Nevertheless he rarely missed a chance of conversation with William Ashe, not because the younger man, in spite of his past indolence, was generally held to be both able and accomplished, but because the elder found in him an invincible taste for men and women, their fortunes, oddities, catastrophes—­especially the latter—­similar to his own.

Like Mary Lyster, both were good gossips; but of a much more disinterested type than she.  Women indeed as gossips are too apt to pursue either the damnation of some one else or the apotheosis of themselves.  But here the stupider no less than the abler man showed a certain broad detachment not very common in women—­amused by the human comedy itself, making no profit out of it, either for themselves or morals, but asking only that the play should go on.

The incident, or rather the heroine of the evening, had given Lord Grosville a topic which in the case of William Ashe he saw no reason for avoiding; and in the peace of the smoking-room, when he was no longer either hungry for his dinner or worried by his responsibilities as host, he fell upon his wife’s family, and, as though he had been the manager of a puppet-show, unpacked the whole box of them for Ashe’s entertainment.

Figure after figure emerged, one more besmirched than another, till finally the most beflecked of all was shaken out and displayed—­Lady Grosville’s brother and Kitty’s father, the late Lord Blackwater.  And on this occasion Ashe did not try to escape the story which was thus a second time brought across him.  Lord Grosville, if he pleased, had a right to tell it, and there was now a curious feeling in Ashe’s mind which had been entirely absent before, that he had, in some sort, a right to hear it.

Briefly, the outlines of it fell into something like this shape:  Henry, fifth Earl of Blackwater, had begun life as an Irish peer, with more money than the majority of his class; an initial advantage soon undone by an insane and unscrupulous extravagance.  He was, however, a fine, handsome, voracious gentleman, born to prey upon his kind, and when he looked for an heiress he was not long in finding her.  His first wife, a very rich woman, bore him one daughter.  Before the daughter was three years old, Lord Blackwater had developed a sturdy hatred of the mother, chiefly because she failed to present him with a son; and he could not even appease himself by the free spending of her money, which, so far as the capital was concerned, was sharply looked after by a pair of trustees, Belfast manufacturers and Presbyterians, to whom the Blackwater type was not at all congenial.

These restrictions presently wore out Lord Blackwater’s patience.  He left his wife, with a small allowance, to bring up her daughter in one of his Irish houses, while he generously spent the rest of her large income, and his own, and a great deal besides, in London and on the Continent.

Lady Blackwater, however, was not long before she obliged him by dying.  Her girl, then twelve years old, lived for a time with one of her mother’s trustees.  But when she had reached the age of seventeen her father suddenly commanded her presence in Paris, that she might make acquaintance with his second wife.