The Marriage of William Ashe

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Excerpt from book: PART V REQ.UIESCAT " Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens, Dusk the hall with yew " XXIII "TTOW strange " thought the Dean, as he once more 11 stepped back into the street to look at the front of the Home Secretary's house in Hill Street. "He is certainly in town." For, according to the Times, William Ashe the night before had been hotly engaged in the House of Commons fighting an important bill, of which he was in charge, through committee. Yet the blinds of the house in Hill Street were all drawn, and the Dean had not yet succeeded in getting any one to answer the bell. He returned to the attack, and this time a charwoman appeared. At sight of the Dean's legs and apron, she dropped a courtesy, or something like one, informing him that they had workmen in the house and Mr. Ashe was "staying with her ladyship." The Dean took the Tranmores' number in Park Lane and departed thither, not without a sad glance at the desolate hall behind the charwoman and at the darkened windows of the drawing-room overhead. He thought of that May day two years before when he had dropped in to lunch with Lady Kitty; his memory, equally effective whether it summoned the detail of an English chronicle or the features of a face once seen, placed firm and clear before him the long-chinned fellow at Lady Kitty's left, to whose villany that emptyand forsaken house bore cruel witness. And the little lady herselfwhat a radiant and ethereal beauty Ah me ah me He walked on in meditation, his hands behind his back. Even in this May London the little Dean was capable of an abstracted spirit, and he had still much to think over. He had his appointment with Ashe. But Ashe had writtenevidently in a press of business from the House, and had omitted to mention his temporary change of addr...