For who that had known her could think of such a being,
alone, in a world of strangers, without a peculiar dread and anguish?
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. But he was met by their solemn promise to Kitty to
keep her secret inviolate. Madame d'Estrees supplied him with the name
of the convent in which Kitty had been brought up; but the mother
superior denied all knowledge of her. Meanwhile no course of action on
Kitty's part could have restored her so effectually to her place in
Ashe's imagination. She haunted his days and nights. So also did his
memory of the Dean's petition. Insensibly, without argument, the whole
attitude of his mind thereto had broken down; since he had been out of
office, and his days and nights were no longer absorbed in the detail of
administration and Parliamentary leadership, he had been the defenceless
prey of grief; yearning and pity and agonized regret, rising from the
deep subconscious self, had overpowered his first recoil and
determination; and in the absence of all other passionate hope, the one
desire and dream which still lived warm and throbbing at his heart was
the dream that still in some crowd, or loneliness, he might again,
before it was too late, see Kitty's face and the wildness of Kitty's
eyes.
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