“Lady Kitty might stand for her to-night,” said Edith Manley.

For Kitty, the capricious, had appeared at dinner in a quasi-Greek dress, white, soft, and flowing, without an ornament.  The Dean acquiesced, but rather sadly.

“I wish she had the bloom of Hebe!  My dear Lady Edith, our hostess looks ill!”

“Does she?  I can’t tell—­I admire her so!” said the woman beside him, upon whose charming eyes some fairy had breathed kindness and optimism from her cradle.

“Ouf!” cried Kitty, as she sprang across the sill of the window behind them.  “They’re all gone!  The Bishop wishes me to become a vice-president of the Women’s Diocesan Association.  And I’ve promised three curates to open bazaars. Ah, mon Dieu!” She raised her white arms with a wild gesture, and then beckoned to Eddie Helston, who was close beside her.

“Shall we try our dance?”

The young men of the house, a group of young guardsmen and diplomats, gathered round, laughing and clapping.  Kitty’s dancing had become famous during the winter as one of her many extravagances.  She no longer recited; literature bored her; motion was the only poetry.  So she had been carefully instructed by a danseuse from the Opera, and in many points, so the enthusiasts declared, had bettered her instructions.  She was now in love with a tempestuous Spanish dance, taught her by a gypsy senorita who had been one of the sensations of the London season.  It required a partner, and she had been practising it with young Helston, for several mornings past, in the empty ballroom.  Helston had spread its praises abroad; and all Haggart desired to see it.

“There!” said Kitty, pointing her partner to a particular spot on the terrace.  “I think that will do.  Where are the castanets, I wonder?”

“Kitty!” said a voice behind her.  Ashe emerged from the drawing-room.

“Kitty, please!  It is nearly midnight.  Everybody is tired—­and you yourself must be worn out!  Say good-night, and let us all go to bed.”

She turned.  Willam’s voice was low, but peremptory.  She shook back her hair from her temples and neck, with the gesture he had learned to dread.

“Nobody’s tired—­and nobody wants to go to bed.  Please stand out of the way, William.  I want plenty of room for my steps.”

And she began pirouetting, as though to try the capacities of the space, humming to herself.

“Helston—­this must be, please, for another night,” said Ashe, resolutely, in the young man’s ear.  “Lady Kitty is much too tired.”  Then to Lady Edith, and the Dean—­“Lady Edith, it would be very kind of you to persuade my wife to go to bed.  She never knows when she is done!”

Lady Edith warmly acquiesced, and, hurrying up to Kitty, she tried to persuade her in soft, caressing phrases.

“I stand on my rights!” said the Dean, following her.  “If my hostess is used up to-night, there’ll be no hostess for me to-morrow.”