Ashe recovered his gayety.

“She is your own niece.  Mightn’t a man dare—­on that guarantee?”

“Not at all,” said Lady Grosville, unappeased.  “I was a hop out of kin.  Besides—­a Methodist governess saved me; she converted me, at eighteen, and I owe her everything.  But my brothers—­and all the rest of us!” She threw up her eyes and hands.  “What’s the good of being mealy mouthed about it?  All the world knows it.  A good many of us were mad—­and I sometimes think I see more than eccentricity in Kitty.”

“Who was Madame d’Estrees?” said Ashe.  Why should he wince so at the girl’s name?—­in that hard mouth?

Lady Grosville smiled.

“Well, I can tell you a good deal about that,” she said.  “Ah!—­another time!”

For the door opened, and in came a group of guests, with a gush of talk and a rustling of silks and satins.

* * * * *

Everybody was gathered; dinner had been announced; and the white-haired and gouty Lord Grosville was in a state of seething impatience that not even the mild-voiced Dean of the neighboring cathedral, engaged in complimenting him on his speech at the Diocesan Conference, could restrain.

“Adelina, need we wait any longer?” said the master of the house, turning an angry eye upon his wife.

“Certainly not—­she has had ample time,” said Lady Grosville, and rang the bell beside her.

Suddenly there was a whirlwind of noise in the hall, the angry barking of a small dog, the sound of a girl’s voice laughing and scolding, the swish of silk skirts.  A scandalized butler, obeying Lady Grosville’s summons, threw the door open, and in burst Lady Kitty.

“Oh!  I’m so sorry,” said the new-comer, in a tone of despair.  “But I couldn’t leave him up-stairs, Aunt Lina!  He’d eaten one of my shoes, and begun upon the other.  And Julie’s afraid of him.  He bit her last week. May he sit on my knee?  I know I can keep him quiet!”

[Illustration:  “A SLIM GIRL IN WHITE AT THE FAR END OF THE LARGE ROOM”]

Every conversation in the library stopped.  Twenty amazed persons turned to look.  They beheld a slim girl in white at the far end of the large room struggling with a gray terrier puppy which she held under her left arm, and turning appealing eyes towards Lady Grosville.  The dog, half frightened, half fierce, was barking furiously.  Lady Kitty’s voice could hardly be heard through the din, and she was crimson with the effort to control her charge.  Her lips laughed; her eyes implored.  And to add to the effect of the apparition, a marked strangeness of dress was at once perceived by all the English eyes turned upon her.  Lady Kitty was robed in the extreme of French fashion, which at that moment was a fashion of flounces; she was much decolletee; and her fair, abundant hair, carried to a great height, and arranged with a certain calculated wildness around her small face, was surmounted by a large scarlet butterfly which shone defiantly against the dark background of books.