Mary Lyster, who had been perfunctorily looking at a book, laid it down.
"It would certainly greatly distress Lady Grosville," she said, in a voice studiously soft, but on that account perhaps all the more significant.
Kitty glanced at Mary, and Ashe saw the sudden red in her cheek. She turned provokingly to Cliffe. "There's quite half an hour, isn't there, before one need dress—"
"More," said Cliffe. "Come along."
And he made for the door, which he held open for her. It was now Mary Lyster's turn to flush—the rebuff had been so naked and unadorned. Ashe rose as Kitty passed him.
"Why don't you come, too?" she said, pausing. There was a flash from eyes deep and dark beneath a pair of wilful brows. "Aunt Lina would never be cross with you!"
"Thank you! I should be delighted to play buffer, but unfortunately I have some work I must do before dinner."
"Must you?" She looked at him uncertainly, then at Cliffe. In the dusk of the large, heavily furnished room the pale yet brilliant gold of her hair, her white dress, her slim energy and elegance, drew all their eyes—even Mary Lyster's.
"I must," Ashe repeated, smiling. "I am glad your headache is so much better."
"It is not in the least better!"
"Then you disguise it like a heroine."
He stood beside her, looking down upon her, his height and strength measured against her smallness. Apparently his amused detachment, the slight dryness of his tone, annoyed her. She made a tart reply and vanished through the door that Cliffe held open for her.
Ashe retired to his own room, dealt with some Foreign Office work, and then allowed himself a meditative smoke. The click of the billiard-balls had ceased abruptly about ten minutes after he had begun upon his papers; there had been voices in the hall, Lord Grosville's, he thought, amongst them; and now all was silence.
He thought of the events of the afternoon with mingled amusement and annoyance. Cliffe was an unscrupulous fellow, and the child's head might be turned. She should be protected from him in future—he vowed she should. Lady Tranmore should take it in hand. She had been a match for Cliffe in various other directions before this.
What brought the man, with his notorious character and antecedents, to Grosville Park—one of the dwindling number of country houses in England where the old Puritan restrictions still held? It was said he was on the lookout for a post—Ashe indeed happened to know it officially; and Lord Grosville had a good deal of influence. Moreover, failing an appointment, he was understood to be aiming at Parliament and office; and there were two safe county seats within the Grosville sphere.
"Yet even when he wants a thing he can't behave himself in order to get it," thought Ashe. "Anybody else would have turned Sabbatarian for once, and refrained from flirting with the Grosvilles' niece. But that's Cliffe all over—and perhaps the best thing about him."
He might have added that as Cliffe was supposed to desire an appointment under either the Foreign Office or the Colonial Office, it might have been thought to his interest to show himself more urbane than he had in fact shown himself that afternoon to the new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. But Ashe rarely or never indulged himself in reflections of that kind. Besides, he and Cliffe knew each other too well for posing. There was a time when they had been on very friendly terms, and when Cliffe had been constantly in his mother's drawing-room. Lady Tranmore had a weakness for "influencing" young men of family and ability; and Cliffe in fact owed her a good deal. Then she had seen cause to think ill of him; and moreover his travels had taken him to the other side of the world. Ashe was now well aware that Cliffe reckoned on him as a hostile influence, and would not try either to deceive or to propitiate him.
He thought Cliffe had been disagreeably surprised to see him that afternoon. Perhaps it was the sudden sense of antagonism acting on the man's excitable nature that had made him fling himself into the wild nonsense he had talked with Lady Kitty!
And thenceforward Ashe's thoughts
