"True--as to the facts--so far as I know. As to the date, Lord Crashaw knows, I think, no more than I do. It may be this week, it may be next month." "Then I hear--thank goodness I never see her," Elizabeth went on, reluctantly--"that that dreadful woman, Lady Parham, is more infuriated than ever--" "With Kitty? Let her be! It really doesn't matter an old shoe, either to Kitty or me." "She can be a most bitter enemy, William. And she certainly influences Lord Parham." Ashe smoked and smiled. Lady Tranmore saw that his pride, too, had been aroused, and that here he was likely to prove as obstinate as Kitty. "I wish I could get her out of my mind!" she sighed. Ashe glanced at her kindly. "I daresay we shall hold our own. Xanthippe is not beloved, and I don't believe Parham will let her interfere with what he thinks best for the party. Will it pay to put me in the cabinet or not?--that's what he'll ask. I shall be strongly backed, too, by most of our papers." A number of thoughts ran through Lady Tranmore's brain. With her long experience of London, she knew well what the sudden lowering of a man's "consideration"--to use a French word--at a critical moment may mean. A cooling of the general regard--a breath of detraction coming no one knows whence--and how soon new claims emerge, and the indispensable of yesterday becomes the negligible of to-day! But even if she could have brought herself to put any of these anxieties into words, she had no opportunity. Kitty's voice was in the hall; the handle turned, and she ran in. "William! Ah!--I didn't know mother was here." She went up to Elizabeth, and lightly kissed that lady's cheek. "Good-morning. William, I just came to tell you that I may be late for dinner, so perhaps you had better dine at the House. I am going on the river." "Are you?" said Ashe, gathering up his papers. "Wish I was." "Are you going with the Crashaw's party?" asked Elizabeth. "I know they have one." "Oh, dear, no!" said Kitty. "I hate a crowd on the river. I am going with Geoffrey Cliffe." Ashe bent over his desk. Lady Tranmore's eyebrows went up, and she could not restrain the word: "Alone?" "_Naturellement_!" laughed Kitty. "He reads me French poetry, and we talk French. We let Madeleine Alcot come once, but her accent was so shocking that Geoffrey wouldn't have her again!" Lady Tranmore flushed deeply. The "Geoffrey" seemed to her intolerable. Kitty, arrayed in the freshest of white gowns, walked away to the farther end of the library to consult a _Bradshaw_. Elizabeth, looking up, caught her son's eyes--and the mingled humor and vexation in them, wherewith he appealed to her, as it were, to see the whole silly business as he himself did. Lady Tranmore felt a moment's strong reaction. Had she indeed been making a foolish fuss about nothing?