Half-way through the luncheon, Ashe came in.  He appeared, fresh and smiling, irreproachably dressed, and showing no trace whatever of the hard morning of official work he had just passed through, nor of the many embarrassments which, as every one knew, were weighing on the Foreign Office.  The Dean, with his keen sense for the dramatic, watched the meeting between him and Cliffe with some closeness, having in mind the almost personal duel between the two men—­a duel of letters, telegrams, or speeches, which had been lately carried on in the sight of Europe and America.  For Ashe now represented the Foreign Office in the House of Commons, and had been much badgered by the Tory extremists who followed Cliffe.

Naturally, being Englishmen, they met as though nothing had happened and they had parted the day before in Pall Mall.  A “Hullo, Ashe!” and “Hullo, Cliffe! glad to see you back again,” completed the matter.  The Dean enjoyed it as a specimen of English “phlegm,” recalling with amusement his last visit to the Paris of the Second Empire—­Paris torn between government and opposition, the salons of the one divided from the salons of the other by a sulphurous gulf, unless when some Lazarus of the moment, some well-known novelist or poet, cradled in the Abraham’s bosom of Liberalism, passed amid shrieks of triumph or howls of treason into the official inferno.

Not that there was any avoiding of topics in this English case.  Ashe had no sooner slipped into his seat than he began to banter Cliffe upon a letter of a supporter which had appeared in that morning’s Times.  It was written by Lord S., who had played the part of public “fool” for half a generation.  To be praised by him was disaster, and Cliffe’s flush showed at once that the letter had caused him acute annoyance.  He and Ashe fell upon the writer, vying with each other in anecdotes that left him presently close-plucked and bare.

“That’s all very well,” said Kitty, amid the laughter which greeted the last tale, “but he never told you how he proposed to the second Lady S.”

And lifting a red strawberry, which she held poised against her red, laughing lips, she waited a moment—­looking round her.  “Go on, Kitty,” said Ashe, approvingly; “go on.”

Thus permitted, Kitty gave one of the little “scenes,” arranged from some experience of her own, which were very famous among her intimates.  Ashe called them her “parlor tricks,” and was never tired of making her exhibit them.  And now, just as at Grosville Park, she held her audience.  She spoke without a halt, her small features answering perfectly to every impulse of her talent, each touch of character or dialogue as telling as a malicious sense of comedy could make it; arms, hands, shoulders all aiding in the final result—­a table swept by a very storm of laughter, in the midst of which Kitty quietly finished her strawberry.

“Well done, Kitty!” Ashe, who sat opposite to her, stretched his hand across, and patted hers.