[Illustration:  THE FINISHING TOUCHES]

“Well, upon my word, Kitty!” said a voice from her husband’s dressing-room.

Kitty turned impetuously.

“Do you like it?” she cried.  Ashe approached.  She lifted her horn to her mouth and stood tiptoe.  The movement was enchanting; it had in it the youth and freshness of spring woods; it suggested mountain distances and the solitudes of high valleys.  Intoxication spoke in Ashe’s pulses; he wished the maids had been far away that he might have taken the goddess in his very human arms.  Instead of which he stood lazily smiling.

“What Endymion are you calling?” he asked her.  “Kitty, you are a dream!”

Kitty pirouetted, then suddenly stopped short and held out a foot.

“Look at those silk things, sir.  Nobody but Fanchette could have made them look anything but a botch.  But they spoil the dress.  And all to please mother and Mrs. Grundy!”

“I like them.  I suppose—­the nearest you could get to buskins?  You would have preferred ankles au naturel?  I don’t think you’d have been admitted, Kitty.”

“Shouldn’t I?  And so few people have feet they can show!” sighed Kitty, regretfully.

Ashe’s eyes met those of the maid, who was trying to hide her smiles, and he and she both laughed.

“What do you think about it, eh, Blanche?”

“I think her ladyship is much better as she is,” said the maid, decidedly.  “She’d have felt very strange when she got there.”

Kitty turned upon her like a whirlwind.  “Go to bed!” she said, putting both hands on the shoulders of the maid.  “Go to bed at once!  Esther can give me my cloak.  Do you know, William, she was awake all last night thinking of her brother?”

“The brother who has had an operation?  But I thought there was good news?” said Ashe, kindly.

“He’s much better,” put in Kitty.  “She heard this afternoon.  She won’t be such a goose as to lie awake, I Should hope, to-night.  Don’t let me catch you here when I get back!” she said, releasing the girl, whose eyes had filled with tears.  “Mr. Ashe will help me, and if he pulls the strings into knots, I Shall just cut them—­so there!  Go away, get your supper, and go to bed.  Such a life as I’ve led them all to-day!” She threw up her hands in a perfunctory penitence.

The maid was forced to go, and the housemaid also returned to the hall with Kitty’s Opera-cloak and fan, till it should please her mistress to descend.  Both of them were dead tired, but they took a genuine disinterested pleasure in Kitty’s beauty and her fine frocks.  She was not by any means always considerate of them; but still, with that wonderful generosity that the poor show every day to the rich, they liked her; and to Ashe every servant in the house was devoted.

Kitty meanwhile had driven Ashe to his own toilette, and was walking about the room, now Studying herself in the glass, and now chattering to him through the open door.