"But then"--she resumed--"I thought you'd soon get over it, and that it was funny--and everybody would laugh--and you'd laugh--and there would be an end of it." He turned and stared at her. "Frankly, Kitty--I don't understand what you can be made of! You imagined that that sketch of Lord Parham"--he struck the open page--"a sketch written by _my wife_, describing my official chief--when he was my guest--under my own roof--with all sorts of details of the most intimate and offensive kind--mocking his speech--his manners--his little personal ways--charging him with being the corrupt tool of Lady Parham, disloyal to his colleagues, a man not to be trusted--and justifying all this by a sort of evidence that you could only have got as my wife and Lord Parham's hostess--you actually supposed that you could write and publish _that!_--without in the first place its being plain to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that you had written it--and in the next, without making it impossible for your husband to remain a colleague of the man you had treated in such a way? Kitty!--you are not a stupid woman! Do you really mean to say that you could write and publish this book without _knowing_ that you were doing a wrong action--which, so far from serving me, could only damage my career irreparably? Did nothing--did no one warn you--if you were determined to keep such a secret from your husband, whom it most concerned?" He had come to stand beside her, both hands on the back of a chair--stooping forward to emphasize his words--the lines of his fine face and noble brow contracted by anger and pain. "Mr. Darrell warned me," said Kitty, in a low voice, as though those imperious eyes compelled the truth from her--"but of course I didn't believe him." "Darrell!" cried Ashe, in amazement--"Darrell! You confided in him?" "I told him all about it. It was he who took it to a publisher." "Hound!" said Ashe, between his teeth. "So that was his revenge." "Oh, you needn't blame him too much," said Kitty, proudly, not understanding the remark. "He wrote to me not long ago to say it was horribly unwise--and that he washed his hands of it." "Ay--when he'd done the deed! When did you show it him?" said Ashe, impetuously. "At Haggart--in August." "_Et tu, Brute!_" said Ashe, turning away. "Well, that's done with. Now the only thing to do is to face the music. I go home. Whatever can be done to withdraw the book from circulation I shall, of course, do; but I gather from this precious letter"--he held up the note which had been enclosed in the parcel--"that some thousands of copies have already been ordered by the booksellers, and a few distributed to 'persons in high places.'" "William," she said, in despair, catching his arm again--"listen! I offered the man two hundred pounds only yesterday to stop it." Ashe laughed. "What did he reply?" "He said it was impossible. Fifty copies had been already issued."