Mary’s bright, involuntary smile transformed her.  Ashe sat down beside her, and they were soon deep in all sorts of gossip—­relations, acquaintance, politics, and what not.  All Mary’s stiffness disappeared.  She became the elegant, agreeable woman, of whom dinner-parties were glad.  Ashe plunged into the pleasant malice of her talk, which ranged through the good and evil fortunes—­mostly the latter—­of half his acquaintance; discussed the debts, the love-affairs, and the follies of his political colleagues or Parliamentary foes; how the Foreign Secretary had been getting on at Balmoral—­how so-and-so had been ruined at the Derby and restored to sanity and solvency by the Oaks—­how Lady Parham, at Hatfield, had been made to know her place by the French Ambassador—­and the like; passing thereby a charming half-hour.

Meanwhile Kitty, Margaret French, and Sir Richard kept up intermittent remarks, pausing at every other phrase to gather the crumbs that fell from the table of the other two.

Kitty was very weary, and a dead weight had fallen on her spirits.  If Sir Richard had thought her bad form ten minutes before, his unspoken mind now declared her stupid.  Meanwhile Kitty was saying to herself, as she watched her husband and Mary: 

“I used to amuse William just as well—­last year!”

When the door closed on them, Kitty fell back on her cushions with an “ouf!” of relief.  William came back in a few minutes from showing the visitors the back way to their hotel, and stood beside his wife with an anxious face.

“They were too much for you, darling.  They stayed too long.”

“How you and Mary chattered!” said Kitty, with a little pout.  But at the same moment she slipped an appealing hand into his.

Ashe clasped the hand, and laughed.

“I always told you she was an excellent gossip.”

* * * * *

Sir Richard and Mary pursued their way through the narrow calles that led to the Piazza.  Sir Richard was expatiating on Ashe’s folly in marrying such a wife.

“She looks like an actress!—­and as to her conversation, she began by telling me outrageous stories and ended by not having a word to say about anything.  The bad blood of the Bristols, it seems to me, without their brains.”

“Oh no, papa!  Kitty is very clever.  You haven’t heard her recite.  She was tired to-night.”

“Well, I don’t want to flatter you, my dear!” said the old man, testily, “but I thought it was pathetic—­the way in which Ashe enjoyed your conversation.  It showed he didn’t get much of it at home.”

Mary smiled uncertainly.  Her whole nature was still aglow from that contact with Ashe’s delightful personality.  After months of depression and humiliation, her success with him had somehow restored those illusions on which cheerfulness depends.

How ill Kitty looked—­and how conscious!  Mary was impetuously certain that Kitty had betrayed her knowledge of Cliffe’s presence in Venice; and equally certain that William knew nothing.  Poor William!