“I hear Kitty is furious with the Parhams,” said Mary, as the two ladies sat together after their rapid dinner.  It was a rainy night, and the fire to which they had drawn up was welcome.

Lady Tranmore shook her head sadly.

“I don’t know where it is to end,” she said, slowly.

“Lady Parham told me yesterday—­you don’t mind my repeating it?”—­Mary looked up with a smile—­“she was still dreadfully afraid that Kitty would play her some trick about next Friday.  She knows that Kitty detests her.”

“Oh no,” said Lady Tranmore, in a vague voice, “Kitty couldn’t—­impossible!”

Mary turned an observant eye upon her companion’s conscious and troubled air, and drew conclusions not far from the truth.

“And it’s all so awkward, isn’t it?” she said, with sympathy, “when apparently Lady Parham is as much Prime Minister as he is.”

For in those days certain great houses and political ladies, though not at the zenith of their power, were still, in their comparative decline, very much to be reckoned with.  When Lady Parham talked longer than usual with the French Ambassador, his Austrian and German colleagues wrote anxious despatches to their governments; when a special mission to the East of great importance had to be arranged, nobody imagined that Lord Parham had very much to do with the appointment of the commissioner, who happened to have just engaged himself to Lady Parham’s second girl.  No young member on the government side, if he wanted office, neglected Lady Parham’s invitations, and admission to her more intimate dinners was still almost as much coveted as similar favors had been a generation before in the case of Lady Jersey, or still earlier, in that of Lady Holland.  She was a small old woman, with a shrewish face, a waxen complexion, and a brown wig.  In spite of short sight, she saw things that escaped most other people; her tongue was rarely at a loss; she was, on the whole, a good friend, though never an unreflecting one; and what she forgave might be safely reckoned as not worth resenting.

Elizabeth Tranmore received Mary’s remark with reluctant consent.  Lady Parham—­from the English aristocratic stand-point—­was not well-born.  She had been the daughter of a fashionable music-master, whose blood was certainly not Christian.  And there were many people beside Lady Tranmore who resented her domination.

“It will be so perfectly easy when the moment comes to invent some excuse or other for shelving William’s claims,” sighed Ashe’s mother.  “Nobody is indispensable, and if that old woman is provoked, she will be capable of any mischief.”

“What do you want for William?” said Mary, smiling.

“He ought, of course, to have the Home Office!” replied Lady Tranmore, with fire.

Mary vowed that he would certainly have it.  “Kitty is so clever, she will understand how important discretion is, before things go too far.”