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So that before they knew they were in the midst of the most burning subjects of human discussion at first in a manner comparatively veiled and general, then with the sharpest personal reference to Cliffe's own story, as the intimacy between them grew.
Cliffe's expression showed the sarcasm of his thought. Fairy, perhaps! with the touch of malice and inhuman mischief that all tradition attributes to the little people. Why, after that first meeting, when the conversation of a few minutes had almost swept them into the deepest waters of intimacy, had she slighted him so, in other drawing-rooms and on other occasions?
To be praised by him was disaster, and Cliffe's flush showed at once that the letter had caused him acute annoyance. He and Ashe fell upon the writer, vying with each other in anecdotes that left him presently close-plucked and bare. "That's all very well," said Kitty, amid the laughter which greeted the last tale, "but he never told you how he proposed to the second Lady S."
Where shall we sit it out?" Ashe moved at once. Mary looked up, hesitated visibly, then rose and took Geoffrey Cliffe's arm. "Just read your remarks this evening," said Cliffe to Ashe. "Well, now, I suppose to-morrow will see your ship in port?" For it was reasonably expected that the morrow would see the American agreement ratified by a substantial ministerial majority. "Certainly.
Phyllis Gedge sent me a few bunches of violets with a shy little note. Lady Fenimore wrote me an affectionate letter bidding me farewell. They were going to Bude in Cornwall, Anthony having put himself under Dr. Cliffe's orders like a wonderful lamb. When she came back, she hoped that her two sick men would be restored to health and able to look more favourably upon her projected dinner party.
That she was alive he knew, for her five hundred a year and she had never accepted another penny from him since her flight was still drawn on her behalf by a banking firm in Paris. His solicitors, since the failure of their first efforts to trace her after Cliffe's death, had made repeated inquiries; Ashe had himself gone to Paris to see the bankers in question.
He waits on life, following where it leads, rejoicing in each new feeling, each fresh reaction of consciousness on experience, and so links his fatalist belief to that Nietzsche doctrine of self-development at all costs, and the coming man, in which Cliffe's thought anticipated the years.
For a gesture of command on Cliffe's part, unseen by her, had sent the boat eastward, spinning before the wind. The lagoon was no longer tranquil. It was covered with small waves; and the roar of the outer sea, though still far off, was already in their ears.
"As much as a friend cares to know?" She nodded, flushing, and dropped the subject. Cliffe's mouth still smiled, but his eyes studied her with a veiled and sinister intensity. "I have not seen the lady for a week," he resumed. "She pesters me with notes. I promised to go and see her in a new play to-morrow night, but " "Oh, go!" said Kitty "by all means go!" "'Ruy Blas' in Italian? I think not.
But they made daily life a sordid, unlovely thing, and they gave Kitty an excuse for saying that William was as violent as herself, and for seeking refuge in the exaltations of feeling or of fancy provided by Cliffe's companionship. Perhaps of all the persons in the drama, Lady Tranmore was the most to be pitied.
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