But he said nothing, and Kitty avoided his
neighborhood. Meanwhile, between him and his mother a certain tacit
understanding began to make itself felt. They talked quietly, in
corners, of the arrangements for the speech and fete of the morrow. So
far, they had been too much left to Kitty. Ashe promised his mother to
look into them. He and she combined for the protection of Lord Parham.
When about one o'clock Ashe went to bed, Kitty either was or pretended
to be fast asleep. The room was in darkness save for the faint
illumination of a night-light, which just revealed to Ashe the delicate
figure of his wife, lying high on her pillows, her cheek and brow hidden
in the confusion of her hair.
One window was wide open to the night, and once more Ashe stood lost in
"recollection" beside it, as on that night in Hill Street, more than a
year before. But the thoughts which on that former occasion had been
still as tragic and unfamiliar guests in a mind that repelled them had
now, alack, lost their strangeness; they entered habitually,
unannounced--frequent, irritating, deplorable.
Had the relation between himself and Kitty ever, in truth, recovered the
shock of that incident on the river--of his night of restlessness, his
morning of agonized alarm, and the story to which he listened on her
return? It had been like some physical blow or wound, easily healed or
conquered for the moment, which then, as time goes on, reveals a hidden
series of consequences.
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