“Does she love him?” Cliffe asked himself, and could not make up his mind, closely as he tried to observe their relations.  He was more and more conscious of the exciting effect she produced on himself, doubly so, indeed, because of that sudden stroke of melancholy wherewith—­like a Rembrandt shadow, she had thrown into relief the gayety and frivolity of her ordinary mood.

The stimulus, whatever it was, played upon his vanity.  He, too, sought an opening and found it.  Soon it was he who was monopolizing the conversation with an account of two days spent with Bismarck in a Prussian country-house, during the triumphant days of the winter which followed on Sadowa.  The story was brilliantly told, and of some political importance.  But it was disfigured by arrogance and affectation, and Ashe’s eyes began to dance a little.  Cliffe meanwhile could not forget that he was in the presence of a rival and an official, could not refrain after a while from a note of challenge here and there.  The conversation diverged from the tale into matters of current foreign politics.  Ashe, lounging and smoking, at first knew nothing, had heard of nothing, as usual.  Then a comment or correction dropped out; Cliffe repeated himself vehemently—­only to provoke another.  Presently, no one knew how, the two men were measured against each other corps a corps—­the wide knowledge and trained experience of the minister against the originality, the force, the fantastic imagination of the writer.

The Dean watched it with delight.  He was very fond of Ashe, and liked to see him getting the better of “the newspaper fellow.”  Kitty’s lovely brown eyes travelled from one to the other.  Now it seemed to the Dean that she was proud of Ashe, now that she sympathized with Cliffe.  Soon, however, like the god at Philippi, she swept upon the poet and bore him from the field.

“Not a word more politics!” she said, peremptorily, to Ashe, holding up her hand. “I want to talk to Mr. Cliffe about the ball.”

Cliffe was not very ready to obey.  He had an angry sense of having been somehow shown to disadvantage, and would like to have challenged his host again.  But Kitty poured balm into his wounds.  She drew him apart a little, using the play of her beautiful eyes for him only, and talking to him in a new voice of deference.

“You’re going, of course?  Lady M. told me the other day she must have you.”

Cliffe, still a little morose, replied that his invitation had been waiting for him at his London rooms.  He gave the information carelessly, as though it did not matter to him a straw.  In reality, as soon as, while still in America, he had seen the announcement of the bail in one of the New York papers, he had written at once to the Marchioness who was to give it—­an old acquaintance of his—­practically demanding an invitation.  It had been sent indeed with alacrity, and without waiting for its arrival Cliffe had ordered his dress in Paris.  Kitty inquired what it was to be.