Ashe turned back to the carriage, bidding a silent farewell to a country
he did not love--a country mainly significant to him of memories which
rose like a harsh barrier between his present self and a time when he,
too, fleeted life carelessly, like other men, and found every hour
delightful. Never, as long as he lived, should he come willingly to
Italy. But his mother this year had fallen into such an exhaustion of
body and mind, caused by his father's long agony, that he had persuaded
her to let him carry her over the Alps to Stresa--a place she had known
as a girl and of which she often spoke--for a Whitsuntide holiday. He
himself was no longer in office. A coalition between the Tories and
certain dissident Liberals had turned out Lord Parham's government in
the course of a stormy autumn session, some eight months before. It had
been succeeded by a weak administration, resting on two or three loosely
knit groups--with Ashe as leader of the Opposition. Hence his
comparative freedom, and the chance to be his mother's escort.
But at Stresa he had been overtaken by some startling political
news--news which seemed to foreshadow an almost immediate change of
ministry; and urgent telegrams bade him return at once.
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