Kitty sat up with revived energy, and joined battle.  She flew into a tirade as to the dulness and routine of English life, the stupidity of good people, and the tyranny of English hypocrisy.  The Dean listened with amusement, then with a shade of something else.  At last he got up to go.

“Well, you know, we have heard all that before.  My point of view is so much more interesting—­subtle—­romantic!  Anybody can attack Mrs. Grundy, but only a person of originality can adore her.  Try it, Lady Kitty.  It would be really worth your while.”

Kitty mocked and exclaimed.

“Do you know what that phrase—­that name of abomination—­always recalls to me?” pursued the old man.

“It bores me, even to guess,” was Kitty’s petulant reply.

“Does it?  I think of some of the noblest people I have ever known—­brave men—­beautiful women—­who fought Mrs. Grundy, and perished.”

The Dean stood looking down upon her, with an eager, sensitive expression.  Tales that he had heeded very little when he had first heard them ran through his mind; he had thought Lady Kitty’s intimate tete-a-tete with her husband’s assailant in the press disagreeable and unseemly; and as for Mrs. Alcot, he had disliked her particularly.

Kitty looked up unquelled.

     “’’Tis better to have fought and lost
     Than never to have fought at all—­’”

she quoted, with one of her most radiant and provoking smiles.

“Incorrigible!” cried the Dean, catching up his hat.  “I see!  Once an Archangel—­always an Archangel.”

“Oh no!” said Kitty.  “There may be ‘war in heaven.’”

“Well, don’t take Mrs. Alcot for a leader, that’s all,” said the Dean, as he held out a hand of farewell.

“And now I understand!” cried Kitty, triumphantly.  “You detest my best friend.”

The Dean laughed, protested, and went.  Ashe, who had been writing letters while Kitty and the Dean were talking, escorted the old man to the door.

* * * * *

When he returned he found Kitty sitting with her hands in her lap, lost apparently in thought.

“Darling,” he said, looking at his watch, “I must be off directly, but I should like to see the boy.”

Kitty started.  She rang, and the child was brought down.  He sat on Kitty’s knee, and Ashe coming to the sofa, threw an arm round them both.

“You are not a bad-looking pair,” he said, kissing first Kitty and then the baby.  “But he’s rather pale, Kitty.  I think he wants the country.”

Kitty said nothing, but she lifted the little white embroidered frock and looked at the twisted foot.  Then Ashe felt her shudder.

“Dear, don’t be morbid!” he cried, resentfully.  “He will have so much brains that nobody will remember that.  Think of Byron.”

Kitty did not seem to have heard.

“I remember so well when I first saw his foot—­after your mother told me—­and they brought him to me,” she said, slowly.  “It seemed to me it was the end—­”