He followed her, laughing, into an apartment that, from its noble proportions and beauty, might fairly be called magnificent.  Its ceiling was panelled with worked timber, and its floor beautifully inlaid with woods of various hue, whilst the walls were thickly covered with pictures, chiefly sea-pieces, and all by good masters.  He had, however, but little time to look about him, for a door opened at the further end of the room, and admitted the portly person of Miss Terry, arrayed in a gigantic sun hat and a pair of green spectacles.  She seemed very hot, and held in her hand a piece of brown paper, inside of which something was violently scratching.

“I’ve caught him at last,” she said, “though he did avoid me all last year.  I’ve caught him.”

“Good gracious! caught what?” asked Arthur, with great interest.

“What! why him that Mildred wanted,” she replied, regardless of grammar in her excitement.  “Just look at him, he’s beautiful.”

Thus admonished, Arthur carefully undid the brown paper, and next moment started back with an exclamation, and began to dance about with an enormous red beetle grinding its jaws into his finger.

“Oh, keep still, do, pray,” called Miss Terry, in alarm, “don’t shake him off on any account, or we shall lose him for the want of a little patience, as I did when he bit my finger last year.  If you’ll keep him quite still, he won’t leave go, and I’ll ring for John to bring the chloroform bottle.”

Arthur, feeling that the interests of science were matters of a higher importance than the well-being of his finger, obeyed her injunction to the letter, hanging his arm (and the beetle) over the back of a chair and looking the picture of silent misery.

“Quite still, if you please, Mr. Heigham, quite still; is not the animal’s tenacity interesting?”

“No doubt to you, but I hope your pet beetle is not poisonous, for he is gnashing his pincers together inside my finger.”

“Never mind, we will treat you with caustic presently.  Mildred, don’t laugh so much, but come and look at him; he’s lovely.  John, please be quick with that chloroform bottle.”

“If this sort of thing happens often, I don’t think that I should collect beetles from choice, at least not large ones,” groaned Arthur.

“Oh, dear,” laughed Mrs. Carr, “I never saw anything so absurd.  I don’t know which looks most savage, you or the beetle.”

“Don’t make all that noise, Mildred, you will frighten him, and if once he flies we shall never catch him in this big room.”

Here, fortunately for Arthur, the servant arrived with the required bottle, into which the ferocious insect was triumphantly stoppered by Miss Terry.

“I am so much obliged to you, Mr. Heigham, you are a true collector.”

“For the first and last time,” mumbled Arthur, who was sucking his finger.

“I am infinitely obliged to you, too, Mr. Heigham,” said Mrs. Carr, as soon as she had recovered from her fit of laughing; “the beetle is really very rare; it is not even in the British Museum.  But come, let us go in to luncheon.”