubt.  By next week there will be, I should say, five thousand in the shops.  Your man understands his business, Kitty.  This is the kind of puff preliminary he has been scattering about.”

And with sparkling eyes he handed to her a printed slip containing an outline of the book for the information of the booksellers.

It drew attention to the extraordinary interest of the production as a painting of the upper class by the hand of one belonging to its inmost circle.  “People of the highest social and political importance will be recognized at once; the writer handles cabinet ministers and their wives with equal freedom, and with a touch betraying the closest and most intimate knowledge.  Details hitherto quite unknown to the public of ministerial combinations and intrigues—­especially