VIII

Meanwhile Lady Tranmore had reached home, and after one of those pathetic hours in her husband’s room which made the secret and sacred foundation of her daily life, she expected Mary Lyster, who was to dine at Tranmore House before the two ladies presented themselves at a musical party given by the French Ambassadress.  Before her guest’s arrival, Lady Tranmore wandered about her rooms, unable to rest, unable even to read the evening papers on Ashe’s speech, so possessed was she still by her altercation with Kitty, and by the foreboding sense of what it meant.  William’s future was threatened; and the mother whose whole proud heart had been thrown for years into every successful effort and every upward step of her son, was up in arms.

Mary Lyster arrived to the minute.  She came in, a tall gliding woman, her hair falling in rippled waves on either side of her face, which in its ample comeliness and placidity reminded the Italianate Lady Tranmore of many faces well known to her in early Siennese or Florentine art.  Mary’s dress to-night was of a noble red, and the glossy brown of her hair made a harmony both with her dress and with the whiteness of her neck that contented the fastidious eye of her companion.  “Polly” was now thirty, in the prime of her good looks.  Lady Tranmore’s affection for her, which had at one time even included the notion that she might possibly become William Ashe’s wife, did not at all interfere with a shrewd understanding of her limitations.  But she was daughterless herself; her family feeling was strong; and Mary’s society was an old and pleasant habit one could ill have parted with.  In her company, moreover, Mary was at her best.

Elizabeth Tranmore never discussed her daughter-in-law with her cousin.  Loyalty to William forbade it, no less than a strong sense of family dignity.  For Mary had spoken once—­immediately after the engagement—­with energy—­nay, with passion; prophesying woe and calamity.  Thenceforward it was tacitly agreed between them that all root-and-branch criticism of Kitty and her ways was taboo.  Mary was, indeed, on apparently good terms with her cousin’s wife.  She dined occasionally at the Ashes’, and she and Kitty met frequently under the wing of Lady Tranmore.  There was no cordiality between them, and Kitty was often sharply or sulkily certain that Mary was to be counted among those hostile forces with which, in some of her moods, the world seemed to her to bristle.  But if Mary kept, in truth, a very sharp tongue for many of her intimates on the subject of Kitty, Lady Tranmore at least was determined to know nothing about it.

On this particular evening, however, Lady Tranmore’s self-control failed her, for the first time in three years.  She had not talked five minutes with her guest before she perceived that Mary’s mind was, in truth, brimful of gossip—­the gossip of many drawing-rooms—­as to Kitty’s escapade with the Prince, Kitty’s relations to Lady Partham, Kitty’s parties, and Kitty’s whims.  The temptation was too great; her own guard broke down.