"Well done, Kitty!" Ashe, who sat opposite to her, stretched his hand
across, and patted hers.
"Does she love him?" Cliffe asked himself, and could not make up his
mind, closely as he tried to observe their relations. He was more and
more conscious of the exciting effect she produced on himself, doubly
so, indeed, because of that sudden stroke of melancholy wherewith--like
a Rembrandt shadow, she had thrown into relief the gayety and frivolity
of her ordinary mood.
The stimulus, whatever it was, played upon his vanity. He, too, sought
an opening and found it. Soon it was he who was monopolizing the
conversation with an account of two days spent with Bismarck in a
Prussian country-house, during the triumphant days of the winter which
followed on Sadowa. The story was brilliantly told, and of some
political importance. But it was disfigured by arrogance and
affectation, and Ashe's eyes began to dance a little. Cliffe meanwhile
could not forget that he was in the presence of a rival and an official,
could not refrain after a while from a note of challenge here and there.
The conversation diverged from the tale into matters of current foreign
politics.
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