Ashe stifled a little yawn.  He threw himself down by Mary, vowing that there was no more pleasure to be got out of pictures now that people would try to know so much about them.  Mary meanwhile raised herself involuntarily to look into the farther room, where the noise made by Cliffe and Lady Kitty had increased.

“They are going to sing,” said Ashe, lazily—­“and it won’t be hymns.”

In fact, Lady Kitty had opened the piano, and had begun the first bars of something French and operatic.  At the first sound of Kitty’s music, however, Lady Grosville drew herself up; she closed the volume of Evangelical sermons for which she had exchanged the Times; she deposited her spectacles sharply on the table beside her.

“Amy!—­Caroline!”

Those young ladies rose.  So did Lady Grosville.  Kitty meanwhile sat with suspended fingers and laughing eyes, waiting on her aunt’s movements.

“Kitty, pray don’t let me interfere with your playing,” said Lady Grosville, with severe politeness—­“but perhaps you would kindly put it off for half an hour.  I am now going to read to the servants—­”

“Gracious!” said Kitty, springing up.  “I was going to play Mr. Cliffe some Offenbach.”

“Ah, but the piano can be heard in the library, and your cousin Amy plays the harmonium—­”

“Mon Dieu!” said Kitty.  “We will be as quiet as mice.  Or”—­she made a quick step in pursuit of her aunt—­“shall I come and sing, Aunt Lina?”

Ashe, in his shelter behind Mary Lyster, fell into a silent convulsion of laughter.

“No, thank you!” said Lady Grosville, hastily.  And she rustled away followed by her daughters.

Kitty came flying into the inner room followed by Cliffe.

“What have I done?” she said, breathlessly, addressing Harman, who rose to greet her.  “Mayn’t one play the piano here on Sundays?”

“That depends,” said Harman, “on what you play.”

“Who made your English Sunday?” said Kitty, impetuously.  “Je vous demande—­who?”

She threw her challenge to all the winds of heaven—­standing tiptoe, her hands poised on the back of a chair, the smallest and most delicate of furies.

“A breath unmakes it, as a breath has made,” said Cliffe.  “Come and play billiards, Lady Kitty.  You said just now you played.”

“Billiards!” said Harman, throwing up his hands.  “On Sunday—­here?”

“Can they hear the balls?” said Kitty, eagerly, with a gesture towards the library.

Mary Lyster, who had been perfunctorily looking at a book, laid it down.

“It would certainly greatly distress Lady Grosville,” she said, in a voice studiously soft, but on that account perhaps all the more significant.

Kitty glanced at Mary, and Ashe saw the sudden red in her cheek.  She turned provokingly to Cliffe.  “There’s quite half an hour, isn’t there, before one need dress—­”