“That was before last week.”

“Before Lord Parham said—­what annoyed you?”

Kitty’s eyes flamed.

“Before Lord Parham humiliated me in public—­or tried to.”

“Dear Kitty, he was annoyed, and said a sharp thing; but he is an old man, and for William’s sake, surely, you can forgive it.  And Lady Parham had nothing to do with it.”

“She has not written to me to apologize,” said Kitty, with a most venomous calm.  “Don’t talk about it, mother.  It will hurt you, and I am determined.  Lady Parham has patronized or snubbed me ever since I married—­when she hasn’t been setting my best friends against me.  She is false, false, false!” Kitty struck her hands together with an emphatic gesture.  “And Lord Parham said a thing to me last week I shall never forgive.  Voila!  Now I mean to have done with it!”

“And you choose to forget altogether that Lord Parham is William’s political chief—­that William’s affairs are in a critical state, and everything depends on Lord Parham—­that it is not seemly, not possible, that William’s wife should publicly slight Lady Parham, and through her the Prime Minister—­at this moment of all moments.”

Lady Tranmore breathed fast.

“William will not expect me to put up with insults,” said Kitty, also beginning to show emotion.

“But can’t you see that—­just now especially—­you ought to think of nothing—­nothing—­but William’s future and William’s career?”

“William will never purchase his career at my expense.”

“Kitty, dear, listen,” cried Lady Tranmore, in despair, and she threw herself into arguments and appeals to which Kitty listened quite unmoved for some twenty minutes.  Margaret French, feeling herself an uncomfortable third, tried several times to steal away.  In vain.  Kitty’s peremptory hand retained her.  She could not escape, much as she wished it, from the wrestle between the two women—­on the one side the mother, noble, already touched with age, full of dignity and protesting affection; on the other the wife, still little more than a child in years, vibrating through all her slender frame with passion and insolence, more beautiful than usual by virtue of the very fire which possessed her—­a maenad at bay.

Lady Tranmore had just begun to waver in a final despair when the door opened and William Ashe entered.

He looked in astonishment at his mother and wife.  Then in a flash he understood, and, with an involuntary gesture of fatigue, he turned to go.

“William!” cried his mother, hurrying after him, “don’t go.  Kitty and I were disputing; but it is nothing, dear!  Don’t go, you look so tired.  Can you stay for dinner?”

“Well, that was my intention,” said Ashe, with a smile, as he allowed himself to be brought back.  “But Kitty seems in the clouds.”

For Kitty had not moved an inch to greet him.  She sat in a high-back chair, one foot crossed over the other, one hand supporting her cheek, looking straight before her with shining eyes.