Darrell shrugged his shoulders.

“These domesticities should be kept out of sight, don’t you think?”

Madeleine Alcot looked at him curiously.

“Did you have a pleasant walk?” she said.

Darrell made a little face.

“The great man was condescending.”

Madeleine Alcot’s face was still interrogative.

“A touch of the folie des grandeurs?”

“Well, who escapes it?” said Darrell, bitterly.

* * * * *

Most of the party had dispersed.  Only Lady Tranmore and Margaret French were on the lawn.  Margaret was writing some household notes for Kitty; Lady Tranmore sat in meditation, with a book before her which she was not reading.  Miss French glanced at her from time to time.  Ashe’s mother was beginning to show the weight of years far more plainly than she had yet done.  In these last three years the face had perceptibly altered; so had the hair.  The long strain of nursing, and that pathetic change which makes of the husband who has been a woman’s pride and shelter her half-conscious dependent, had, no doubt, left deep marks upon a beauty which had so long resisted time.  And yet Margaret French believed it was rather with her son than with her husband that the constant and wearing anxiety of Lady Tranmore’s life should be connected.  All the ambition, the pride of race and history which had been disappointed in her husband had poured themselves into her devotion to her son.  She lived now for his happiness and success.  And both were constantly threatened by the personality and the presence of Kitty.

Such, at least, as Margaret French well knew, was the inmost persuasion—­fast becoming a fanaticism—­of Ashe’s mother.  William might, indeed, for the moment have triumphed over the consequences of Kitty’s bygone behavior.  But the reckless, untamed character was there still at his side, preparing Heaven knew what pitfalls and catastrophes.  Lady Tranmore lived in fear.  And under the outward sweetness and dignity of her manner was there not developing something worse than fear—­that hatred which is one of the strange births of love?

If so, was it just?  There were many moments when Margaret would have indignantly denied it.

It was true, indeed, that Kitty’s eccentricity seemed to develop with every month that passed.  The preceding winter had been marked, first by a mad folly of table-turning—­involving the pursuit of a particular medium whose proceedings had ultimately landed him in the dock; then by a headlong passion for hunting, accompanied by a series of new flirtations, each more unseemly than its predecessor, as it seemed to Lady Tranmore.  Afterwards—­during the general election—­a political phase!  Kitty had most unfortunately discovered that she could speak in public, and had fallen in love with the sound of her own voice.  In Ashe’s own contest, her sallies and indiscretions had already begun to do mischief when Lady Tranmore had succeeded in enticing her to London by the bait of a French clairvoyante, with whom Kitty nightly tempted the gods who keep watch over the secrets of fate—­till William’s poll had been declared.